Speaker 1: Hey guys, exciting news. I'm really really stoked about this.
Speaker 1: On March seventh, at noon Pacific Standard time, Team Sideways
Speaker 1: is going to host an a m A on the
Speaker 1: Unresolved Mysteries subreddit on Reddit. Pretty exciting. Hell yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So the mods will post an announcement a week prior,
Speaker 1: so if you can't join us at that time, at
Speaker 1: that date, you can post your questions there. Um, please
Speaker 1: don't email us questions will lose them and forget them.
Speaker 1: Let's try and contain this just to Reddit. But we're
Speaker 1: super excited and uh yeah, so if you can join us. Sorry,
Speaker 1: just in case somebody you know, five years from now,
Speaker 1: I was listening to this episode, not two thousand seventeen.
Speaker 1: This is not true yourself two thousand seventeen. Sorry, Thinking Sideways.
Speaker 1: I don't understand. You never know stories of things we
Speaker 1: symply don't know the answer too. Well, Hey everybody, and
Speaker 1: welcome back again to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I
Speaker 1: am Steve, of course, I am joined by he just
Speaker 1: adjusted to the middle of us. I don't know what
Speaker 1: you're pointing at that. I thought it was ahead I did,
Speaker 1: so we're off to a rock and good start. Sorry. Well,
Speaker 1: this week, we of course have another mystery that we
Speaker 1: want to bring to you. This one has no dead bodies, no, no,
Speaker 1: just not know people at all. Really. Nah, well, I
Speaker 1: think I have one specific person in this story that
Speaker 1: I talked about me too, But yeah, no, mostly this
Speaker 1: is no people. Well I didn't do any research on
Speaker 1: It's got some gophers in yeah, it's got some critters. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What we're going to talk about today is glo oject mystery,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of geographically specific. Our subject is what
Speaker 1: is known as the Mima Mounds. And if you've never
Speaker 1: heard of these, but you've read this on the internet,
Speaker 1: you might think that the name is Mima, which I
Speaker 1: was under the false understanding that was the name too,
Speaker 1: until I started watching some YouTube videos and realized that
Speaker 1: I was pronouncing it incorrectly. The Mima Mounds are located
Speaker 1: in Washington State. They are they're near Olympia tom Water
Speaker 1: area of Washington, kind of like if folks have seen
Speaker 1: maps of Washington New Puget Sound is they're like southeast
Speaker 1: of Pugaty there in the southwestern portion of the state.
Speaker 1: Their name comes from the actual area that they're located in,
Speaker 1: which is known as the Mima Prairie, and you will
Speaker 1: come across mounds like this, which we're gonna give some
Speaker 1: description of this, So bear with me here. We're going
Speaker 1: to describe them a little bit. But this kind of
Speaker 1: mound is found in other places in the continental United States,
Speaker 1: as well as other places across the globe. I think
Speaker 1: the only place that this kind of structure is not
Speaker 1: found as Antarctica. And well that's because it's mostly ice.
Speaker 1: It's probably probably found the possibly, I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's true, but they're they're relatively consistent all across the US.
Speaker 1: But again, I'm gonna focus on the ones that are
Speaker 1: in Washington, so we're gonna just work on those. But
Speaker 1: if you do see some research on these and other
Speaker 1: areas of the country, you'll see him referred to as
Speaker 1: prairie mounds, pimple mounds, hog hog wallow mounds. There's a
Speaker 1: few others that are out there. But the mystery, of
Speaker 1: course about these things is that nobody knows how they
Speaker 1: were made or how they were formed. That's the interesting
Speaker 1: thing is that the they know all about all kinds
Speaker 1: of limestone cave. Hey, they figured it out played tectonics,
Speaker 1: they figured that out. Too, but they can't figure out
Speaker 1: these stupid little amounts. I don't get it. Well, maybe
Speaker 1: you will after this, Maybe we'll solve it. Maybe probably
Speaker 1: I doubt it. The mim amounts, to give you a
Speaker 1: description of them, are round dome like bulges of the
Speaker 1: soil that are raised above the plane of the surrounding landscape.
Speaker 1: So here's here's the description. They will range anywhere from
Speaker 1: ten feet to over a hundred and sixty ft across. Wow.
Speaker 1: And they can be anywhere as short as one ft
Speaker 1: two as high as six plus feet high. So this
Speaker 1: is when I say kind of a bulge in the
Speaker 1: landscape I really need it's a giant dome like bull.
Speaker 1: Those numbers that I'm giving those are the average range.
Speaker 1: There are, of course some that are smaller and some
Speaker 1: that are bigger, but that's the general normal range that
Speaker 1: they've been found to be. It's hard to pin down
Speaker 1: how many you're going to find in an area. It
Speaker 1: can be anywhere as few as one or two two upwards,
Speaker 1: or over four hundred mounds in a hectar. Tired, I
Speaker 1: totally was going to mess that one up. Hectare is
Speaker 1: just to give you some number, because that's a random
Speaker 1: number or word that you don't here used a lot.
Speaker 1: It's a hundred and one hundred seven thousand, six hundred
Speaker 1: plus square feet and that's about two and a half
Speaker 1: acres two and a half acres. Yeah, that's a much
Speaker 1: easier number. I wish I thought to put it that way.
Speaker 1: And the weird thing is is that they're they're just
Speaker 1: distribution over that area will be fairly consistent. Now this
Speaker 1: is when there's a bunch of them, not when there's
Speaker 1: one or two. But if there's a hundred of them,
Speaker 1: they're relatively evenly spaced. If there's four hundred of them,
Speaker 1: they're evenly spaced, almost if they're in a grid or
Speaker 1: a hex pattern. Yeah, it's a very pattern, but it's
Speaker 1: a pattern. Nonetheless. Yeah it's semi regular, that's for sure,
Speaker 1: which is rare in nature. Right, you don't see that
Speaker 1: a whole lot by natural, although there there is some
Speaker 1: um when we're getting the theories, there's some things that
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that might help explain why it's in
Speaker 1: such a regular distribution. Um, I mean in in in nature,
Speaker 1: I mean things things actually they could you look at
Speaker 1: a forest, for example, it's actually kind of regularly distributed.
Speaker 1: Because distributed, I mean because I mean obviously they're not
Speaker 1: gonna all the trees are not not gonna all crowd together,
Speaker 1: and they're gonna and they're not gonna like space themselves
Speaker 1: way out. So they see a lot of kind of
Speaker 1: regular distributions in nature actually exactly, and and and we
Speaker 1: will get into a better description of that later. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna warn everybody now as we go through this,
Speaker 1: this story or the this description, I'm going to end
Speaker 1: up using quite a few analogies to help describe some
Speaker 1: of this, the first one of which is how I
Speaker 1: think of the mounds. I kind of think of them.
Speaker 1: The easy way that I can think of the Mima
Speaker 1: mounds is that they're Yeah, they're the goose bumps of
Speaker 1: the Earth. They're just really small, weird little bumps. But
Speaker 1: I also think of volcanoes. It's kind of the pimples
Speaker 1: of the earth. You're so weird, are actually more like boils? Yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna no more of that. And this is a
Speaker 1: terrible time for we remember, But before we get too
Speaker 1: far along, this was a listeners suggestion. Eric emailed this
Speaker 1: to us quite a long time ago. Eric, you're still
Speaker 1: with us. Yeah, I really hope that my terrible description
Speaker 1: of these or analogy didn't put you off. But I
Speaker 1: really appreciate this suggestion. I was really glad when I
Speaker 1: found this when the list, because it's it's really unique
Speaker 1: and interesting. Yeah, it's a little different than what we
Speaker 1: usually do because exactly, yeah, there's no murder here except
Speaker 1: of my grammar. You don't know, there might be it
Speaker 1: could be a lot of dead people in those bounds.
