WEBVTT - Thinking Sideways: Mima Mounds 0:00:00.120 --> 0:00:03.520 Hey guys, exciting news. I'm really really stoked about this. 0:00:03.760 --> 0:00:08.040 On March seventh, at noon Pacific Standard time, Team Sideways 0:00:08.160 --> 0:00:10.000 is going to host an a m A on the 0:00:10.080 --> 0:00:16.520 Unresolved Mysteries subreddit on Reddit. Pretty exciting. Hell yeah, yeah, 0:00:16.840 --> 0:00:18.800 So the mods will post an announcement a week prior, 0:00:18.920 --> 0:00:21.400 so if you can't join us at that time, at 0:00:21.480 --> 0:00:25.360 that date, you can post your questions there. Um, please 0:00:25.400 --> 0:00:29.920 don't email us questions will lose them and forget them. 0:00:30.560 --> 0:00:32.760 Let's try and contain this just to Reddit. But we're 0:00:32.760 --> 0:00:39.560 super excited and uh yeah, so if you can join us. Sorry, 0:00:39.800 --> 0:00:41.960 just in case somebody you know, five years from now, 0:00:41.920 --> 0:00:44.760 I was listening to this episode, not two thousand seventeen. 0:00:44.880 --> 0:00:52.600 This is not true yourself two thousand seventeen. Sorry, Thinking Sideways. 0:00:53.760 --> 0:01:03.760 I don't understand. You never know stories of things we 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:09.000 symply don't know the answer too. Well, Hey everybody, and 0:01:09.120 --> 0:01:13.560 welcome back again to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I 0:01:13.600 --> 0:01:20.280 am Steve, of course, I am joined by he just 0:01:20.360 --> 0:01:22.039 adjusted to the middle of us. I don't know what 0:01:22.120 --> 0:01:28.679 you're pointing at that. I thought it was ahead I did, 0:01:28.760 --> 0:01:35.080 so we're off to a rock and good start. Sorry. Well, 0:01:35.200 --> 0:01:39.000 this week, we of course have another mystery that we 0:01:39.080 --> 0:01:42.399 want to bring to you. This one has no dead bodies, no, no, 0:01:42.560 --> 0:01:45.960 just not know people at all. Really. Nah, well, I 0:01:46.000 --> 0:01:49.160 think I have one specific person in this story that 0:01:49.200 --> 0:01:51.600 I talked about me too, But yeah, no, mostly this 0:01:51.720 --> 0:01:53.720 is no people. Well I didn't do any research on 0:01:53.720 --> 0:01:57.000 It's got some gophers in yeah, it's got some critters. Yeah. 0:01:57.120 --> 0:02:00.760 What we're going to talk about today is glo oject mystery, 0:02:01.240 --> 0:02:06.160 and it's kind of geographically specific. Our subject is what 0:02:06.360 --> 0:02:10.480 is known as the Mima Mounds. And if you've never 0:02:10.520 --> 0:02:12.760 heard of these, but you've read this on the internet, 0:02:13.080 --> 0:02:16.680 you might think that the name is Mima, which I 0:02:16.720 --> 0:02:19.400 was under the false understanding that was the name too, 0:02:19.440 --> 0:02:22.000 until I started watching some YouTube videos and realized that 0:02:22.000 --> 0:02:27.559 I was pronouncing it incorrectly. The Mima Mounds are located 0:02:27.720 --> 0:02:34.440 in Washington State. They are they're near Olympia tom Water 0:02:34.680 --> 0:02:38.720 area of Washington, kind of like if folks have seen 0:02:38.800 --> 0:02:41.680 maps of Washington New Puget Sound is they're like southeast 0:02:41.680 --> 0:02:46.640 of Pugaty there in the southwestern portion of the state. 0:02:47.919 --> 0:02:53.000 Their name comes from the actual area that they're located in, 0:02:53.080 --> 0:02:57.320 which is known as the Mima Prairie, and you will 0:02:57.360 --> 0:03:00.840 come across mounds like this, which we're gonna give some 0:03:00.880 --> 0:03:03.640 description of this, So bear with me here. We're going 0:03:03.680 --> 0:03:06.560 to describe them a little bit. But this kind of 0:03:06.720 --> 0:03:12.880 mound is found in other places in the continental United States, 0:03:13.000 --> 0:03:16.600 as well as other places across the globe. I think 0:03:16.680 --> 0:03:19.799 the only place that this kind of structure is not 0:03:19.960 --> 0:03:23.840 found as Antarctica. And well that's because it's mostly ice. 0:03:24.400 --> 0:03:30.880 It's probably