803 Ohio's Ancient Trails; Safeguarding Heritage Sites; How to Land a Plane

0:00The earthworks that were built nearly 2 ,000 years ago across the Midwest were not random. They include places in Ohio that are recognized as important world heritage sites. Octagons and squares and circles connected by lines. It's an odd sort of set of earthenworks there. Coming up, we'll look at the mound builder mysteries of Ohio's ancient trail. It takes commitment to maintain heritage sites like these. The head of the World Monuments Fund reminds us how preservation projects can bring us together as we protect places that are at risk of disappearing in our communities and around the world.

0:38America is amazing, first of all, because of its philanthropic culture. And we have to preserve that because it enriches you as humans. Plus, a transcontinental pilot tells us what it's like to land a jet airplane. Pilots will often joke that no one has to take off, but we do need to land. It's all in the hour ahead on Travel with Rick Steves. You can travel all the way to Stonehenge in England to explore a mysterious site and imagine what it was all about in the distant past. But there are also impressive prehistoric sites in North America, even where you might least expect them. In a minute, Laurie Erickson reminds us that earthwork sites, like the Great Serpent Mound in Ohio, serve as a link with the people who came before us.

1:22How do you protect important heritage sites from the ravages of time and other threats? Since 1965, the World Monuments Fund has been trying to safeguard what's irreplaceable around the world. Their latest list adds two dozen heritage places in need of protection, from ancient cities to modern icons. And this time, it even includes what we left behind on the moon. In just a bit, the head of the WMF reminds us of the mission to preserve a piece of ourselves in the World Heritage sites around us. And would you like to know what it feels like to work as a jet pilot taking people across the ocean?

1:56Mark Van Honaker wrote a fun little guide called How to Land a Plane. He joins us later in the hour for some reassurance from the cockpit. The people of Ohio are proud to have their first UNESCO World Heritage Site. In 2023, several prehistoric Hopewell ceremonial earthworks across central Ohio were given that honor. They serve as a witness to the brilliance of the societies who came long before us and built earthwork monuments aligned with the rhythms of the sun and the moon. Lori Erickson has made pilgrimages to important sites across the U.S. from Appalachia to Alaska. She explores them in her book, Every Step is Home.

2:33And she's with us now on Travel with Rick Steves to take a closer look at Ohio's ancient trail. Lori, welcome back. Thank you for having me. So, Lori, there's actually a culture right here in our country that goes back 1 ,500, 1 ,800 years, the Hopewell culture. Tell us who they were. Well, in some ways, we don't know a lot about them because we have no written records. The oral tradition is it's too far in the past to have a living oral tradition. But what we do have are these remarkable earthen works that were created by this culture. So they're named the Hopo culture after the name of the farmer who owned the land where one of these first mounds was excavated on.

3:13But otherwise, Hopo doesn't have any connection with what the people themselves called their culture. There are four main sites on the ancient Ohio Trail. There are thousands of mound sites, but the four main ones are Newark, which is the largest set of geometric earthworks in the world. It's near Columbus. And if you look at an aerial map, it looks almost like a semiconductor map. You know, there are octagons and squares and circles connected by lines. It's an odd sort of set of earthenworks there. Mound City is another area, maybe about a half hour drive or so away. That was a necropolis, a burial place.

3:55It looks like giant anthills spread out over a couple of football fields. Fort Ancient is the third one. It was the largest hilltop enclosure in North America. It's on a beautiful setting overlooking a river. And it's a puzzle because there were in this hilltop enclosure, there were 70 different openings. And so it clearly wasn't meant for defensive purposes because you wouldn't have that many openings in it. So it was used for some kind of ceremony. And it's huge. And then the fourth one is the one that is most impressive that captures people's imaginations in all sorts of ways. It's the Great Serpent Mound.

4:33It is the largest effigy mound in the world. It's a huge serpent, a quarter mile in length. Each of the curves are about three feet high. Originally, they would have been even higher than that. The Great Serpent Mound is a little bit of an anomaly. It probably wasn't Hopewell. It was built either before or after, but it's connected to this ancient Ohio trail, and it is a really impressive spot. Now, this face is the setting sun, I understand, just like all of the stone circles and these remnants of civilizations in Europe and in England, and they all seem to be lined up with the stars and the rising, setting sun on summer solstice.