Speaker 1: Actually there isn't. That's the best part because when Western
Speaker 1: explorers first came to the Washington what is now Washington State,
Speaker 1: they of course looked at these mounds and when I'll
Speaker 1: bet those are burial mounds of the local name it is,
Speaker 1: and next thing they said, hey, let's dig them up,
Speaker 1: and there they were very disappointed because all they found
Speaker 1: was dirt and rocks. There was no bodies. I guess
Speaker 1: the joke was on them. Interestingly enough, there is from
Speaker 1: what I've read, legends from the natives of the area
Speaker 1: that say that the mounds were created either a by
Speaker 1: a large spirit. I think it's a spiritual blue jay
Speaker 1: if I remember, who flew over and dropped the mounds,
Speaker 1: and that's how they came to be a comet that
Speaker 1: flew over and left them in its wake. I mean,
Speaker 1: Haley's comment is fairly frequent in this area, and these
Speaker 1: are like enormous blue jay droppings? Is that kind of
Speaker 1: Indians put it? Maybe? Have you ever had a blue
Speaker 1: jay fly over your car and seeing what happens? So
Speaker 1: it quite could be. But well, thankfully for us, some
Speaker 1: real scientific types, this would be soil scientists actually went
Speaker 1: out and they they dug into the mounds to try
Speaker 1: to figure them out. And what we're gonna go through
Speaker 1: now is the physical description of a mime amount. And
Speaker 1: this is where I'm going to use the first analogy
Speaker 1: beer set of analogies to describe the layers of the earth,
Speaker 1: because if you've never thought of it this way, the
Speaker 1: easy way to think about the layers of soil that
Speaker 1: make up the crust of the earth is to think
Speaker 1: about it as a layer cake. That they might be
Speaker 1: thicker thinner vertically, but they are in bands, and it's
Speaker 1: a it's just a simple way to kind of envision it. YEA,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people know about that so well.
Speaker 1: I would think so, but I don't know that everybody does.
Speaker 1: So I just like to put it out there. So
Speaker 1: the tasty part, of course, it's the top of the mountain.
Speaker 1: It is because that's the icing on the cake after
Speaker 1: you pluck out the candles, and that just turned the
Speaker 1: earth into a birthday cake. Just carrying out your analogy further,
Speaker 1: you know, the the top of the cake is the icing,
Speaker 1: which is Joe was alluding to. It is, well, that
Speaker 1: top layer, that icing layer of the cake of the
Speaker 1: Mima mounds. I was gonna say, dag nabbit. The Mima
Speaker 1: Mounds are covered in prairiegraph, so that paragraphs would be
Speaker 1: that icing layer. Now it's not always gonna be prairie grass,
Speaker 1: but typically in that area, that's what it's going to be.
Speaker 1: You dig below that into the first layer of earth
Speaker 1: and you're gonna encounter what is known as the A horizon.
Speaker 1: And when you're dealing with soil science, every layer is
Speaker 1: going to be called a horizon. So I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: let everybody know we're gonna use the horizon name. So
Speaker 1: real times the A horizon. Typically it's gonna be top soil,
Speaker 1: which is going to be kind of that dark earth layer.
Speaker 1: It's full of vegetation that's rotted it's got worms, it's
Speaker 1: got bugs and other little critters in it. That's the
Speaker 1: layer that plants will typically start to live off. It's
Speaker 1: got the most mineral content and all the decomposing materials
Speaker 1: in it. Now, somehow the cake analogy is not holding
Speaker 1: for me here though, because you don't want to eat that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't sound like the rich German chocolate part, thank yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you, with a lot of disgusting stuff, lots of
Speaker 1: walnuts and and grapes. I don't know. I'm not good
Speaker 1: at dessert. I don't know. Okay, let's get back to
Speaker 1: describing it, and let's thinking about eating it. The a horizon,
Speaker 1: like I said, top soil, and that's where the plants
Speaker 1: typically will start to live, now, I admit, and I know,
Speaker 1: right the bat, anybody who knows something about to say, well,
Speaker 1: that's not the only layer of the soil that plants
Speaker 1: live off, And I get that, But that's the primary
Speaker 1: layer that you're gonna see things like grass and small
Speaker 1: shrubs actually lives shallow rooted, shallow rooted, thank you. That's
Speaker 1: the perfect perfect way to describe it. Below that. Now, actually,
Speaker 1: before we get below that, we should probably describe the
Speaker 1: makeup of the A horizon, which is going to be
Speaker 1: what is referred to as a loamy soil and loam
Speaker 1: is in a varying mixture, can be have you on
Speaker 1: one side or the other, or evenly mixed. You're gonna
Speaker 1: have silt, You're gonna have sand, and to some degree
Speaker 1: you're gonna have clay. So that that's what it all is.
Speaker 1: Plus mixed in there, there's gonna be some small stones, gravel,
Speaker 1: and large stones. That's the A horizon below that, which
Speaker 1: unfortunately for Joe, I'm going to say again, it's the
Speaker 1: next layer of the cake is typically a layer of
Speaker 1: gravel and stone and soil materials that is referred to
Speaker 1: as the B and or see horizons. It can be one,
Speaker 1: the other, or both. The This layer can also be
Speaker 1: relatively hard packed. It's got a higher proportion of clay
Speaker 1: in it, which is something that's important to keep in
Speaker 1: mind because that clay will help hold moisture, which is
Speaker 1: really important when you think about the state of Washington,
Speaker 1: because the state of Washington, like Oregon which we live in,
Speaker 1: it's fairly rainy, yeah, and it's pretty damp. What happens
Speaker 1: in these prairies is that in the winter. In the
Speaker 1: spring it's kind of boggy ish standing water or very
Speaker 1: sodden soil. Come the summer and fall, it dries out
Speaker 1: and then the cycle repeats, which from an ecological standpoint
Speaker 1: is actually really important because it lets a lot of
Speaker 1: things grow that wouldn't grow anywhere else around that because
Speaker 1: they need all that water. Yeah, and the clay the
Speaker 1: B and C horizon typically really hold on to that
Speaker 1: water even in the dry summer months. You know, we
Speaker 1: don't get so dry and hot that our ground totally
Speaker 1: dries out. Typically sometimes we do, but generally not, especially
Speaker 1: in something like this with when it's boggy, that clay
Speaker 1: is going to hold onto a lot of that moisture
Speaker 1: and allow plants to grow year round where they typically wouldn't. Correct. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if if it's an exposed plane that didn't have all
Speaker 1: that clay, that water would go down into the soil
Speaker 1: and as the heat came evaporated out of the upper
Speaker 1: layers and then those plants. You it's uh, if you've
Speaker 1: ever seen grassland in the summer and all the grass
Speaker 1: is relatively dead, it's dried out, you can't live anymore,
Speaker 1: and it's waiting for the next rainfall to germinate. Again,
Speaker 1: this is not the case in these locations because of
Speaker 1: that clay layer. Uh. And and what we're talking about here,
Speaker 1: this boggy kind of area is what is referred to as,
Speaker 1: if I'm correcting it or pronouncing it correctly, is a
Speaker 1: vernal pool. Yeah. And those are shallow depressions, which is
Speaker 1: what we're talking about here, that hold all that water
Speaker 1: through those spring and summer months so those plants can grow.
