This is a post that blows your mind because the last you'd expect to find in Kansas is a lost city, right. Well that's exactly what archaeologists found when searching through this amazing part of the US. Check out this spectacular research by dedicated archaeologists and students from Wichita State University.
Professor Donald Blakeslee in one of the pits being excavated in Arkansas City, Kan. Photo by: David Kelly / For The Times
After researching this and other amazing discoveries in the United States the obvious conclusion is that the US has lots more amazing discoveries to come. It seems likely that there's more cities, towns and definitely more treasure, artifacts and possibly parts of history which we can answer once and for all because that's the motivating factor for doing this type of stuff and that's filling in history.
Bringing back to life the past and give names to people unknown and answer the long ago mysteries with facts. mankind's history is always under the scrutiny of others but facts are well, facts and who can argue with facts. So here's the story: Check out their Twitter page here for up to date information here.
Of all the places to discover a lost city, this pleasing little community seems an unlikely candidate. There are no vine-covered temples or impenetrable jungles here just an old-fashioned downtown, a drug store that serves up root beer floats and rambling houses along shady brick lanes. Yet there’s always been something something just below the surface.
Locals have long scoured fields and river banks for arrowheads and bits of pottery, amassing huge collections. Then there were those murky tales of a sprawling city on the Great Plains and a chief who drank from a goblet of gold.
A few years ago, Donald Blakeslee, an anthropologist and archaeology professor at Wichita State University, began piecing things together. And what he’s found has spurred a rethinking of traditional views on the early settlement of the Midwest, while potentially filling a major gap in American history.
Using freshly translated documents written by the Spanish conquistadors more than 400 years ago and an array of high-tech equipment, Blakeslee located what he believes to be the lost city of Etzanoa, home to perhaps 20,000 people between 1450 and 1700. They lived in thatched, beehive-shaped houses that ran for at least five miles along the bluffs and banks of the Walnut and Arkansas rivers.
Blakeslee says the site is the second-largest ancient settlement in the country after Cahokia in Illinois. On a recent morning, Blakeslee supervised a group of Wichita State students excavating a series of rectangular pits in a local field. Jeremiah Perkins, 21, brushed dirt from a half-buried black pot. Others sifted soil over screened boxes, revealing arrowheads, pottery and stone scrapers used to thin buffalo hides. Blakeslee, 75, became intrigued by Etzanoa after scholars at UC Berkeley retranslated in 2013 the often muddled Spanish accounts of their forays into what is now Kansas.
The new versions were more cogent, precise and vivid. “I thought, ‘Wow, their eyewitness descriptions are so clear it’s like you were there.’ I wanted to see if the archaeology fit their descriptions,” he said. “Every single detail matched this place.”
Kacie Larsen of Wichita State University shakes dirt through a screened box to see what artifacts may emerge. David Kelly / For The Times Photo by: David Kelly / For The Times.
Professor Donald Blakeslee in one of the pits being excavated in Arkansas City, Kan. Photo by: David Kelly / For The Times
After researching this and other amazing discoveries in the United States the obvious conclusion is that the US has lots more amazing discoveries to come. It seems likely that there's more cities, towns and definitely more treasure, artifacts and possibly parts of history which we can answer once and for all because that's the motivating factor for doing this type of stuff and that's filling in history.
Bringing back to life the past and give names to people unknown and answer the long ago mysteries with facts. mankind's history is always under the scrutiny of others but facts are well, facts and who can argue with facts. So here's the story: Check out their Twitter page here for up to date information here.
Of all the places to discover a lost city, this pleasing little community seems an unlikely candidate. There are no vine-covered temples or impenetrable jungles here just an old-fashioned downtown, a drug store that serves up root beer floats and rambling houses along shady brick lanes. Yet there’s always been something something just below the surface.
Locals have long scoured fields and river banks for arrowheads and bits of pottery, amassing huge collections. Then there were those murky tales of a sprawling city on the Great Plains and a chief who drank from a goblet of gold.
A few years ago, Donald Blakeslee, an anthropologist and archaeology professor at Wichita State University, began piecing things together. And what he’s found has spurred a rethinking of traditional views on the early settlement of the Midwest, while potentially filling a major gap in American history.
Using freshly translated documents written by the Spanish conquistadors more than 400 years ago and an array of high-tech equipment, Blakeslee located what he believes to be the lost city of Etzanoa, home to perhaps 20,000 people between 1450 and 1700. They lived in thatched, beehive-shaped houses that ran for at least five miles along the bluffs and banks of the Walnut and Arkansas rivers.
Blakeslee says the site is the second-largest ancient settlement in the country after Cahokia in Illinois. On a recent morning, Blakeslee supervised a group of Wichita State students excavating a series of rectangular pits in a local field. Jeremiah Perkins, 21, brushed dirt from a half-buried black pot. Others sifted soil over screened boxes, revealing arrowheads, pottery and stone scrapers used to thin buffalo hides. Blakeslee, 75, became intrigued by Etzanoa after scholars at UC Berkeley retranslated in 2013 the often muddled Spanish accounts of their forays into what is now Kansas.
The new versions were more cogent, precise and vivid. “I thought, ‘Wow, their eyewitness descriptions are so clear it’s like you were there.’ I wanted to see if the archaeology fit their descriptions,” he said. “Every single detail matched this place.”
Kacie Larsen of Wichita State University shakes dirt through a screened box to see what artifacts may emerge. David Kelly / For The Times Photo by: David Kelly / For The Times.