5:15And there's a connection there, isn't there? Well, it seems like it's too much of a coincidence that the mouth of the serpent would face the setting sun on the solstice. Another interesting quirk of this site is that deep below the serpent is the remains of a meteor crater. A big meteor struck the area about 300 million years ago, and it twisted the rock there in ways that it's not apparent from the surface, But there are, if you have a compass and you're walking around the Great Serpent, it does weird things. And it has to do with, you know, there are geological explanations for that. But I think it's interesting to speculate on the fact that the people, perhaps, who built the Great Serpent effigy realized that there were a variety of reasons why this place was different.

6:02Lori Erickson is an Episcopal clergywoman from Iowa City who often visits and writes about significant spiritual sites around the world. She's with us right now from the Travel with Rick Steves archives to look at Ohio's ancient trail of mound builder sites. She wrote about them in her book, Every Step is Home, based on road trip discoveries she and her husband had exploring sites across America that seemed to have a special resonance. Her website is laurierickson.net, and Lori is spelled L-O-R-I. Lori, how does this relate to indigenous Americans that we think of, tribes that we all know. Is this Hopewell culture as mysterious to them as even more so than they are to us?

6:46Well, I think the Shawnee in particular claim an ancestral connection to these sites and that it almost certainly is their ancestors who were there because of the tremendous disruptions in Native American culture, diseases, and all the terrible things that happened to various tribal groups, that it's not a direct connection anymore, but there is a reclaiming of that heritage. And the Park Service in Ohio is working really hard to collaborate with the Native peoples to try to bring to life the stories, the older traditions, as much as they can. I would think it's a bit of a challenge, especially with the Native American interest in making sure these are respected as holy sites.

7:33Some of them are sites that are holy to golfers or developers more than holy to Native American heritage. I would imagine that's a bit of a discussion in Ohio. Well, it is. And I think it's always hard when you have sacred sites, indigenous sites that are in the midst of modern development. And so you mentioned the Mound Builders Country Club. It contains part of the Newark Earthen Works. and their negotiations underway to take it back under the control of the state historical society. I think another thing that happens at the Great Serpent Mound, it's become a center for New Age pilgrims and for people who, you know, in various ways connect with nature spirituality.

8:15And so there's somewhat of a delicate dance relating to that. It's a public place. It's a spiritual place. It's a Native American place. And so there are a lot of different stories that come together there. But I think as long as people come with a sense of respect and openness, that that can be a good thing. You know, in part, what I like about these places is that the story is so open. You know, there's not one set, there's not a book about it. There's not one particular set of dogma or rules about it. Instead, there's mystery at the heart of it. And I think that people respond to that, the power of the mystery.

8:51If somebody wants to visit, I would think it'd be nice to have some kind of a museum where you might have a few artifacts and some sort of a sense of what was the technology and what do we know about these people. Is there a museum and are there artifacts and what's that like? Yes, there are some. In Columbus, Ohio, called the History Connection Museum, that would be the best place to go. at Fort Ancient. They have quite a nice museum there that has some of the artifacts and some replica artifacts. It's in the works that these sites are going to be named UNESCO World Heritage Sites. They're on the short list for that.

9:30If and when that happens, I think that's going to raise the profile of these places tremendously, because I think a lot of people just don't realize how significant they are. They really are the American Stonehenge or the American Pyramids. And unfortunately, because they were built of Earth, they've sunk down a lot. You know, you have to use some imagination with them. But the amount of work, the sophistication, the lunar alignments, the astronomical alignments, all of those indicate an incredibly sophisticated culture that built these places. Fascinating. Lori Erickson is joining us from the studios of Iowa Public Radio to explore Ohio's ancient trail of mound builders' sites.

10:13For more recent indigenous history, Ohio has opened the Great Council State Park. It's on the site of an 18th-century Shawnee village just north of Xenia. It also has displays on the Hopewell and Fort Ancient Cultures, with their mound sites just a short drive away. Laurie, when we think of this ancient Ohio trail, you can't help but wonder, what was the technology of the age, and how did they build this stuff? I mean, when we go to that museum, what kind of artifacts will we see? What physical remnants are there from the Hopewell people? Well, if you go to the museum, you'll see artifacts that are made of mica and copper and seashells and obsidian that were traded throughout North America, which indicates that it was a powerful culture that had connections across the continent.