Speaker 1: So that's what that area is referred to. Um. The
Speaker 1: last layer of the cake is going to be the
Speaker 1: R horizon, which I'm pretty sure stands for rock because
Speaker 1: it's the bedrock layer. That is, of course a almost
Speaker 1: impermeable layer of the Earth's on. Water does go down
Speaker 1: through it, but it's the rock layer. Yeah. And then
Speaker 1: and then below that, about ten feet is the is
Speaker 1: the molten magma at the center of the earth. Not
Speaker 1: quite ten feet, I'm sure, but magma. That's your favorite
Speaker 1: part of the cake evidently, Joe. Well, these these soil
Speaker 1: horizons are what the mima mounds are made up of.
Speaker 1: And as I said, this is the typical or the
Speaker 1: general makeup. It's not specific. Some are more complex, Some
Speaker 1: are less complex than that. Some may have one and two,
Speaker 1: some may have five or six layers, and we didn't
Speaker 1: talk about all of them. That's a soil science show
Speaker 1: that we're not going to do. And they seem to
Speaker 1: be Are they kind of equally distributed throughout the mound
Speaker 1: it's kind of the same kind of layer, or are
Speaker 1: they some thicker so thinner? Do you know? Do they know?
Speaker 1: I'm okay, Yeah. That's one of the things that really
Speaker 1: really irritated me is I did some research on this,
Speaker 1: and I think we're correct me if I'm wrong. Where
Speaker 1: you're going here, Devon is that we've got the mound,
Speaker 1: and the mound itself goes A B C R, and
Speaker 1: then there's the depression, and does the depression go A
Speaker 1: B C Are they similar makeups? I can't find that, honestly.
Speaker 1: I've looked in. Some researchers say yes, they're the same,
Speaker 1: though they're a much thinner makeup. In other words, the
Speaker 1: layers are much narrower, and some say, oh no, it's
Speaker 1: a very thin A and then a very thin C.
Speaker 1: And then we go to our there's no conclusive evidence,
Speaker 1: but I think that might be because everybody's focused on
Speaker 1: the mounds themselves rather than digging between which is odd
Speaker 1: I guess, because if you're going to and I know
Speaker 1: we're close to theories, but if you're going to theorize
Speaker 1: that their natural form, you have to know what's around them,
Speaker 1: you know. So if if what's behind it's what's between
Speaker 1: them is a similar makeup, you can more readily say, well,
Speaker 1: it's just a bigger collection of that, and that's fine,
Speaker 1: and maybe we don't know exactly why, but it's all
Speaker 1: very similar to the soil around it versus, oh, this
Speaker 1: isn't anything like the soil around so it's a some
Speaker 1: kind of anomaly. And that's the thing that gets me.
Speaker 1: It seems like that would be a thing that people
Speaker 1: would be interested in. Well, you know, I think to
Speaker 1: saddle this question, what we need to do is, let
Speaker 1: me grab a couple of shovels, because the amounts are
Speaker 1: not that far away the actually but no, actually, quickly though,
Speaker 1: let me let me say that my understanding of it
Speaker 1: is that these there's a fairly thick layer of clay
Speaker 1: underneath these things, and that and that the clay in
Speaker 1: the areas between them is just not very far down.
Speaker 1: It's basically almost just solid clay soil. They're almost the opposite.
Speaker 1: So that's that's the hard part. But I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: a little bit off track here in terms of what
Speaker 1: I know everybody's expecting me to go through in this
Speaker 1: studio is that when I was in a high school,
Speaker 1: I took a couple of soil science classes. And I
Speaker 1: don't know if either of you have ever got into
Speaker 1: a soiled trench to to figure out what the horizons are.
Speaker 1: It's really it's insanely interesting to be able to look
Speaker 1: at in a like, let's say, a five ft deep trench,
Speaker 1: and you can very clearly in a colored band and
Speaker 1: see those things. That's very straight, straight and straight. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I went to a weird middle school, so I had
Speaker 1: an experienced in high school. Yeah, I was able to
Speaker 1: do that, and it's true, it's very interesting. It's very clear.
Speaker 1: So all you would have to do is really cut
Speaker 1: that mount in half like a cake and they'll take
Speaker 1: a look at That's that's I know that the problem
Speaker 1: is here is this. It's it's all in a preserve.
Speaker 1: So I'm sure that they can't just a back ho
Speaker 1: and dig one giant trench from the middle into the
Speaker 1: next and then walk inside of it and figure it out.
Speaker 1: So I think that might be part of the reason
Speaker 1: that we can't get the answer you could take core samples.
Speaker 1: Though true, it's very true. I also suspect people don't
Speaker 1: really care enough. I'll be honest. We're very interested in it,
Speaker 1: but I think that real scientists are probably thinking, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that's we have to explore the sea or something. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that also. Apparently the Gopher Protection Society is
Speaker 1: this won't allow that because they're afraid that the core
Speaker 1: samp we're tool will puncture a gopher. I mean, that's fair,
Speaker 1: that's a fair concern. Well, you actually don't get too
Speaker 1: far ahead of us here, Joe. You you are all
Speaker 1: about the roading theory. I understand that we're not at
Speaker 1: the roading theory. We're in the theory section. But the
Speaker 1: first theory is I will admit my favorite theory, which
Speaker 1: is glaciers. I'm going to start off, unusually enough with
Speaker 1: my favorite. The last glacial period on North America in
Speaker 1: the North American continent, I should say, and did about
Speaker 1: ten thousand years ago, and there is a lot of
Speaker 1: scientific evidence of the shaping that those glaciers did to
Speaker 1: this continent. I mean, there's all kinds of things that
Speaker 1: we can just look and go, oh, yeah, obviously a
Speaker 1: glacier carved that out or left that behind. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: Gorge is a great example of that. And there's giant
Speaker 1: rocks left all over, so we know that glaciers do
Speaker 1: some of it did some amazing and we had some
Speaker 1: pretty amazing glaciers here. I mean, I can't honestly remember
Speaker 1: the name of the Kardashian glacier. Glacier. I don't remember
Speaker 1: the worst that's where are you going after? I really
Speaker 1: I can't remember for the name of it, but the
Speaker 1: one that carved out the Gorge the Missoula floods. The
Speaker 1: Missoula floods, it wasn't an actual glacier glacier. It was
Speaker 1: a flood. And what happened for the Columbia River gor
Speaker 1: the Columbia and the will Lam it kind of all
Speaker 1: of the gorges that we have around here, they were
Speaker 1: all formed by what happened was there was this during
Speaker 1: the Ice Age. There were these huge glaciers that formed
Speaker 1: and they started to melt, and of course they created
Speaker 1: an ice dam and so once that damn burst, it
Speaker 1: created these huge floods that just ravaged the area and
Speaker 1: somehow just like created all of this gorge activity. And
Speaker 1: certainly some of it has yeah, and certainly you know,
Speaker 1: some of it has been over the ages, you know,
Speaker 1: gets deeper and deeper deeper. But that was the general
Speaker 1: formation of it. The Missoula floodstock it up, not the
Speaker 1: Kardashian glacier kind of bad news for the people that
Speaker 1: happened to be living in that little depression. The good
Speaker 1: news is nobody was living there. It was it was
Speaker 1: thousand plus years ago. Well, actually there were people living
Speaker 1: here back then. Back to the point, it's okay, is
Speaker 1: that my this first theory that I the one that
Speaker 1: I'm hanging on to, the glaciers formed the Mima mounds,
Speaker 1: and the soil structure of the mounds, which obviously I
Speaker 1: just described is is old and stable. And it's feasible
Speaker 1: that glaciers, as they advanced or retreated in their process,
Speaker 1: like you were just talking about, their a little bit
Speaker 1: formed it um scraping away the ground. I should probably
Speaker 1: also mentioned, which I didn't, is that the soil structure
Speaker 1: of the Mima mounds is in some of them very old.
