Staff photo/Katie Yantis: Archeologist Bradley T. Lepper gives a presentation about early man to members of the New Knoxville Historical Society Thursday night.

Archeologist Bradley T. Lepper of the Ohio Historical Society talked to the historical society with a presentation entitled “A Fifteen Thousand Year Human Odyssey.”
“It’s really exciting to talk to a group that is interested,” Lepper said. “They are looking beyond their (immediate) heritage.”
Lepper started back in the 12,000 to 8,000 B.C period, which is called the Paleoindian Period.
“These were the first original explorers from Asia to Alaska, exactly when that happened is not known,” Lepper said.
“They were a highly mobile, nomadic people. The landscape these people lived in were very different than what we would think.”
Lepper explained the ways the group explored, lived and hunted for food to provide nutrition for their families.
“We see the tools from the hunting kit that belonged to the men,” Lepper said. “Men hunted and women were the gatherers. Archeological view is skewed toward the men, because the women’s tools were not preserved.”
While many of the tools that were preserved were tools used by men, Lepper said it is suspected that 80 to 90 percent of the families meals were contributed by the gathering of women and the other percent of which was the meat contributed by the men.
Licking County was featured in Lepper’s presentation because of his extensive study on the Burning Tree Mastodon that was discovered in the area. He said a man was expanding a golf course from nine holes to 18 holes when the mastodon was discovered.
That excavation led to a discovery of living bacteria and a place in the top story list in the 1991 Discovery magazine.
The mastodon is on display today in Yokohama, Japan. The owner sold it to a museum in Yokohama.
“It’s pretty neat a museum in Japan would want an Ohio mastodon,” Lepper said. “That is a sign, it was a pretty significant find.”
After progressing through the Early Woodland Period, Lepper highlighted points of the “Golden Age” or the Middle Woodland Period, when many geometric earthworks started being built.
Lepper highlighted the Hopewell culture that many are familiar with in the area.
He pointed out the people of the Hopewell culture used spear points made of obsidian, a volcanic glass found in Yellowstone Park.
“That stuff is as far away as Wyoming,” Lepper said. “That (was) being brought to Ohio,” Lepper said.
The significance, he said, was the people of the Hopewell culture were beginning to settle in specific areas and began trading items.
Also highlighted during the presentation were the earthworks, Mound City in Chillicothe and the High Bank Works in Ross County.
Moon alignments also were brought up in discussion of Octagon Earthworks in Chillicothe and Warren County.
The earthworks were built to reveal the lunar cycle, which takes 18.6 years.
As the people progressed through the Late Wooden Culture and the Late Prehistoric Period of 900 to 1550,  Lepper said social change evolved the people as well as the food that was grown and shared for nutrition.
New Knoxville Historical Society President Kirk Steinecker said he was pleased with the presentation and the night as the society celebrated its 25th anniversary.
“I think we had a good turn-out, a lot of people came from out of town that we didn’t even anticipate being here,” Steinecker said.
“We try and get a speaker that will draw in a lot of people. I think most of them enjoyed it and they asked a lot of good questions.”