Thinking Sideways: Mima Mounds

The Mima mounds, located in southwestern Washington state, have been baffling scientists for decades. These strange domes of earth rise up out of the landscape covering large areas in a loosely regular pattern. To date no one can seem to figure out what made them or why they are there.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey guys, exciting news. I'm really really stoked about this.
On March seventh, at noon Pacific Standard time, Team Sideways
is going to host an a m A on the
Unresolved Mysteries subreddit on Reddit. Pretty exciting. Hell yeah, yeah,
So the mods will post an announcement a week prior,
so if you can't join us at that time, at

(00:21):
that date, you can post your questions there. Um, please
don't email us questions will lose them and forget them.
Let's try and contain this just to Reddit. But we're
super excited and uh yeah, so if you can join us. Sorry,
just in case somebody you know, five years from now,

(00:41):
I was listening to this episode, not two thousand seventeen.
This is not true yourself two thousand seventeen. Sorry, Thinking Sideways.
I don't understand. You never know stories of things we

(01:03):
symply don't know the answer too. Well, Hey everybody, and
welcome back again to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I
am Steve, of course, I am joined by he just
adjusted to the middle of us. I don't know what
you're pointing at that. I thought it was ahead I did,

(01:28):
so we're off to a rock and good start. Sorry. Well,
this week, we of course have another mystery that we
want to bring to you. This one has no dead bodies, no, no,
just not know people at all. Really. Nah, well, I
think I have one specific person in this story that

(01:49):
I talked about me too, But yeah, no, mostly this
is no people. Well I didn't do any research on
It's got some gophers in yeah, it's got some critters. Yeah.
What we're going to talk about today is glo oject mystery,
and it's kind of geographically specific. Our subject is what
is known as the Mima Mounds. And if you've never

(02:10):
heard of these, but you've read this on the internet,
you might think that the name is Mima, which I
was under the false understanding that was the name too,
until I started watching some YouTube videos and realized that
I was pronouncing it incorrectly. The Mima Mounds are located
in Washington State. They are they're near Olympia tom Water

(02:34):
area of Washington, kind of like if folks have seen
maps of Washington New Puget Sound is they're like southeast
of Pugaty there in the southwestern portion of the state.
Their name comes from the actual area that they're located in,
which is known as the Mima Prairie, and you will

(02:57):
come across mounds like this, which we're gonna give some
description of this, So bear with me here. We're going
to describe them a little bit. But this kind of
mound is found in other places in the continental United States,
as well as other places across the globe. I think
the only place that this kind of structure is not

(03:19):
found as Antarctica. And well that's because it's mostly ice.
It's probably probably found the possibly, I don't know if
that's true, but they're they're relatively consistent all across the US.
But again, I'm gonna focus on the ones that are
in Washington, so we're gonna just work on those. But

(03:41):
if you do see some research on these and other
areas of the country, you'll see him referred to as
prairie mounds, pimple mounds, hog hog wallow mounds. There's a
few others that are out there. But the mystery, of
course about these things is that nobody knows how they

(04:03):
were made or how they were formed. That's the interesting
thing is that the they know all about all kinds
of limestone cave. Hey, they figured it out played tectonics,
they figured that out. Too, but they can't figure out
these stupid little amounts. I don't get it. Well, maybe
you will after this, Maybe we'll solve it. Maybe probably
I doubt it. The mim amounts, to give you a

(04:25):
description of them, are round dome like bulges of the
soil that are raised above the plane of the surrounding landscape.
So here's here's the description. They will range anywhere from
ten feet to over a hundred and sixty ft across. Wow.

(04:50):
And they can be anywhere as short as one ft
two as high as six plus feet high. So this
is when I say kind of a bulge in the
landscape I really need it's a giant dome like bull.
Those numbers that I'm giving those are the average range.

(05:12):
There are, of course some that are smaller and some
that are bigger, but that's the general normal range that
they've been found to be. It's hard to pin down
how many you're going to find in an area. It
can be anywhere as few as one or two two upwards,
or over four hundred mounds in a hectar. Tired, I

(05:38):
totally was going to mess that one up. Hectare is
just to give you some number, because that's a random
number or word that you don't here used a lot.
It's a hundred and one hundred seven thousand, six hundred
plus square feet and that's about two and a half

(05:58):
acres two and a half acres. Yeah, that's a much
easier number. I wish I thought to put it that way.
And the weird thing is is that they're they're just
distribution over that area will be fairly consistent. Now this
is when there's a bunch of them, not when there's
one or two. But if there's a hundred of them,

(06:20):
they're relatively evenly spaced. If there's four hundred of them,
they're evenly spaced, almost if they're in a grid or
a hex pattern. Yeah, it's a very pattern, but it's
a pattern. Nonetheless. Yeah it's semi regular, that's for sure,

(06:40):
which is rare in nature. Right, you don't see that
a whole lot by natural, although there there is some
um when we're getting the theories, there's some things that
we'll talk about that might help explain why it's in
such a regular distribution. Um, I mean in in in nature,
I mean things things actually they could you look at
a forest, for example, it's actually kind of regularly distributed.