Speaker 1: It's somewhere up to about thirty thousand years years old,
Speaker 1: which will match up to glaciers. And I want to
Speaker 1: kinda again, I want to kind of break this down
Speaker 1: to things that we see, and so I'm going to
Speaker 1: give an example is have either of you seen when
Speaker 1: it's freezing cold out and there's a chunk of ice
Speaker 1: that's kind of overhanging and it's sunny in the day
Speaker 1: but really cold, and then cold at night, and you'll
Speaker 1: notice that the ice starts to thaw a little bit,
Speaker 1: and on the underside, the droplets will through um what's
Speaker 1: the word that I'm looking for, cohesion, They'll come together
Speaker 1: and refreeze and you'll get kind of a bulge. And
Speaker 1: then in the daytime everything will freeze and you'll get
Speaker 1: a slightly bigger bulge, and so you get deep, higher
Speaker 1: bulges and deeper ridges, so you get this kind of
Speaker 1: weird curvelinear structure on the underside of sheet of ice.
Speaker 1: Have you been this before? Yeah, I mean you're basically
Speaker 1: talking about the formation of icicles. But yeah, well yeah,
Speaker 1: but but but on a big flat plane, so it
Speaker 1: doesn't have that large drop. But I guess only on
Speaker 1: the underside of things. I don't think I've ever seen
Speaker 1: it on the overside of things exactly. Okay, Well, but
Speaker 1: that's the thing is if this is on the bottom
Speaker 1: of a glacier which is huge and heavy, and that
Speaker 1: water through cohesion, it's coming together and then freezing. And
Speaker 1: this of course wouldn't be on a day night cycle,
Speaker 1: but over a year's cycle, that weight is going to
Speaker 1: shove the soil underneath it around. Think about the underside
Speaker 1: of this glacier like egg crate foam, you know, that
Speaker 1: silly egg crate foam that sleeping pads are made out of.
Speaker 1: If it was something like that, but it's really strong
Speaker 1: and hard and it's pushing down on the earth, it's
Speaker 1: gonna shove the dirt around and make those ridges. Of course,
Speaker 1: then when it melts, we've got this egg crate shape
Speaker 1: going on, give it ten thousand years. Some erosion happens
Speaker 1: and instead of these perfect divots between them, the plane
Speaker 1: of the soil evens out between them. So now all
Speaker 1: we have is these random bulges at different places. That's
Speaker 1: where this theory goes. And I don't know if that
Speaker 1: makes sense the way of explained it to you, or
Speaker 1: you have a better way to describe now. I mean,
Speaker 1: I understand, I understand what you're saying. I think that
Speaker 1: if it's water and it's pushing into the ground, it's
Speaker 1: probably going to get absorbed into the ground, not stick.
Speaker 1: It's melting. It's melting down into those bulges and then
Speaker 1: refreezing and of course meting. It's melting. Glaciers are really
Speaker 1: really widly creatures. No, I I understand where you're saying it.
Speaker 1: If it's water, why doesn't it go into the soil?
Speaker 1: I understand where you're headed with that. I can see that,
Speaker 1: but I I can't explain it because I'm not I
Speaker 1: can't explain the glaciers to that degree. I just look
Speaker 1: at it from what I have seen anecdotally in nature,
Speaker 1: and then add all that weight and pressure. I guess
Speaker 1: my other problem with that theory is um the glacier
Speaker 1: has to escape somewhere. Right, So either it melted on
Speaker 1: a massive scale without moving and sliding anywhere, because you
Speaker 1: don't see those big gouges in the earth, right. So
Speaker 1: either it because you would expect if it had these
Speaker 1: big divots that that would be a like a rake
Speaker 1: pattern almost across the landscape. But it's more melting and
Speaker 1: they're freezing and building back. I understand that, But I'm saying,
Speaker 1: at the end of the ice age, right, is it
Speaker 1: just melting away and every and the water just washes
Speaker 1: away and it leaves these divot marks? Or is it
Speaker 1: that it's melting and it's going to elt on the bottom?
Speaker 1: You know? And is it sliding somewhere? Is it gouging
Speaker 1: something out? I don't know that it would. And I
Speaker 1: don't claim to know a lot about glaciers, but munder
Speaker 1: standing of glaciers is the way they were able to
Speaker 1: grind out big valleys and stuff. Would you see all
Speaker 1: the way all all over around here, is that as
Speaker 1: it grows, the way it grows and it starts sliding,
Speaker 1: moving forward and adding on and stuff. And then so
Speaker 1: that's when the grinding occurs, is when it's growing. But
Speaker 1: when it's retreating, it doesn't like, it doesn't slide backward.
Speaker 1: It's quite the same way. When it's retreating, it just
Speaker 1: gets thinner and thinner. So it just it's just slowly melts,
Speaker 1: and it melts from the top, not in the milt.
Speaker 1: But the only problem I have with the glacier theory
Speaker 1: is that you would think that there would be it
Speaker 1: would eventually a lot of the water that came off
Speaker 1: of the glacier as it melts, would wash a lot
Speaker 1: of this stuff away right now. And while I like
Speaker 1: the glacier theory the most, if this theory were correct,
Speaker 1: this is going to come up multiple times in the
Speaker 1: theory section. We should see this in more than just
Speaker 1: this place and there, And like I said, it's continentally
Speaker 1: for the United States. You see this, You see it
Speaker 1: in some places in the South, in some of the East.
Speaker 1: But you think that you would see it more consistently,
Speaker 1: But that also you might not see it because of
Speaker 1: farming practices. That might be a reason that we don't
Speaker 1: see it anything cleared away. But also that's another thing
Speaker 1: I problem I have with this theory is that it
Speaker 1: is seen in the South, where as far as I know,
Speaker 1: there was never any glaciation. Yeah, you're right, and again
Speaker 1: there are some other things that might be responsible for
Speaker 1: this in the South, and that's actually well, I was
Speaker 1: just gonna ask one more question, is that you see
Speaker 1: these singularly as well, right, And that obviously can't have
Speaker 1: and if you if you're saying it was a divot
Speaker 1: in between a bunch of things. You can't create just
Speaker 1: one mound from a divot. You've got to have at
Speaker 1: least two probably, I can see it. Well, No, let's
Speaker 1: let's okay. We've got a flat sheet ice, and for
Speaker 1: some reason it's got a thin spot on the top,
Speaker 1: and so the water in the thin spot on the
Speaker 1: top is melting and it's seeping down through itself, and
Speaker 1: then it's going to create that pattern radiating away. Again,
Speaker 1: not perfect, I understand. I mean you're saying two different
Speaker 1: things are happening. Then at that point, No, it's it's
Speaker 1: there's a thin spot at the top, so that's where
Speaker 1: the melt happens. So then it's gonna melt down and
Speaker 1: it's going to radiate down and create a cone essentially, right,
Speaker 1: So that's exactly what I'm saying, is you're saying, no,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't work. I guess it doesn't work. I
Speaker 1: like this one the best, and we beat the crap.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm sorry better, And we're gonna go through
Speaker 1: some fairly mundane serious here, just to let your folks know,
Speaker 1: but don't despair. There's gonna be some aliens before and
Speaker 1: to fuzzy things. And I've got a theory of my own,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to attack in it all of the better.