11:00But the technology itself used to build these mounds was very simple. They had probably pointed sticks. They had hoes made out of clamshells. And they had woven baskets. And they had human labor. But then the other part of that, the process that I think is really important to realize is that this was not a hierarchical culture. Like when the pyramids were built, for example, there was a pharaoh who was telling people what to do. But instead, these cultures, these early Hopewell cultures were primarily hunter-gatherers. They did some limited agriculture, but primarily they lived in small groups without a big social structure, you know, with the elite living in wealthy places and the rest of people living in pretty minimal circumstances.

11:44So whatever the motivation was, it almost certainly was done in a voluntary fashion. And they also almost certainly didn't live at these places. And so they were used for ceremonial purposes. So probably people came together from a considerable distance to work on the earthen works, and then they'd have ceremonies, and then they would go away. And so there's real differences between some of these monuments and, say, the Central American monuments that were built essentially by slave labor, and in Europe as well. That is so important that we're able to just remember that we don't need to leave our country to find distant history.

12:28I mean, I'm so used to thinking, oh, we've got history here a couple centuries ago, but we're talking 1 ,500, 1 ,800 years ago, remnants of communities that worked together, and it's a blessing to be able to see it, and what we need to do is remember the ancient Ohio Trail. Lori Erickson, thank you so much for joining us, and I've got some interesting travels ahead of me right here in our own country. Thank you for having me, Rick. There were Choctaws in Alabama, Chippewas in St. Paul. Mississippi mud runs like a river in me

13:05America, oh, she's like a mother to me You can hear more with Lori Erickson in our show archives at ricksteves.com slash radio. An intercontinental pilot tells us how to land a plane in just a bit. But first, the head of the World Monuments Fund reminds us what it takes to protect endangered heritage sites around the world. You're listening to Travel. with Rick Steves. My name is Fabian Brügger, and this is a tongue twister in German. Brautkleid bleibt Brautkleid, und Blaukraut bleibt Blaukraut. And what that means is, a wedding gown is a wedding gown, and blue weed is blue weed. Blaukraut bleibt Blaukraut, und Brautkleid bleibt Brautkleid.

13:48For 60 years, the World Monuments Fund has led the way in conserving the world's irreplaceable treasures, architectural and cultural sites that span the diversity of human civilization. Every two years, they identify 25 sites under threat from some of our most pressing global challenges and raise the call to action to preserve them. To help us understand what's endangered and what it takes to protect them and why, we're joined now by the World Monuments Fund President and CEO, Benedit de Montlard. Benedit, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me, Rick. You know, this is a travel show, and lots of people who are enthusiastic about traveling tune in to us every week.

14:30And a lot of us aren't really mindful or aware of the fact that many of the great cultural sites that we travel so far and wait so long and dream so much about to see are fragile, and they're under threat by various challenges. Tell us about the mission of the World Monuments Fund to protect these treasures of our civilization. Thank you so much, Rick. And indeed, people are not always aware of what it takes to preserve the places that they so happily visit. And in fact, like some recent events, like the fire at Notre Dame, really helped people realize that places you take for granted are not there forever if you don't put in place the systems to preserve them.

15:12So the mission of World Monuments Fund is to work with communities around the world to preserve heritage. So this takes many different shapes. Sometimes it's on advocacy projects, Sometimes it's some brick-and-mortar preservation projects. It's very different. We are headquartered in New York, and we have offices in India, in Peru, in France, in the UK, in Spain, Portugal. And we have projects today in 35 countries. Now, as president and CEO of the World Monuments Fund, Benedit, what are your responsibilities? And what are your biggest challenges and maybe the big joys? Well, my responsibility is to set the strategy with my whole team and with our partners and to have the right staff at the right places.