(07:02):
Because distributed, I mean because I mean obviously they're not
gonna all the trees are not not gonna all crowd together,
and they're gonna and they're not gonna like space themselves
way out. So they see a lot of kind of
regular distributions in nature actually exactly, and and and we
will get into a better description of that later. Um,
I'm gonna warn everybody now as we go through this,

(07:23):
this story or the this description, I'm going to end
up using quite a few analogies to help describe some
of this, the first one of which is how I
think of the mounds. I kind of think of them.
The easy way that I can think of the Mima
mounds is that they're Yeah, they're the goose bumps of
the Earth. They're just really small, weird little bumps. But

(07:46):
I also think of volcanoes. It's kind of the pimples
of the earth. You're so weird, are actually more like boils? Yeah, yeah, okay,
we're gonna no more of that. And this is a
terrible time for we remember, But before we get too

(08:07):
far along, this was a listeners suggestion. Eric emailed this
to us quite a long time ago. Eric, you're still
with us. Yeah, I really hope that my terrible description
of these or analogy didn't put you off. But I
really appreciate this suggestion. I was really glad when I
found this when the list, because it's it's really unique

(08:29):
and interesting. Yeah, it's a little different than what we
usually do because exactly, yeah, there's no murder here except
of my grammar. You don't know, there might be it
could be a lot of dead people in those bounds.
Actually there isn't. That's the best part because when Western
explorers first came to the Washington what is now Washington State,

(08:53):
they of course looked at these mounds and when I'll
bet those are burial mounds of the local name it is,
and next thing they said, hey, let's dig them up,
and there they were very disappointed because all they found
was dirt and rocks. There was no bodies. I guess

(09:13):
the joke was on them. Interestingly enough, there is from
what I've read, legends from the natives of the area
that say that the mounds were created either a by
a large spirit. I think it's a spiritual blue jay
if I remember, who flew over and dropped the mounds,

(09:36):
and that's how they came to be a comet that
flew over and left them in its wake. I mean,
Haley's comment is fairly frequent in this area, and these
are like enormous blue jay droppings? Is that kind of
Indians put it? Maybe? Have you ever had a blue
jay fly over your car and seeing what happens? So

(09:57):
it quite could be. But well, thankfully for us, some
real scientific types, this would be soil scientists actually went
out and they they dug into the mounds to try
to figure them out. And what we're gonna go through
now is the physical description of a mime amount. And

(10:19):
this is where I'm going to use the first analogy
beer set of analogies to describe the layers of the earth,
because if you've never thought of it this way, the
easy way to think about the layers of soil that
make up the crust of the earth is to think
about it as a layer cake. That they might be

(10:41):
thicker thinner vertically, but they are in bands, and it's
a it's just a simple way to kind of envision it. YEA,
I think a lot of people know about that so well.
I would think so, but I don't know that everybody does.
So I just like to put it out there. So
the tasty part, of course, it's the top of the mountain.
It is because that's the icing on the cake after
you pluck out the candles, and that just turned the

(11:05):
earth into a birthday cake. Just carrying out your analogy further,
you know, the the top of the cake is the icing,
which is Joe was alluding to. It is, well, that
top layer, that icing layer of the cake of the
Mima mounds. I was gonna say, dag nabbit. The Mima

(11:27):
Mounds are covered in prairiegraph, so that paragraphs would be
that icing layer. Now it's not always gonna be prairie grass,
but typically in that area, that's what it's going to be.
You dig below that into the first layer of earth
and you're gonna encounter what is known as the A horizon.

(11:50):
And when you're dealing with soil science, every layer is
going to be called a horizon. So I'm just gonna
let everybody know we're gonna use the horizon name. So
real times the A horizon. Typically it's gonna be top soil,
which is going to be kind of that dark earth layer.
It's full of vegetation that's rotted it's got worms, it's

(12:13):
got bugs and other little critters in it. That's the
layer that plants will typically start to live off. It's
got the most mineral content and all the decomposing materials
in it. Now, somehow the cake analogy is not holding
for me here though, because you don't want to eat that. Yeah,
it doesn't sound like the rich German chocolate part, thank yeah,

(12:35):
thank you, with a lot of disgusting stuff, lots of
walnuts and and grapes. I don't know. I'm not good
at dessert. I don't know. Okay, let's get back to
describing it, and let's thinking about eating it. The a horizon,
like I said, top soil, and that's where the plants

(12:56):
typically will start to live, now, I admit, and I know,
right the bat, anybody who knows something about to say, well,
that's not the only layer of the soil that plants
live off, And I get that, But that's the primary
layer that you're gonna see things like grass and small
shrubs actually lives shallow rooted, shallow rooted, thank you. That's