probably found the possibly, I don't know if 0:03:30.919 --> 0:03:34.960 that's true, but they're they're relatively consistent all across the US. 0:03:35.080 --> 0:03:37.920 But again, I'm gonna focus on the ones that are 0:03:37.920 --> 0:03:41.280 in Washington, so we're gonna just work on those. But 0:03:41.360 --> 0:03:44.000 if you do see some research on these and other 0:03:44.080 --> 0:03:47.480 areas of the country, you'll see him referred to as 0:03:47.760 --> 0:03:55.880 prairie mounds, pimple mounds, hog hog wallow mounds. There's a 0:03:55.960 --> 0:03:59.200 few others that are out there. But the mystery, of 0:03:59.240 --> 0:04:03.560 course about these things is that nobody knows how they 0:04:03.560 --> 0:04:06.600 were made or how they were formed. That's the interesting 0:04:06.640 --> 0:04:09.160 thing is that the they know all about all kinds 0:04:09.160 --> 0:04:12.600 of limestone cave. Hey, they figured it out played tectonics, 0:04:12.600 --> 0:04:14.440 they figured that out. Too, but they can't figure out 0:04:14.440 --> 0:04:18.440 these stupid little amounts. I don't get it. Well, maybe 0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:22.120 you will after this, Maybe we'll solve it. Maybe probably 0:04:22.600 --> 0:04:25.839 I doubt it. The mim amounts, to give you a 0:04:25.880 --> 0:04:32.719 description of them, are round dome like bulges of the 0:04:32.880 --> 0:04:38.120 soil that are raised above the plane of the surrounding landscape. 0:04:38.200 --> 0:04:44.520 So here's here's the description. They will range anywhere from 0:04:44.560 --> 0:04:49.680 ten feet to over a hundred and sixty ft across. Wow. 0:04:50.320 --> 0:04:53.560 And they can be anywhere as short as one ft 0:04:54.000 --> 0:04:58.440 two as high as six plus feet high. So this 0:04:58.520 --> 0:05:01.359 is when I say kind of a bulge in the 0:05:01.520 --> 0:05:05.880 landscape I really need it's a giant dome like bull. 0:05:07.560 --> 0:05:12.080 Those numbers that I'm giving those are the average range. 0:05:12.200 --> 0:05:14.800 There are, of course some that are smaller and some 0:05:14.920 --> 0:05:19.359 that are bigger, but that's the general normal range that 0:05:19.960 --> 0:05:23.159 they've been found to be. It's hard to pin down 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:26.479 how many you're going to find in an area. It 0:05:26.520 --> 0:05:30.720 can be anywhere as few as one or two two upwards, 0:05:30.880 --> 0:05:37.960 or over four hundred mounds in a hectar. Tired, I 0:05:38.160 --> 0:05:42.000 totally was going to mess that one up. Hectare is 0:05:42.400 --> 0:05:45.840 just to give you some number, because that's a random 0:05:45.920 --> 0:05:48.920 number or word that you don't here used a lot. 0:05:49.680 --> 0:05:55.479 It's a hundred and one hundred seven thousand, six hundred 0:05:55.520 --> 0:05:58.920 plus square feet and that's about two and a half 0:05:58.960 --> 0:06:01.520 acres two and a half acres. Yeah, that's a much 0:06:01.560 --> 0:06:04.320 easier number. I wish I thought to put it that way. 0:06:05.960 --> 0:06:08.640 And the weird thing is is that they're they're just 0:06:09.000 --> 0:06:14.040 distribution over that area will be fairly consistent. Now this 0:06:14.120 --> 0:06:16.279 is when there's a bunch of them, not when there's 0:06:16.360 --> 0:06:20.200 one or two. But if there's a hundred of them, 0:06:20.240 --> 0:06:24.160 they're relatively evenly spaced. If there's four hundred of them, 0:06:24.240 --> 0:06:28.440 they're evenly spaced, almost if they're in a grid or 0:06:28.480 --> 0:06:35.560 a hex pattern. Yeah, it's a very pattern, but it's 0:06:35.560 --> 0:06:40.120 a pattern. Nonetheless. Yeah it's semi regular, that's for sure, 0:06:40.440 --> 0:06:42.640 which is rare in nature. Right, you don't see that 0:06:42.680 --> 0:06:45.359 a whole lot by natural, although there there is some 0:06:45.800 --> 0:06:48.520 um when we're getting the theories, there's some things that 0:06:48.560 --> 0:06:51.560 we'll talk about that might help explain why it's in 0:06:51.640 --> 0:06:55.839 such a regular distribution. Um, I mean in in in nature, 0:06:55.880 --> 0:06:57.719 I mean things things actually they could you look at 0:06:57.760 --> 0:07:02.040 a forest, for example, it's actually kind of regularly distributed. 