15:57And then to make sure that we answer the demands and needs of the communities around the world. And that's sometimes the best thing when you figure out you've made a difference. You know, when you go to Cambodia, you go to Angkor, you see like four temples that were monuments found as restored. Last year, I had the great joy of handing over three of those temples to the Cambodian authorities. That's extraordinary. And sometimes you feel like, oh, my God, how am I going to do this? What are we going to do? When we saw this big earthquake that impacted Turkey and Syria, we were so desperate and also really wanted to work with the communities there.

16:40So since then, we've launched a big project in Antakya to restore like mosque and church and synagogue there. But, you know, in Syria, because of the situation there, we were not able to do anything. And that's heartbreaking because when you know Syria and all the heritage there, that is so important to humanity. You really want to be able to do something. I suppose part of your work is not funding the restoration or funding the protection, but raising awareness of the issue so people who care can then go, oh, this is a good cause. Absolutely. Like very often when a site makes it to our watch list, then you see an immediate mobilization and that's really heartwarming.

17:21For example, this year we had a very important modernist place in Argentina. And just the fact that it was put on the watch list a few years ago, the government mobilized and now it's fully restored. And in fact, it got our Noel Prize for modernism, which is one of the best restorations we've seen. So you have some great examples like that. So our action goes from raising awareness and advocacy all the way to restoring temples in Cambodia. So you have the whole arc and it all depends on what does our partner on the ground want? What do they need? And then we try to bring it expertise, funding, helping shape a project.

18:03but also raising the profile of the site and the people that care for it. So every two years, you produce this list of 25 sites declared by the World Monuments Fund that should be recognized as important and threatened. And you choose these sites from, I would imagine, many applications. What shapes your priorities in choosing these? Do you have an agenda like, oh, we're concerned about climate or we're concerned about conflict or we're concerned about urbanization. That is a trend and it's challenging many sites. And do you choose one poster child to make that general cause more understood? Or what are your priorities in choosing these 25?

18:49Well, so that's a very bottom-up process. And so we receive, as you said, the nominations from all over the world. We receive hundreds of nominations. And first of all, we analyze the trend. And it's really our window on the world. It has a way we, one of the ways in which we interact with many, many partners in the field. And so it's interesting for us to see what are the main challenges quoted by those nominators. And so this year, indeed, you saw lack of funding, you saw climate change, you saw urbanization. But also we can have a refined analysis. We can look at what is happening more in one region versus another.

19:26For example, obviously, like the Middle East quoted much more conflict and natural disasters. So that's one thing. But then how we choose what are our criteria? Well, first of all, it's the significance. You know, what is the cultural significance of this place locally, nationally, internationally? Second is, is it urgent? Like, do we need to do something right now? Will it make a difference to be on that list? does it need an action immediately? And then third is visibility. Like, can we do a project there? Can we have an impact? So at the end of the day, we try to have a list that is geographically balanced.

20:09We want sites that are representative of the diversity of heritage around the world. But is that, of course, emblematic of the big threats and the big challenges that we've observed in all those nominations? So if you see a trend in the hundreds of nominations, you'll say, well, I can't choose all of these places that are threatened by climate change, but we must choose a couple to raise awareness of climate change in general as a threat to cultural treasures. Absolutely, because you want people to understand what's happening around the world and what are the big threats to heritage. So, for example, climate change.

20:45This year, we have on the list the Swahili coast of Africa. You know, all those extraordinary places like Lamu, like Zanzibar, and those places are today threatened by sea level rise and coastal erosion. But closer to home, you have also the lighthouses of Maine that are equally endangered by sea level rise. So we indeed are trying to pick examples that reflect these trends and that people can relate to. Maybe I don't relate to Zanzibar, but maybe I relate to the cultural landscape of Maine. It's interesting, Benedit, because I just read through all 25 sites that are on the list for this year, and it is a cohesive ensemble of concerns, very carefully balanced and divided from geography and different fundamental causes and so on.

21:38And you can learn a lot just from looking in that and trying to analyze the thinking that goes into the selection from the World Monuments Fund. Benedit de Montlauer is with us right now on Travel with Rick Steves to remind us of the global efforts to preserve many of the world's most treasured architectural and cultural gems. Benedit is the president and CEO of the World Monuments Fund and is joining us from their offices in New York City. Every two years, the WMF identifies 25 significant sites that are threatened by the pressures of climate change, conflicts, overdevelopment, and neglect. You can see photos from what's on their 2025 watch and learn about their partnerships with communities across the world on their website, wmf.org.