Speaker 1: Hurry up. Our next theory is plant and or wind.
Speaker 1: This is going to take a little bit of explaining
Speaker 1: to but the theory centers around basically the interaction between
Speaker 1: large plants, the wind and blown sediment. Um And tell
Speaker 1: you right now, the beginning of this theory does not
Speaker 1: hold up for the state of Washington. This is more
Speaker 1: of an arid region theory. But we'll kind of try
Speaker 1: and see how it could work. In the process of
Speaker 1: wind blown sediment is what is known as an Aeolian process.
Speaker 1: I hope I'm pronouncing that right. I believe that's right.
Speaker 1: And what that is is that you've got dry earthen
Speaker 1: materials that are picked up by the winds, so sand
Speaker 1: and silt, they're blown around. It runs into vegetation, so
Speaker 1: a tree or a bush or whatever it is. Of course,
Speaker 1: then it's knocked free and it drops to the ground.
Speaker 1: As that continues to happen over an extended period of time,
Speaker 1: you get a mound of earth built up around this plant.
Speaker 1: If we think about trees, which can live on the
Speaker 1: scale of hundreds of years, that means that you can
Speaker 1: get quite a large mound built, and then when the
Speaker 1: plant dies and rots away, all this left is the mound.
Speaker 1: And actually, what I like about this theory is that
Speaker 1: it's very much like dunes. Well exactly, if you look
Speaker 1: at these mounds of pictures of them, they look like
Speaker 1: sand dunes. But they're different in one way, which is
Speaker 1: that instead of forming into kind of rows and stuff,
Speaker 1: they come sort they come sort of their mounds. But
Speaker 1: when you look at especially a sort of like a
Speaker 1: high level, like looking at it from above, and you
Speaker 1: look at the spacing between them, it's not completely even,
Speaker 1: but it's the kind of spacing that you would see
Speaker 1: between say, trees in a forest. In other words, they're space.
Speaker 1: They're spaced enough apart so that they don't choke each
Speaker 1: other out. And that is what is known as vegetation
Speaker 1: spatial patterning exactly. And it looks like it looks exactly
Speaker 1: like that if you look at the aerial photos of
Speaker 1: the Mima mounds. And we're going to get into vegetation
Speaker 1: spatial patterning. But let me just finish up one little bit.
Speaker 1: Devon's rolling your eyes, But one little bit about the
Speaker 1: problem with the alien process is that, as I said,
Speaker 1: this is a process that happens in arid regions. The
Speaker 1: Pacific Northwest is by no means an arid region, nor
Speaker 1: has it really ever it has not anything that I
Speaker 1: could find even suggested that the that area was ever arid.
Speaker 1: It's oh, he's been wet. So this doesn't hold up.
Speaker 1: So I admit there's a giant flaw in that, but
Speaker 1: it is something that's pointed at. I guess another problem
Speaker 1: that I would have is that didn't you say that
Speaker 1: there are rocks and a lot of these mounds. That
Speaker 1: is another problem. Yeah, there are small stones and there
Speaker 1: are large stones under the surface and on top. So yes,
Speaker 1: windblown material, that's a problem because the wind doesn't throw
Speaker 1: big That's that's an issue. Uh. If we go to
Speaker 1: the spatial patterning that we were that Joe was alluding
Speaker 1: to or discussing, um, this and what what vegetation spatial patterning,
Speaker 1: which is an easy phrase to say not. Uh. This
Speaker 1: is is the theory that or the practice that individual
Speaker 1: or groups of plants, so we've got a number of
Speaker 1: them growing together will spread their roots out and they
Speaker 1: will drain the surrounding area of all of the nutrients
Speaker 1: that are in the soil. Making it a waste land
Speaker 1: for other plants, for other plants, so nothing else can
Speaker 1: grow there. And then you have no roots holding the
Speaker 1: top soil down, so then that that dirt washes away
Speaker 1: and then you end up with these strange rivulet patterns
Speaker 1: between them. Here's something to think about. An easy way
Speaker 1: to envision this is if anybody has ever seen mangroves.
Speaker 1: You see them, they have those giant, weird root patterns
Speaker 1: and there they arch up above the water. Now, think
Speaker 1: about something like that where its roots are still underground,
Speaker 1: but the dirt that would be on top between them
Speaker 1: is gone. You would have the same kind of mounding
Speaker 1: humping pattern that you find at the mime amounts. It
Speaker 1: makes sense. I'm not going to buy into it, but
Speaker 1: it makes sense. But it also does help what Devon
Speaker 1: pointed out, which is the issue with the stones and rocks.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of evidence that roots will grab and
Speaker 1: move stones through pressure that they grow next to. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've all seen they'll break stones to push them around.
Speaker 1: So this does happen, and it will push them to
Speaker 1: the surface it gets big enough, Yes, I I agree
Speaker 1: with that. The problem I'm having is, uh, the size
Speaker 1: of a lot of these mounds, right, I'm willing to
Speaker 1: go there for the smaller ones. But if we're talking,
Speaker 1: I mean hundred and sixty fee feet round, was that?
Speaker 1: I think that's that's kind of rare. That's on the
Speaker 1: large Sure, it's on the large side. But okay, well
Speaker 1: bear with me. Okay, how big do you think the
Speaker 1: rutch structure of say a mature oak would be. Which
Speaker 1: oaks get huge? Pretty big? Yeah, it would be would
Speaker 1: be huge. So I'm not saying that this is something
Speaker 1: that happens in a matter of five years, but those
Speaker 1: oaks live hundreds of years. If that oak lived hundreds
Speaker 1: of years, and there's i mean, the odds of this
Speaker 1: happening with oaks, I understand is infantestimal. But I'm just
Speaker 1: using it as an example. If we've got a forest
Speaker 1: of rows of oaks that all have these giant root
Speaker 1: balls that eventually die, that could explain the structure. I'm
Speaker 1: not all for it, but I am. That's just my
Speaker 1: my little bit of fence force. Yeah, if if Washington
Speaker 1: was an arid place, yes, but no. But this this
Speaker 1: is why I think that the thing that I need
Speaker 1: to point out is for this uh, for the spatial
Speaker 1: pattern ng is part of it is erosion because the
Speaker 1: roots are holding it in. So now we're getting erosion
Speaker 1: with the root patterns as well. I've essentially at this
Speaker 1: point discounted the wind theory, but now we're factoring in erosion,
Speaker 1: so we're adding that's and that's the hard part of
Speaker 1: this theory or this story in general, is that things
Speaker 1: get added and discounted left, right and center. And I'm
Speaker 1: doing my best to keep them separate. But this one
Speaker 1: is one of those weird ones where they say, well,
Speaker 1: the wind brought it in and then the plants held it,
Speaker 1: and then the water washed it away, and it makes
Speaker 1: it awkward. Awkwards the word I'm going to use, speaking
Speaker 1: of awkward, Let's just leave that theory mind. Let's move
Speaker 1: on to the next one, which says that the mimmounds
Speaker 1: are creature created and this is the mammal version, and
Speaker 1: that would be pocket gophers make cute little devils. Okay,
Speaker 1: let just let go You've never heard of a pocket
Speaker 1: go fer, No I have. I'm just I'm just laughing
Speaker 1: that they could have created these things. I'm just letting
Speaker 1: you go for it. Likes him. He's gonna make a
Speaker 1: pocket go for me next week. Pocket gophers are industrious
Speaker 1: little critters. Actually, they they can move a lot of dirt.