0:07:02.120 --> 0:07:05.680 Because distributed, I mean because I mean obviously they're not 0:07:05.720 --> 0:07:08.320 gonna all the trees are not not gonna all crowd together, 0:07:08.520 --> 0:07:10.600 and they're gonna and they're not gonna like space themselves 0:07:10.640 --> 0:07:12.760 way out. So they see a lot of kind of 0:07:12.800 --> 0:07:16.720 regular distributions in nature actually exactly, and and and we 0:07:16.760 --> 0:07:20.200 will get into a better description of that later. Um, 0:07:20.600 --> 0:07:23.960 I'm gonna warn everybody now as we go through this, 0:07:23.960 --> 0:07:27.440 this story or the this description, I'm going to end 0:07:27.520 --> 0:07:32.080 up using quite a few analogies to help describe some 0:07:32.160 --> 0:07:35.360 of this, the first one of which is how I 0:07:35.400 --> 0:07:38.600 think of the mounds. I kind of think of them. 0:07:38.720 --> 0:07:40.360 The easy way that I can think of the Mima 0:07:40.400 --> 0:07:43.120 mounds is that they're Yeah, they're the goose bumps of 0:07:43.160 --> 0:07:46.280 the Earth. They're just really small, weird little bumps. But 0:07:46.360 --> 0:07:48.680 I also think of volcanoes. It's kind of the pimples 0:07:48.680 --> 0:07:59.200 of the earth. You're so weird, are actually more like boils? Yeah, yeah, okay, 0:07:59.280 --> 0:08:04.440 we're gonna no more of that. And this is a 0:08:04.560 --> 0:08:07.400 terrible time for we remember, But before we get too 0:08:07.480 --> 0:08:13.960 far along, this was a listeners suggestion. Eric emailed this 0:08:14.080 --> 0:08:17.680 to us quite a long time ago. Eric, you're still 0:08:17.720 --> 0:08:21.760 with us. Yeah, I really hope that my terrible description 0:08:21.800 --> 0:08:24.760 of these or analogy didn't put you off. But I 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:27.160 really appreciate this suggestion. I was really glad when I 0:08:27.160 --> 0:08:29.920 found this when the list, because it's it's really unique 0:08:29.920 --> 0:08:32.160 and interesting. Yeah, it's a little different than what we 0:08:32.240 --> 0:08:38.160 usually do because exactly, yeah, there's no murder here except 0:08:38.160 --> 0:08:40.480 of my grammar. You don't know, there might be it 0:08:40.520 --> 0:08:42.400 could be a lot of dead people in those bounds. 0:08:42.760 --> 0:08:47.400 Actually there isn't. That's the best part because when Western 0:08:47.440 --> 0:08:52.199 explorers first came to the Washington what is now Washington State, 0:08:53.120 --> 0:08:56.800 they of course looked at these mounds and when I'll 0:08:56.840 --> 0:09:00.360 bet those are burial mounds of the local name it is, 0:09:00.480 --> 0:09:05.839 and next thing they said, hey, let's dig them up, 0:09:05.040 --> 0:09:08.360 and there they were very disappointed because all they found 0:09:09.040 --> 0:09:13.280 was dirt and rocks. There was no bodies. I guess 0:09:13.280 --> 0:09:18.400 the joke was on them. Interestingly enough, there is from 0:09:18.480 --> 0:09:22.840 what I've read, legends from the natives of the area 0:09:22.960 --> 0:09:28.800 that say that the mounds were created either a by 0:09:28.840 --> 0:09:32.280 a large spirit. I think it's a spiritual blue jay 0:09:32.400 --> 0:09:36.160 if I remember, who flew over and dropped the mounds, 0:09:36.160 --> 0:09:39.160 and that's how they came to be a comet that 0:09:39.200 --> 0:09:43.319 flew over and left them in its wake. I mean, 0:09:43.360 --> 0:09:47.360 Haley's comment is fairly frequent in this area, and these 0:09:47.360 --> 0:09:50.000 are like enormous blue jay droppings? Is that kind of 0:09:50.960 --> 0:09:52.640 Indians put it? Maybe? Have you ever had a blue 0:09:52.720 --> 0:09:57.400 jay fly over your car and seeing what happens? So 0:09:57.800 --> 0:10:02.080 it quite could be. But well, thankfully for us, some 0:10:02.200 --> 0:10:06.640 