Hopewell Exchange System

American Indians had peaceful interaction spheres among a variety of peoples going back as far as perhaps 8000 BC.
In this little post I intend to say  a bit  about  trade spheres centered on the Mississippi River and relative to peoples called Mound Builders.
The earliest European visitors and explorers of what is now the US found the ones extent when they arrived, notable. By that time the Indian trade systems were far below their peak. Still, before the end if the 1500s the Spanish had begun to write of them. Before the end of the 1600s the French were participating in them. Even though by then many of the Indians' mounds and earthworks were already grown-over. By the 1700s, the English were finding the Indians a bit degenerate, but  still worthy of manipulation. By the time Americans got to the upper Mississippi in the early 1800s a great many of them thought the Indians were worthless, incapable of mound or earthwork building. Few Americans, even intelligent and imaginative ones, saw any Indians as capable of managing long range interaction spheres.
Still, it was those same Americans who began looking into what some now call the Hopewell Culture.

I intend to write more of these things a later date. I look forward to your comments.

Joseon

I became conscious of Korea at the same time I noted a loss of confidence on the part of my father.


Near the beginning of the 'Korean War' I heard my father say that it was wrong for the people of the United States to be butting into anyone else's civil war.
Soon after that I heard him renege by saying that he just didn't understand and who was he to say.


I still don't know much about Koreans. While working on the docks I did discover that Koreans could work with Japanese without loving them.


Form early reading I seem to remember that they knew about riding horses very early in their history, but that they had raised bears even earlier.


I think that your history book will tell you that Korea is one of the oldest continuous civilization in the world.


The oldest evidence of pottery in Korea is dated just after the flood, about 8000 BC.




There were lots of people in Korea before the Gojoseon Kingdom was founded about 2500 BC, which is the time from which date the beginning of the Korean people on the Peninsula.


I think that pre-Buddhist Koreans had already successfully resisted Chinese and Mongolian invasions. Still, I imagine that Koreans carry some Chinese and Mongolian genes. Please correct me where I need correction and add your comments.


I think that Koreans are just now finding evidence of how very old the use of bronze is on te peninsula.
Before about 300 BC an iron culture began toward the south of the peninsula. The Koreans are very much their own people, but I do believe that they were influenced by very early contact with Han Chinese.