Speaker 1: They can, uh. The pocket gopher theory has actually been
Speaker 1: around for a long time. Came out in the late
Speaker 1: nineteenth century and it was theorized that the mounds were
Speaker 1: actually built by the pocket gopher. Anybody who doesn't know
Speaker 1: what a pocket gopher, his pocket gopher is a rodent.
Speaker 1: It's really On average they weighed less than half a
Speaker 1: pound there. Any are from six to eight inches long,
Speaker 1: and that includes their tail and of course their gophers.
Speaker 1: So they have really terrible ice sight. They don't come
Speaker 1: above the ground very much. And unlike most gophers, which
Speaker 1: will either dig a hole and push the dirt into
Speaker 1: the bottom of their tunnel structure or just push it
Speaker 1: up out and keep going, pocket gophers seem to have
Speaker 1: the habit of pushing all of the dirt they dig
Speaker 1: out to the top of the mound of dirt that's
Speaker 1: above their tunnel and continue to push it towards the top.
Speaker 1: So if you've ever had gopher holes in your yard
Speaker 1: and they're those goofy mounds, now imagine they keep coming
Speaker 1: to the same spot, but they keep pushing all the
Speaker 1: extra dirt up top and building it up higher and higher.
Speaker 1: That's what they do, and that's what's got people kind
Speaker 1: of intrigued as to why they think that these little
Speaker 1: boogers are responsible. Yeah, the and actually I'm kind of
Speaker 1: liking this series, not just because the gophers are cute,
Speaker 1: but it also fits a lot of facts, like there
Speaker 1: their territorial You're exactly right, They're they're very territorial little critters.
Speaker 1: And it turns out that the spacing of the Mima
Speaker 1: mounds corresponds relatively speaking to the territorial distance that a
Speaker 1: pocket gopher will cover somewhere between a hundred and a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty feet. So that's that makes sense. Uh. There.
Speaker 1: There's a researcher at San Diego State University that he
Speaker 1: wanted to see if this theory could be right. And
Speaker 1: what he did is he took and made a computer
Speaker 1: model factoring in the speed that these little gophers build
Speaker 1: at and it turns out, indeed, note this, eventually they
Speaker 1: can make a mound that is upwards of six ft tall,
Speaker 1: and that takes a bit of time. It does take
Speaker 1: a bit of time. Now, other people have jumped on
Speaker 1: the bandwagon and they're saying, oh yeah, and and they're
Speaker 1: building them that tall so that they can escape the
Speaker 1: water table of where they're living, because, as we've talked about,
Speaker 1: it's a very boggy area, so the water table is
Speaker 1: pretty high. Yeah, a lot of a lot of big
Speaker 1: clay area and clay area that that holds water and
Speaker 1: actually prevents water from draining into it. Yes, which means
Speaker 1: they would have flooded tunnels. So yes, it makes sense
Speaker 1: they would build up to have a dry area. But
Speaker 1: it's it's a little weird. But here's the problem. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of problems. Well, yeah, there's there's a
Speaker 1: whole lot of problems, which is that, well, to start with,
Speaker 1: it would take five to seven hundred years for gophers
Speaker 1: to build mound that tall. Problem number one. Problem number two.
Speaker 1: Pocket gophers, no matter how cute they are with the
Speaker 1: little pockets in their cheeks, only lived to be at
Speaker 1: most five years old, which says, well, how does this happen?
Speaker 1: People have said, oh, well, other other other little gophers
Speaker 1: come in and they take over their mouths and they
Speaker 1: keep building them, and that's how it happens. But the
Speaker 1: research that I've read, nothing in there says that after
Speaker 1: a gopher dies and leaves its burrow or its tunnel structure,
Speaker 1: does another one come in and take it over? But
Speaker 1: they all seem to start from scratch themselves. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: isn't it possible you can inherit as it go? For
Speaker 1: the family home? Let me go first, have go first,
Speaker 1: have babies. I guess my problem number three gopher family home.
Speaker 1: Well no, I mean seriously though, I mean I mean,
Speaker 1: if you if you have, if you have baby gophers,
Speaker 1: and then eventually you die, why should they move off
Speaker 1: somewhere else to start a whole new tunnel network when
Speaker 1: they've got one right already there. I'm gonna kill that
Speaker 1: right now with the I don't believe that they're a
Speaker 1: communal family structure. I think they all move on on
Speaker 1: their own. But Devin, you were no. My problem number
Speaker 1: three is that the if this is a mound that's
Speaker 1: built by digging out, right, the top layer should correspond
Speaker 1: to the bottom layer of the soil, the top layer
Speaker 1: of the mound, because that's what they've been digging out last,
Speaker 1: And the bottom layer should correspond to the top layer
Speaker 1: of the soil that they were digging out. Not the
Speaker 1: way that it goes right, No, I know where you're
Speaker 1: headed here. If gophers were digging and mixing the soil constantly,
Speaker 1: it shouldn't be easily divided into horizons. It should actually
Speaker 1: be one giant mishmash mixed up. It should be an
Speaker 1: undistinguishable layers. And even if it was layers, it should
Speaker 1: be flipped layers at the bottom layer of the mound.
Speaker 1: Should be breaking into the simplest factory. Yes, it should be.
Speaker 1: The clay should be on top, should be. Yes. And
Speaker 1: there's the problem with the stones that we talked about earlier,
Speaker 1: which is a half pound critter cannot move a ten
Speaker 1: pounds stone, right, I guess also a problem that there
Speaker 1: aren't like huge tunnels running through these things, are there?
Speaker 1: I would be another anything that said, here's a picture
Speaker 1: of a pocket go for tunnel in a mime amount.
Speaker 1: Haven't seen that. I haven't seen any that now. I cute? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, I know. We're going to move on to
Speaker 1: the next creature created theory. Okay, this one, I am
Speaker 1: going to it right off the bat I put in
Speaker 1: because it's in the rees church, but I don't buy it.
Speaker 1: But it's still in the creature area, which is termites.
Speaker 1: Gross they are gross. There are people out there who
Speaker 1: say that the mounds are made by termites. And before
Speaker 1: anybody has their head pop off, let's just think about
Speaker 1: termite mounds that we see in places like Africa. You
Speaker 1: see these giant, giant termite mounds similar bear with me,
Speaker 1: the giants above and below ground. So theoretically those critters
Speaker 1: die off and then erosion takes effect. But you're right,
Speaker 1: there is no record of that kind of termite in
Speaker 1: that region, or you know, the different layers in the
Speaker 1: mounds or the no holes or the five pound stones stones.