real scientific types, this would be soil scientists actually went 0:10:06.679 --> 0:10:12.120 out and they they dug into the mounds to try 0:10:12.160 --> 0:10:14.880 to figure them out. And what we're gonna go through 0:10:14.920 --> 0:10:19.560 now is the physical description of a mime amount. And 0:10:19.760 --> 0:10:22.920 this is where I'm going to use the first analogy 0:10:23.240 --> 0:10:28.120 beer set of analogies to describe the layers of the earth, 0:10:28.640 --> 0:10:30.880 because if you've never thought of it this way, the 0:10:31.080 --> 0:10:34.960 easy way to think about the layers of soil that 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:37.760 make up the crust of the earth is to think 0:10:37.800 --> 0:10:41.840 about it as a layer cake. That they might be 0:10:41.960 --> 0:10:46.400 thicker thinner vertically, but they are in bands, and it's 0:10:46.400 --> 0:10:49.280 a it's just a simple way to kind of envision it. YEA, 0:10:49.520 --> 0:10:51.680 I think a lot of people know about that so well. 0:10:51.679 --> 0:10:55.400 I would think so, but I don't know that everybody does. 0:10:55.480 --> 0:10:57.280 So I just like to put it out there. So 0:10:57.320 --> 0:10:59.360 the tasty part, of course, it's the top of the mountain. 0:10:59.440 --> 0:11:01.360 It is because that's the icing on the cake after 0:11:01.440 --> 0:11:05.160 you pluck out the candles, and that just turned the 0:11:05.160 --> 0:11:08.520 earth into a birthday cake. Just carrying out your analogy further, 0:11:08.600 --> 0:11:13.880 you know, the the top of the cake is the icing, 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:18.640 which is Joe was alluding to. It is, well, that 0:11:18.800 --> 0:11:21.920 top layer, that icing layer of the cake of the 0:11:22.800 --> 0:11:26.920 Mima mounds. I was gonna say, dag nabbit. The Mima 0:11:27.000 --> 0:11:32.040 Mounds are covered in prairiegraph, so that paragraphs would be 0:11:32.080 --> 0:11:36.120 that icing layer. Now it's not always gonna be prairie grass, 0:11:36.440 --> 0:11:40.280 but typically in that area, that's what it's going to be. 0:11:41.320 --> 0:11:44.920 You dig below that into the first layer of earth 0:11:45.440 --> 0:11:50.160 and you're gonna encounter what is known as the A horizon. 0:11:50.679 --> 0:11:54.760 And when you're dealing with soil science, every layer is 0:11:54.760 --> 0:11:57.199 going to be called a horizon. So I'm just gonna 0:11:57.480 --> 0:11:59.800 let everybody know we're gonna use the horizon name. So 0:12:00.040 --> 0:12:04.520 real times the A horizon. Typically it's gonna be top soil, 0:12:04.960 --> 0:12:08.280 which is going to be kind of that dark earth layer. 0:12:08.840 --> 0:12:13.080 It's full of vegetation that's rotted it's got worms, it's 0:12:13.080 --> 0:12:16.319 got bugs and other little critters in it. That's the 0:12:16.400 --> 0:12:20.439 layer that plants will typically start to live off. It's 0:12:20.440 --> 0:12:24.520 got the most mineral content and all the decomposing materials 0:12:24.520 --> 0:12:27.320 in it. Now, somehow the cake analogy is not holding 0:12:27.360 --> 0:12:29.840 for me here though, because you don't want to eat that. Yeah, 0:12:29.920 --> 0:12:34.959 it doesn't sound like the rich German chocolate part, thank yeah, 0:12:35.080 --> 0:12:38.600 thank you, with a lot of disgusting stuff, lots of 0:12:38.640 --> 0:12:44.960 walnuts and and grapes. I don't know. I'm not good 0:12:44.960 --> 0:12:48.320 at dessert. I don't know. Okay, let's get back to 0:12:48.360 --> 0:12:52.600 describing it, and let's thinking about eating it. The a horizon, 0:12:52.640 --> 0:12:56.400 like I said, top soil, and that's where the plants 0:12:56.480 --> 0:12:59.600 typically will start to live, now, I admit, and I know, 0:12:59.760 --> 0:13:02.600 right the bat, anybody who knows something about to say, well, 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:05.520 that's not the only layer of the soil that plants 0:13:05.559 --> 0:13:08.679 live off, And I get that, But that's the primary 0:13:08.760 --> 0:13:11.880 layer that you're