22:26Benedit, a lot of money goes into your work in helping these sites. It must be quite expensive, and I understand that philanthropic organizations and individuals who care about your values contribute and empower the work of the World Monuments Fund. if you're talking to a big organization or a big foundation that has a lot of money to develop, to invest, how do you make the case that this is a good investment? What's a concrete example of how somebody's money can go to you and then save something that is really important for posterity, for the heritage, for the future, to be able to look back and appreciate from where we came?

23:07Well, so I think the point to make is that it doesn't take a big investment to have a huge impact. And I think one of our examples is really Cambodia. We arrived, we were the first Western organization to be called in Cambodia after the fall of the Khmer Rouge. And at that time, it was a landscape full of landmines. And as you know, a whole generation of people with education, of course, people who are specialists of preservation, had been decimated. So they definitely needed help. So we started working at the Istanbul, but also training people while doing so. And it's so interesting to see that at the beginning, when we just arrived in Cambodia, we had to bring a lot of international experts because everybody with an education had been killed or displaced, etc.

24:00But today, our whole team is Cambodian, Cambodia. And so it's extraordinary. And you go to Siem Reap and you see like this flourishing town. You see these millions of tourists, all those people having jobs. Because of what? because of an archaeological site, because of historic preservation. So the impact of your investment, I mean, over 30 years, maybe we've invested$20 million, but how much money has been reinvested in the community? How many millions of jobs? So I think that's one of the best examples of what is the potential impact of historic preservation. Benedit, you are a French diplomat working to head an organization, a nonprofit organization, the World Monuments Fund in New York.

24:46And we're entering into a time in our country, which is make America great again, MAGA. Now, the thinking for a lot of good people is we need to take care of ourselves first. How can you relate to somebody with a make America great again attitude that America is needed at the table for a global initiative like what your mission is? Is America needed for this? Yeah, I mean, America is amazing, first of all, because of its philanthropic culture. This doesn't exist anywhere else, like this generosity of the American people. And I think this is something Americans shouldn't turn their back on. They have something to teach everywhere else, that individuals themselves, through their philanthropy, at whatever level, they can make a difference for what they care about.

25:36And it's about themselves. You know, heritage in Africa maybe doesn't relate to you as well as heritage in Maine. But at the end, it's the history of humanity. It's the history of our ancestors. So I think we have to care for that. And we have to preserve that because it enriches you as humans. And so that's, I think, really important. And also you can have an important impact, like economic impact. You will have a more stable world if we know where we come from. At the moment, I think there is a lot of loss of identities. People want to know who they are. People want to relate to their origins, their cultures.

26:15I think this is also what MAGA is about. And what we should see is that that relates to everyone knowing where they come from and where humanity comes from. And it takes a whole, like, vast array of cultures that we have to learn about. You know, that's building bridges instead of building walls. and a lot of people want to build walls to be safer, but I really believe if you build bridges, you'll be safer when we have more connections between cultures. And the United States can be such a great contributor to worthy causes like the World Monuments Fund if we take a seat at the table. We have a great example of that, which is the bridge of Mostar in Ex-Lugosiavia.

26:54This region was torn by war. So many people were worried about it. You had a genocide there. and then through historic preservation, along with many other initiatives, of course, it's not the only thing that contributes to peace, but we were able to build projects that brought people together. And it's really difficult in places where you have so much hatred and you have so much that has happened between people. But through concrete projects, we can rally people together around something positive and to learn about their culture and what they share in common. And so, yes, we are all about building bridges, sometimes walls, but good walls, walls that reflect history and cultures.

27:37You know, you bring up the bridge in Mostar. That is an emotional thing for me. It's a pointed bridge, one big arch that comes to a point. And it is symbolically where cultures come together in former Yugoslavia. And these cultures were disagreeing and fighting, and there was a heartbreaking war. and they were pummeling this bridge that for centuries has symbolized people coming together. And I was in a little theater in Mostor watching the video of that and after pummeling and pummeling and pummeling with bombs, it finally crashed into the river and I was surrounded by people from that community and there was a community outcry.