Speaker 1: But the biggest problem that is is that is that
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to believe that there would be
Speaker 1: literally trillions of termites living in this plane with you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean seriously think about it. And when
Speaker 1: you see aunt hills and termite hills there, there's like
Speaker 1: they're kind of a one off kind of thing. You
Speaker 1: don't see hundreds and thousands of them next to each other. Well,
Speaker 1: actually you see them sometimes in the plains of Africa
Speaker 1: where they're they're close to each other, not nearly this close,
Speaker 1: but they are let's say, five hundred to a thousand
Speaker 1: feet apart instead of miles apart. I know where you're going,
Speaker 1: and I agree, But there are cases where you see
Speaker 1: them close but not nearly this close. Yeah, no, I
Speaker 1: mean because I mean, if if you've got nothing but
Speaker 1: termites living in this fast area, there's nothing to eat
Speaker 1: except each other, that's it. So I just don't see that. No, no,
Speaker 1: I admit, I put this one in just because it's there.
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't. I don't buy it. And everybody
Speaker 1: loves termites except one to the next one, which I
Speaker 1: actually love how this one came about. Their the theory
Speaker 1: got created. But the theory is that it is earthquakes
Speaker 1: or seismic vibrations are causing the mounds there. The theory
Speaker 1: goes as a basic premise that there are vibrations due
Speaker 1: to seismic or volcanic activity that is shaking the dirt
Speaker 1: around and at that point that's causing it to heap
Speaker 1: up into small mounds. This is where my favorite part
Speaker 1: of this theory comes from. Is there's a gentleman by
Speaker 1: the name of Andrew Burg who is an actual geologist,
Speaker 1: somebody who just came up with this idea on his own. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know him. I'm sorry, I don't know the idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was. He was building a doghouse of all things,
Speaker 1: with a bunch of sheets supply wood that had ash
Speaker 1: on them. Mine. I don't know what kind of ash
Speaker 1: was it in the volcanic ash? Oh yeah, it wasn't
Speaker 1: the eighties, which means it would have been St. Helen's head.
Speaker 1: I was. I was around in those days, and yes
Speaker 1: there was a lot of ash. Okay, So now we
Speaker 1: know why there was ash on his plywood. And he
Speaker 1: is hammering nails into the plywood to build the doghouse,
Speaker 1: and he notices that the concussive vibrational force of each
Speaker 1: blow on a nail transferred through the plywood. He's causing
Speaker 1: the ash to vibrate and mound up. I kind of
Speaker 1: like that theory. It's very simple at its root. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I understand that well. And also clay behaves fairly similarly
Speaker 1: to ash once it's wet. Well. I think the clay represents,
Speaker 1: in this case, sup plywood and then all the stuff
Speaker 1: that never mind, I don't like basic very much like plywood.
Speaker 1: The theory the dirt of the mind him amount or
Speaker 1: the mima plane is like the ash. The clay and
Speaker 1: the bedrock are like the board, and every time there's
Speaker 1: seismic activity, and those seismic waves are rattling around underneath
Speaker 1: that cross and they're hitting fractures and whatever the case
Speaker 1: may be. Down there, they're making that vibration which is
Speaker 1: causing that soil too, for lack of a better term,
Speaker 1: kind of clump up and boil up. Okay, My problem
Speaker 1: with this is if that were the normal case, again,
Speaker 1: why don't we see that in other areas? And there
Speaker 1: is a practical example that I want to point to
Speaker 1: which causes me some concern because he's saying that there
Speaker 1: is some serious seismic activity that is going through the area,
Speaker 1: not low grade, but it seems it needs to be
Speaker 1: a relatively big bunch of psychic activity in order to
Speaker 1: do this kind of thing. Yeah, that's really a lot
Speaker 1: of pounds of dirt. The example that I'm going to
Speaker 1: point to is a location in California, which is another
Speaker 1: place that mounds like this are found. In the fifties,
Speaker 1: we had kind of talked about this in some of them,
Speaker 1: possibly in some of the places, but in the fifties
Speaker 1: those mounds were plowed under for farmland plowed them down.
Speaker 1: In the eighties that farmland was abandoned for farming, and
Speaker 1: low and behold mounds began to arise again on their own.
Speaker 1: Huh yep, the mounds have started to come back in
Speaker 1: that area. That truly leaves me with more questions than
Speaker 1: answers because it's only been like, what thirty five years years,
Speaker 1: so it couldn't have been We've had two major and
Speaker 1: I used air quotes, your major earthquakes in the that
Speaker 1: region of California, kind of that Bay area, northern California.
Speaker 1: There hasn't been It's not like the place has been
Speaker 1: rocking and rolling for a long time. There's been a
Speaker 1: couple of them. There's been a couple of decent size,
Speaker 1: that's it. But this theory seems to say that they're
Speaker 1: they infer that it's got to be kind of a
Speaker 1: big thing to shake that much soil around long term,
Speaker 1: for to clump up that much, and yet it's still happening.
Speaker 1: I just thought, literally discounts every theory that we've had
Speaker 1: that they reform like that, there's no and there's no termites,
Speaker 1: and there's clearly not glaciers egg carton ing the things. Nope, Nope, no,
Speaker 1: no glaciers. Yeah. I think I think didn't. I. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think what it is is the soils is forming
Speaker 1: around and reflecting like massive structures built underneath and buried
Speaker 1: by aliens. Okay, Joe, stop, we're moving on before you
Speaker 1: start making up something that confuses our listeners because it's
Speaker 1: all made up. We're gonna go to the next theory,
Speaker 1: which is actually real, which I think is a very
Speaker 1: solid one as well, is the shrinking and swelling of
Speaker 1: the clay layer of soil. If you guys remember earlier
Speaker 1: in the beginning, we talked about how the b and
Speaker 1: the sea layers horizons have clay in them, and the
Speaker 1: density of clay can vary, so it's a low density
Speaker 1: or a high density. So some layers are very very
Speaker 1: thick with clay and some are not. That might be
Speaker 1: the simplest answer of what's responsible. And here's why. Clay,
Speaker 1: though it doesn't seem to absorb water, does have either
Speaker 1: of you had to dig in dirt that was full
Speaker 1: of clay. Oh yeah, my my yard is full of it,
Speaker 1: and I did. I hate digging in it in the
Speaker 1: winter time because it's just a sticky, matt nasty mess.
Speaker 1: But actually that's a lot better than digging in in
Speaker 1: the summer time, it is better. It turns out I
Speaker 1: never realized this until I started doing the research, is that, yeah,
Speaker 1: clay does absorb water, and it absorbs it at varying
Speaker 1: ratios because depending on the mineral count and the density
Speaker 1: of the clay, it can absorb more or less. In
Speaker 1: other words, think of it this way. There's pockets in
Speaker 1: between in the clay. So if it's really dense, there's
Speaker 1: not a lot of pockets of areas that water can
Speaker 1: get into. But if it's a low density, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of areas that that water can infiltrate, and those
Speaker 1: thinner areas will swell as the water gets in. So
Speaker 1: what that means is that as it swells, it's got
Speaker 1: it can't push down into the bedrock, so it's gonna
Speaker 1: push up and it's gonna push everything above it upwards. Well,
Speaker 1: the areas in between the mounds are very thin, they're
Speaker 1: very dense. They can't absorb a lot of water, so
Speaker 1: they don't really expand, although then the clay drays, that
Speaker 1: dries out and it goes flying. That's kind of what
Speaker 1: I was thinking there. I have seen some research and
Speaker 1: the validity of this I cannot stand behind. But I
Speaker 1: will put out is that as things expand from water
Speaker 1: and then that water drains out and evaporates, they will collapse,
Speaker 1: but they will not compact their original volume. They will
Speaker 1: stay larger. Think about it. You stick a sheet of
Speaker 1: water or a sheet of paper and water and it
Speaker 1: gets all wet, and then you dry it out, and
Speaker 1: then it's all puffy and rough and it's a little thicker,
Speaker 1: not much, but it's a little thicker. Now, think about
Speaker 1: a two foot thick layer of dirt that that fills
Speaker 1: with water and puffs up. It's gonna shrink back down
Speaker 1: a little bit, but it's not gonna go all the
Speaker 1: way down to what it was originally. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: would help explain why mounds were reforming. I think the
Speaker 1: key is for us to get some shovels and go
Speaker 1: up to um. Well now, maybe, but there should be
Speaker 1: this should be a big pocket then, like even even
Speaker 1: in the dry times, there should be a big hollow
Speaker 1: pocket underneath these things. So let's go punch through some
Speaker 1: of those mounds and see what's underneath there. Joe is
Speaker 1: always wanting a field trip that requires everybody else dis
Speaker 1: you manual labor while he sits in his director's chair
Speaker 1: with the umbrella over him and my tie in his hand, saying, Dick, there,
Speaker 1: this is not happening. We've done that too many times, right, Yeah, sorry,
Speaker 1: Forest park. Our final theory is, are you ready devon aliens? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Not really makes sense? Why not aliens? When you read
Speaker 1: about the Mima mounds are all over the places like
Speaker 1: they were done for aliens. They were done for aliens.