gonna see things like grass and small 0:13:12.000 --> 0:13:16.760 shrubs actually lives shallow rooted, shallow rooted, thank you. That's 0:13:16.800 --> 0:13:21.200 the perfect perfect way to describe it. Below that. Now, actually, 0:13:21.240 --> 0:13:24.560 before we get below that, we should probably describe the 0:13:24.640 --> 0:13:29.000 makeup of the A horizon, which is going to be 0:13:29.280 --> 0:13:33.800 what is referred to as a loamy soil and loam 0:13:34.360 --> 0:13:38.120 is in a varying mixture, can be have you on 0:13:38.120 --> 0:13:42.040 one side or the other, or evenly mixed. You're gonna 0:13:42.080 --> 0:13:46.680 have silt, You're gonna have sand, and to some degree 0:13:46.720 --> 0:13:50.600 you're gonna have clay. So that that's what it all is. 0:13:50.800 --> 0:13:55.199 Plus mixed in there, there's gonna be some small stones, gravel, 0:13:55.360 --> 0:14:00.480 and large stones. That's the A horizon below that, which 0:14:00.840 --> 0:14:02.640 unfortunately for Joe, I'm going to say again, it's the 0:14:02.640 --> 0:14:07.679 next layer of the cake is typically a layer of 0:14:07.960 --> 0:14:13.800 gravel and stone and soil materials that is referred to 0:14:14.240 --> 0:14:19.120 as the B and or see horizons. It can be one, 0:14:19.440 --> 0:14:24.960 the other, or both. The This layer can also be 0:14:25.520 --> 0:14:31.960 relatively hard packed. It's got a higher proportion of clay 0:14:32.000 --> 0:14:35.920 in it, which is something that's important to keep in 0:14:36.000 --> 0:14:40.320 mind because that clay will help hold moisture, which is 0:14:40.400 --> 0:14:43.600 really important when you think about the state of Washington, 0:14:43.720 --> 0:14:47.320 because the state of Washington, like Oregon which we live in, 0:14:48.000 --> 0:14:54.760 it's fairly rainy, yeah, and it's pretty damp. What happens 0:14:55.000 --> 0:14:59.120 in these prairies is that in the winter. In the 0:14:59.160 --> 0:15:03.240 spring it's kind of boggy ish standing water or very 0:15:03.280 --> 0:15:08.480 sodden soil. Come the summer and fall, it dries out 0:15:08.960 --> 0:15:12.920 and then the cycle repeats, which from an ecological standpoint 0:15:13.000 --> 0:15:16.000 is actually really important because it lets a lot of 0:15:16.040 --> 0:15:19.040 things grow that wouldn't grow anywhere else around that because 0:15:19.040 --> 0:15:22.000 they need all that water. Yeah, and the clay the 0:15:22.920 --> 0:15:27.120 B and C horizon typically really hold on to that 0:15:27.200 --> 0:15:30.040 water even in the dry summer months. You know, we 0:15:30.080 --> 0:15:33.120 don't get so dry and hot that our ground totally 0:15:33.200 --> 0:15:37.440 dries out. Typically sometimes we do, but generally not, especially 0:15:37.440 --> 0:15:41.160 in something like this with when it's boggy, that clay 0:15:41.240 --> 0:15:43.200 is going to hold onto a lot of that moisture 0:15:43.280 --> 0:15:47.800 and allow plants to grow year round where they typically wouldn't. Correct. Yeah, 0:15:47.920 --> 0:15:50.200 if if it's an exposed plane that didn't have all 0:15:50.240 --> 0:15:53.200 that clay, that water would go down into the soil 0:15:53.360 --> 0:15:55.760 and as the heat came evaporated out of the upper 0:15:55.800 --> 0:15:59.000 layers and then those plants. You it's uh, if you've 0:15:59.000 --> 0:16:02.560 ever seen grassland in the summer and all the grass 0:16:02.640 --> 0:16:06.280 is relatively dead, it's dried out, you can't live anymore, 0:16:06.280 --> 0:16:08.960 and it's waiting for the next rainfall to germinate. Again, 0:16:09.600 --> 0:16:12.520 this is not the case in these locations because of 0:16:12.560 --> 0:16:17.240 that clay layer. Uh. And and what we're talking about here, 0:16:18.000 --> 0:16:23.480 this boggy kind of area is what is referred to as, 0:16:23.720 --> 0:16:28.200 if I'm correcting it or pronouncing it correctly, is a 0:16:28.320 --> 0:16:34.040 vernal pool. Yeah. And those are shallow depressions, which is 0:16:34.080 --> 0:16:36.600 what we're talking about here, that hold all that water 0:16:36.800 --> 