Mound

I'm your host, Shannon Ballard.

This is episode 197, Mounds and Murder on the Natchez Trace.

It's part one of the Devil's Road Stories of the Natchez Trace, a four-part October series.

Long before the Natchez Trace was traveled by settlers, traders, and armies, people were living in the country it crossed.

There are several mound sites preserved along the parkway in Mississippi.

Some are rounded burial mounds, others are large, flat-topped platforms associated with ceremonial centers and communities.

At Bynum Mounds, near milepost 232, construction dates to roughly 100 BC through AD 100, during a period archaeologists called the Middle Woodland.

Originally, there were six mounds there.

To those massive mounds.

Yeah.

Alan's Mounds.

Go and see Alan's Mounds, where the people get crowned.

Yeah.

Take our Celtic crosses.

What about the burials themselves? The scenes that 19th century diggers turned into giant stories, modern excavations done slowly and with context in mind, reveal something that earlier accounts almost never talk about.

Mounds are often layered.

A mound might start with a single burial or a small group of burials.

Later, people come back.

They scroll, they swipe past a hundred things they'll never think about again until something grabs them.

An image of a trench with a human skeleton, stretching the full width of the frame.

A yellowed newspaper clipping with the headline, Giant Race Found in Ohio Mounds.

A screenshot of a supposed Smithsonian letter.

Based on the character Conan the Barbarian, created by Robert E. Howard, it is the sequel to Conan the Barbarian the movie from 1982.

The film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mako, they both reprise their roles as Conan and Akira, the Wizard of the Mounds, respectively.

And the cast also includes Grace Jones, Wilt Chamberlain, Tracy Walter, and Olivia Diabo.

So let me do a synopsis, and then we will start.

It's crazy.

It's crazy.

The gem is secured in the fortress of a powerful wizard, so Conan seeks the help of his friend Akiro, the Wizard of the Mounds, who must first be rescued from a tribe of cannibals who have captured him.

The adventures encounter Zula, a powerful bandit warrior being tortured by vengeful villagers.