Speaker 1: I really am afraid that the alien connection here was
Speaker 1: made up sarcastically by a bunch of weitty writers to
Speaker 1: be able to immediately discount it, because every time you
Speaker 1: see something about aliens, it says, but there's no evidence,
Speaker 1: and why there really is. There's nothing that says why
Speaker 1: aliens would do it because as corresponding information is just
Speaker 1: three sentences and then they move on to the rest
Speaker 1: of their story. Now, it's it's very well documented that aliens.
Speaker 1: Aliens historically come to the Earth, they do random stuff,
Speaker 1: and then they leave again. Then the bottom of their
Speaker 1: ships or formed like egg crates, and that through landing pads.
Speaker 1: It could be that, or it could it could be
Speaker 1: that actually, these these things are are kind of like
Speaker 1: Morse code dots in the in the surface of the planet.
Speaker 1: And when we get it says eat here, it says
Speaker 1: high we are aliens just wanted to stop by and
Speaker 1: say hello. And when we eventually manage to decode the message,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure the s A is on it, you know,
Speaker 1: then that will be the first message from another race.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think more times than not, we try
Speaker 1: to assign a meaning that we, as lowly humans could
Speaker 1: possibly understand to alien activity, right if we're assuming that
Speaker 1: aliens exist, which we are, of course, because they do.
Speaker 1: But there's no way that our puny, little tiny not
Speaker 1: being able to go out into space and travel through
Speaker 1: all of that, could possibly comprehend what they may or
Speaker 1: may not have been doing. So they might have had
Speaker 1: very good reasons for doing We just don't know what
Speaker 1: it is, yeah, exactly. So yeah, alright, so there's another
Speaker 1: thing that's much overlooked, but yeah, let's have it. In
Speaker 1: this particular area of southeast become the dominant tribe in
Speaker 1: the area before the white man showed up was put
Speaker 1: up Indians, and the Indians were noted for not having
Speaker 1: internet or cable or anything quality. They had a lot
Speaker 1: of time on their hands, and so they spent their
Speaker 1: time just building mounds, because it's kind of like the
Speaker 1: Incas spent their time shaping stone and building these incredible
Speaker 1: stone structures. They made these really cool sort of mounding areas.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's true. I yeah, know, the fact
Speaker 1: that we see mounds re rising in other areas, I
Speaker 1: can't agree with that. The other hard part about this is, Okay, again,
Speaker 1: we've only focused in this episode on the Mima Mounts.
Speaker 1: There are mounds in the south of the United States,
Speaker 1: in the California's, there in Europe, there in Africa. I
Speaker 1: mean this, this g logic structure happens for multiple reasons
Speaker 1: in multiple areas. So to just say, well, this particular
Speaker 1: one is because people were born, I'm just gonna tell
Speaker 1: you right now. No, no, actually I think that even
Speaker 1: though the serious been put forward by many prominent scientists,
Speaker 1: I don't take it too seriously. Myself was that prominent
Speaker 1: scientist your cat? Uh, somebody like my cat? Anyway, that's
Speaker 1: what I thought that for fun. Obviously there's there's an
Speaker 1: interesting process which perhaps someday our grandchildren will understand here,
Speaker 1: but possibly, yeah, we don't quite get it yet. Well,
Speaker 1: that's that's the theories that we've got. Obviously, none of
Speaker 1: them fit or are perfect, though some of us subscribe
Speaker 1: to others more than some. That that made sense, I swear.
Speaker 1: If you want to take a look at some of
Speaker 1: the research that we've done on this particular episode, you
Speaker 1: can find that on our website. That website is Thinking
Speaker 1: Sideways podcast dot com. Of course, we have the episodes
Speaker 1: there to stream, but chances are you're listening to and
Speaker 1: downloading us somewhere else. There are a bazillion streaming sources
Speaker 1: out there, and we are on pretty much all of them,
Speaker 1: so you can find us there if you use iTunes,
Speaker 1: which I know a good portion of people do. Please
Speaker 1: when you're there, take it the time to to subscribe
Speaker 1: and then leave the comment and the rating, because of
Speaker 1: course that helps other folks find us, which is great
Speaker 1: because other people need to find us. We are on Facebook,
Speaker 1: so we have the group and this the Facebook page
Speaker 1: which is ever growing, and tons and tons of fun
Speaker 1: conversations going on there, so anybody can join. Let us know.
Speaker 1: Joe's favorite phrases is it find us, friend us like us?
Speaker 1: Um No, I think it's uh yes, I think that's
Speaker 1: close enough. But I think I put it a little
Speaker 1: more in fat find us, friend us, like us okay,
Speaker 1: well emphatically saying I'm not gonna say that. Well, you
Speaker 1: can also find us on Twitter. We are on Twitter
Speaker 1: at Thinking Sideways, so drop the g off of thinking
Speaker 1: and you can follow us on there and we put
Speaker 1: some stuff out on Twitter. And of course if you
Speaker 1: have thoughts or story suggestions, agreements, disagreements, love hate, anything
Speaker 1: like that that you want to send us and you
Speaker 1: want us to read, you can send that to us
Speaker 1: at our email, which is Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com. Don't have anything else that I can think of,
Speaker 1: just I did want to add this one thing, and
Speaker 1: that is that if you have a shovel when you're
Speaker 1: then you want to build my amount of your most instructions. No,
Speaker 1: we're this This is not a instructibles website. We're not
Speaker 1: going to tell them how to build their own mon
Speaker 1: not stuff you should know. You know, I'm sorry who
Speaker 1: doesn't want to mind amount of their very own I
Speaker 1: know someone and I lived with them, she would not
Speaker 1: be happy if I built a six ft by a
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty ft mound in our backyard. You also
Speaker 1: have to have a bigger yard. Yeah, there's that but
Speaker 1: you know what, Yeah, my neighbors don't want that, so yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you might bring in gophers and termites. Bad idea, Joe. Well,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen, we're going to go ahead and roll
Speaker 1: this one up, put in the can and call it done,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk to you next week. Everybody. By guys,
Speaker 1: it was probably go fers, but not really probably go first,