0:16:40.280 through those spring and summer months so those plants can grow. 0:16:40.360 --> 0:16:43.680 So that's what that area is referred to. Um. The 0:16:43.840 --> 0:16:46.960 last layer of the cake is going to be the 0:16:47.320 --> 0:16:52.160 R horizon, which I'm pretty sure stands for rock because 0:16:52.560 --> 0:16:57.200 it's the bedrock layer. That is, of course a almost 0:16:57.560 --> 0:17:01.080 impermeable layer of the Earth's on. Water does go down 0:17:01.080 --> 0:17:03.840 through it, but it's the rock layer. Yeah. And then 0:17:04.320 --> 0:17:06.960 and then below that, about ten feet is the is 0:17:07.000 --> 0:17:10.080 the molten magma at the center of the earth. Not 0:17:10.320 --> 0:17:19.280 quite ten feet, I'm sure, but magma. That's your favorite 0:17:19.280 --> 0:17:25.800 part of the cake evidently, Joe. Well, these these soil 0:17:25.880 --> 0:17:29.800 horizons are what the mima mounds are made up of. 0:17:30.320 --> 0:17:34.679 And as I said, this is the typical or the 0:17:34.880 --> 0:17:41.280 general makeup. It's not specific. Some are more complex, Some 0:17:41.400 --> 0:17:44.720 are less complex than that. Some may have one and two, 0:17:45.160 --> 0:17:48.240 some may have five or six layers, and we didn't 0:17:48.280 --> 0:17:51.400 talk about all of them. That's a soil science show 0:17:51.440 --> 0:17:53.040 that we're not going to do. And they seem to 0:17:53.080 --> 0:17:56.840 be Are they kind of equally distributed throughout the mound 0:17:56.960 --> 0:17:58.840 it's kind of the same kind of layer, or are 0:17:58.840 --> 0:18:01.880 they some thicker so thinner? Do you know? Do they know? 0:18:02.080 --> 0:18:05.240 I'm okay, Yeah. That's one of the things that really 0:18:05.320 --> 0:18:07.920 really irritated me is I did some research on this, 0:18:08.000 --> 0:18:09.680 and I think we're correct me if I'm wrong. Where 0:18:09.680 --> 0:18:11.760 you're going here, Devon is that we've got the mound, 0:18:12.200 --> 0:18:17.560 and the mound itself goes A B C R, and 0:18:17.600 --> 0:18:20.639 then there's the depression, and does the depression go A 0:18:21.520 --> 0:18:26.200 B C Are they similar makeups? I can't find that, honestly. 0:18:26.280 --> 0:18:30.520 I've looked in. Some researchers say yes, they're the same, 0:18:31.040 --> 0:18:33.800 though they're a much thinner makeup. In other words, the 0:18:33.880 --> 0:18:38.400 layers are much narrower, and some say, oh no, it's 0:18:38.440 --> 0:18:41.760 a very thin A and then a very thin C. 0:18:42.520 --> 0:18:46.560 And then we go to our there's no conclusive evidence, 0:18:46.560 --> 0:18:49.520 but I think that might be because everybody's focused on 0:18:49.560 --> 0:18:53.639 the mounds themselves rather than digging between which is odd 0:18:53.680 --> 0:18:56.080 I guess, because if you're going to and I know 0:18:56.160 --> 0:18:58.640 we're close to theories, but if you're going to theorize 0:18:58.680 --> 0:19:03.440 that their natural form, you have to know what's around them, 0:19:03.480 --> 0:19:05.880 you know. So if if what's behind it's what's between 0:19:05.960 --> 0:19:10.720 them is a similar makeup, you can more readily say, well, 0:19:10.760 --> 0:19:13.639 it's just a bigger collection of that, and that's fine, 0:19:13.680 --> 0:19:16.560 and maybe we don't know exactly why, but it's all 0:19:16.720 --> 0:19:20.440 very similar to the soil around it versus, oh, this 0:19:20.520 --> 0:19:24.119 isn't anything like the soil around so it's a some 0:19:24.200 --> 0:19:26.960 kind of anomaly. And that's the thing that gets me. 0:19:27.040 --> 0:19:28.680 It seems like that would be a thing that people 0:19:28.680 --> 0:19:30.520 would be interested in. Well, you know, I think to 0:19:30.720 --> 0:19:33.120 saddle this question, what we need to do is, let 0:19:33.119 --> 0:19:35.719 me grab a couple of shovels, because the amounts are 0:19:35.760 --> 0:19:40.920 not that far away the actually but no, actually, quickly though, 0:19:40.960 --> 0:19:42.960 let me let me say that my understanding of it 0:19:43.000 --> 0:19:45.920 is that these there's a fairly thick layer of clay 0:19:46.000 --> 0:19:49.800 underneath these things, and that and that the clay in 0:19:49.840 --> 0:19:53.399 the areas between them is just not very far down. 0:19:54.760 --> 0:20:00.960 It's basically almost just solid clay soil. They're almost the opposite. 0:20:00.960 --> 0:20:03.600 So that's that's the hard part. But I'm gonna get 0:20:03.600 --> 0:20:05.960 a little bit off track here in terms of what 0:20:06.160 --> 0:20:09.520 I know everybody's expecting me to go through in this 0:20:09.680 --> 0:20:13.760 studio is that when I was in a high school, 0:20:13.800 --> 0:20:16.280 I took a couple of soil science classes. And I 0:20:16.359 --> 0:20:19.240 don't know if either of you have ever got into 0:20:19.720 --> 0:20:23.440 a soiled trench to to figure out what the horizons are. 0:20:24.200 --> 0:20:28.840 It's really it's insanely interesting to be able to look 0:20:28.880 --> 0:20:31.359 at in a like, let's say, a five ft deep trench, 0:20:31.840 --> 0:20:35.199 and you can very clearly in a colored band and 0:20:35.320 --> 0:20:40.119 see those things. That's very straight, straight and straight. Yes, yeah, 0:20:40.200 --> 0:20:42.560 I went to a weird middle school, so I had 0:20:42.600 --> 0:20:45.080 an experienced in high school. Yeah, I was able to 0:20:45.280 --> 0:20:48.159 do that, and it's true, it's very interesting. It's very clear. 0:20:48.680 --> 0:20:50.200 So all you would have to do is really cut 0:20:50.240 --> 0:20:52.840 that mount in half like a cake and they'll take 0:20:52.840 --> 0:20:55.600 a look at That's that's I know that the problem 0:20:55.760 --> 0:20:58.359 is here is this. It's it's all in a preserve. 0:20:58.480 --> 0:21:00.639 So I'm sure that they can't just a back ho 0:21:01.359 --> 0:21:04.679 and dig one giant trench from the middle into the 0:21:04.720 --> 0:21:07.800 next and then walk inside of it and figure it out. 0:21:07.880 --> 0:21:10.240 So I think that might be part of the reason 0:21:10.560 --> 0:21:12.840 that we can't get the answer you could take core samples. 0:21:12.840 --> 0:21:18.359 Though true, it's very true. I also suspect people don't 0:21:18.359 --> 0:21:22.199 really care enough. I'll be honest. We're very interested in it, 0:21:22.240 --> 0:21:25.160 but I think that real scientists are probably thinking, oh, well, 0:21:25.280 --> 0:21:30.119 that's we have to explore the sea or something. Yeah. 0:21:30.240 --> 0:21:34.119 I think that also. Apparently the Gopher Protection Society is 0:21:34.200 --> 0:21:36.280 this won't allow that because they're afraid that the core 0:21:36.320 --> 0:21:39.240 samp we're tool will puncture a gopher. I mean, that's fair, 0:21:39.720 --> 0:21:42.080 that's a fair concern. Well, you actually don't get too 0:21:42.080 --> 0:21:44.920 far ahead of us here, Joe. You you are all 0:21:44.960 --> 0:21:48.480 about the roading theory. I understand that we're not at 0:21:48.520 --> 0:21:52.720 the roading theory. We're in the theory section. But the 0:21:52.760 --> 0:21:58.160 first theory is I will admit my favorite theory, which 0:21:58.160 --> 0:22:02.239 is glaciers. I'm going to start off, unusually enough with 0:22:02.320 --> 0:22:08.119 my favorite. The last glacial period on North America in 0:22:08.240 --> 0:22:12.400 the North American continent, I should say, and did about 0:22:12.840 --> 0:22:17.679 ten thousand years ago, and there is a lot of 0:22:17.920 --> 0:22:25.679 scientific evidence of the shaping that those glaciers did to 0:22:25.880 --> 0:22:28.199 this continent. I mean, there's all kinds of things that 0:22:28.240 --> 0:22:30.280 we can just look and go, oh, yeah, obviously a 0:22:30.359 --> 0:22:33.600 glacier carved that out or left that behind. Yeah, the 0:22:33.640 --> 0:22:36.919 Gorge is a great example of that. And there's giant 0:22:37.000 --> 0:22:41.280 rocks left all over, so we know that glaciers do 0:22:41.720 --> 0:22:44.360 some of it did some amazing and we had some 0:22:44.480 --> 0:22:48.479 pretty amazing glaciers here. I mean, I can't honestly remember 0:22:48.480 --> 0:22:55.520 the name of the Kardashian glacier. Glacier. I don't remember 0:22:55.640 --> 0:22:59.400 the worst that's where are you going after? I really 0:22:59.400 --> 0:23:02.040 I can't remember for the name of it, but the 0:23:02.040 --> 0:23:07.000 one that carved out the Gorge the Missoula floods. The 0:23:07.040 --> 0:23:09.680 Missoula floods, it wasn't an actual glacier glacier. It was 0:23:09.720 --> 0:23:13.000 a flood. And what happened for the Columbia River gor 0:23:13.160 --> 0:23:14.919 the Columbia and the will Lam it kind of all 0:23:14.960 --> 0:23:16.600 of the gorges that we have around here, they were 0:23:16.640 --> 0:23:19.040 all formed by what happened was there was this during 0:23:19.040 --> 0:23:21.439 the Ice Age. There were these huge glaciers that formed 0:23:21.560 --> 0:23:24.240 and they started to melt, and of course they created 0:23:24.280 --> 0:23:27.359 an ice dam and so once that damn burst, it 0:23:27.680 --> 0:23:31.399 created these huge floods that just ravaged the area and 0:23:31.480 --> 0:23:36.080 somehow just like created all of this gorge activity. And 0:23:36.119 --> 0:23:41.359 certainly some of it has yeah, and certainly you know, 0:23:41.440 --> 0:23:43.240 some of it has been over the ages, you know, 0:23:43.280 --> 0:23:46.000 gets deeper and deeper deeper. But that was the general 0:23:46.040 --> 0:23:50.119 formation of it. The Missoula floodstock it up, not the 0:23:50.200 --> 0:23:54.320 Kardashian glacier kind of bad news for the people that 0:23:54.359 --> 0:23:56.080 happened to be living in that little depression. The good 0:23:56.119 --> 0:23:59.520 news is nobody was living there. It was it was 0:24:00.480 --> 0:24:06.639 thousand plus years ago. Well, actually there were people living 0:24:06.680 --> 0:24:11.360 here back then. Back to the point, it's okay, is 0:24:11.800 --> 0:24:16.040 that my this first theory that I the one that 0:24:16.080 --> 0:24:19.919 I'm hanging on to, the glaciers formed the Mima mounds, 0:24:20.080 --> 0:24:24.240 and the soil structure of the mounds, which obviously I 0:24:24.359 --> 0:24:30.600 just described is is old and stable. And it's feasible 0:24:30.680 --> 0:24:34.600 that glaciers, as they advanced or retreated in their process, 0:24:34.680 --> 0:24:36.600 like you were just talking about, their a little bit 0:24:37.280 --> 0:24:43.199 formed it um scraping away the ground. I should probably 0:24:43.480 --> 0:24:50.200 also mentioned, which I didn't, is that the soil structure 0:24:50.440 --> 0:24:55.320 of the Mima mounds is in some of them very old. 0:24:55.760 --> 0:25:00.480 It's somewhere up to about thirty thousand years years old, 0:25:00.520 --> 0:25:04.200 which will match up to glaciers. And I want to 0:25:04.320 --> 0:25:06.360 kinda again, I want to kind of break this down 0:25:06.440 --> 0:25:09.080 to things that we see, and so I'm going to 0:25:09.200 --> 0:25:13.280 give an example is have either of you seen when 0:25:13.320 --> 0:25:16.679 it's freezing cold out and there's a chunk of ice 0:25:16.880 --> 0:25:20.640 that's kind of overhanging and it's sunny in the day 0:25:20.680 --> 0:25:23.560 but really cold, and then cold at night, and you'll 0:25:23.600 --> 0:25:26.640 notice that the ice starts to thaw a little bit, 0:25:26.880 --> 0:25:32.320 and on the underside, the droplets will through um what's 0:25:32.440 --> 0:25:36.840 the word that I'm looking for, cohesion, They'll come together 0:25:37.440 --> 0:25:42.119 and refreeze and you'll get kind of a bulge. And 0:25:42.160 --> 0:25:46.040 then in the daytime everything will freeze and you'll get 0:25:46.119 --> 0:25:51.040 a slightly bigger bulge, and so you get deep, higher 0:25:51.119 --> 0:25:54.919 bulges and deeper ridges, so you get this kind of 0:25:55.040 --> 0:25:59.120 weird curvelinear structure on the underside of sheet of ice. 0:25:59.400 --> 0:26:01.760 Have you been this before? Yeah, I mean you're basically 0:26:01.800 --> 0:26:04.240 talking about the formation of icicles. But yeah, well yeah, 0:26:04.280 --> 0:26:07.119 but but but on a big flat plane, so it 0:26:07.160 --> 0:26:10.720