(13:16):
the perfect perfect way to describe it. Below that. Now, actually,
before we get below that, we should probably describe the
makeup of the A horizon, which is going to be
what is referred to as a loamy soil and loam
is in a varying mixture, can be have you on

(13:38):
one side or the other, or evenly mixed. You're gonna
have silt, You're gonna have sand, and to some degree
you're gonna have clay. So that that's what it all is.
Plus mixed in there, there's gonna be some small stones, gravel,
and large stones. That's the A horizon below that, which

(14:00):
unfortunately for Joe, I'm going to say again, it's the
next layer of the cake is typically a layer of
gravel and stone and soil materials that is referred to
as the B and or see horizons. It can be one,
the other, or both. The This layer can also be

(14:25):
relatively hard packed. It's got a higher proportion of clay
in it, which is something that's important to keep in
mind because that clay will help hold moisture, which is
really important when you think about the state of Washington,
because the state of Washington, like Oregon which we live in,

(14:48):
it's fairly rainy, yeah, and it's pretty damp. What happens
in these prairies is that in the winter. In the
spring it's kind of boggy ish standing water or very
sodden soil. Come the summer and fall, it dries out

(15:08):
and then the cycle repeats, which from an ecological standpoint
is actually really important because it lets a lot of
things grow that wouldn't grow anywhere else around that because
they need all that water. Yeah, and the clay the
B and C horizon typically really hold on to that
water even in the dry summer months. You know, we

(15:30):
don't get so dry and hot that our ground totally
dries out. Typically sometimes we do, but generally not, especially
in something like this with when it's boggy, that clay
is going to hold onto a lot of that moisture
and allow plants to grow year round where they typically wouldn't. Correct. Yeah,
if if it's an exposed plane that didn't have all

(15:50):
that clay, that water would go down into the soil
and as the heat came evaporated out of the upper
layers and then those plants. You it's uh, if you've
ever seen grassland in the summer and all the grass
is relatively dead, it's dried out, you can't live anymore,
and it's waiting for the next rainfall to germinate. Again,
this is not the case in these locations because of

(16:12):
that clay layer. Uh. And and what we're talking about here,
this boggy kind of area is what is referred to as,
if I'm correcting it or pronouncing it correctly, is a
vernal pool. Yeah. And those are shallow depressions, which is

(16:34):
what we're talking about here, that hold all that water
through those spring and summer months so those plants can grow.
So that's what that area is referred to. Um. The
last layer of the cake is going to be the
R horizon, which I'm pretty sure stands for rock because
it's the bedrock layer. That is, of course a almost

(16:57):
impermeable layer of the Earth's on. Water does go down
through it, but it's the rock layer. Yeah. And then
and then below that, about ten feet is the is
the molten magma at the center of the earth. Not
quite ten feet, I'm sure, but magma. That's your favorite

(17:19):
part of the cake evidently, Joe. Well, these these soil
horizons are what the mima mounds are made up of.
And as I said, this is the typical or the
general makeup. It's not specific. Some are more complex, Some

(17:41):
are less complex than that. Some may have one and two,
some may have five or six layers, and we didn't
talk about all of them. That's a soil science show
that we're not going to do. And they seem to
be Are they kind of equally distributed throughout the mound
it's kind of the same kind of layer, or are
they some thicker so thinner? Do you know? Do they know?

(18:02):
I'm okay, Yeah. That's one of the things that really
really irritated me is I did some research on this,
and I think we're correct me if I'm wrong. Where
you're going here, Devon is that we've got the mound,
and the mound itself goes A B C R, and
then there's the depression, and does the depression go A
B C Are they similar makeups? I can't find that, honestly.

(18:26):
I've looked in. Some researchers say yes, they're the same,
though they're a much thinner makeup. In other words, the
layers are much narrower, and some say, oh no, it's
a very thin A and then a very thin C.
And then we go to our there's no conclusive evidence,

(18:46):
but I think that might be because everybody's focused on
the mounds themselves rather than digging between which is odd
I guess, because if you're going to and I know
we're close to theories, but if you're going to theorize
that their natural form, you have to know what's around them,
you know. So if if what's behind it's what's between
them is a similar makeup, you can more readily say, well,

(19:10):
it's just a bigger collection of that, and that's fine,
and maybe we don't know exactly why, but it's all
very similar to the soil around it versus, oh, this
isn't anything like the soil around so it's a some
kind of anomaly. And that's the thing that gets me.
It seems like that would be a thing that people
would be interested in. Well, you know, I think to
saddle this question, what we need to do is, let

(19:33):
me grab a couple of shovels, because the amounts are
not that far away the actually but no, actually, quickly though,
let me let me say that my understanding of it
is that these there's a fairly thick layer of clay
underneath these things, and that and that the clay in
the areas between them is just not very far down.

(19:54):
It's basically almost just solid clay soil. They're almost the opposite.
So that's that's the hard part. But I'm gonna get
a little bit off track here in terms of what
I know everybody's expecting me to go through in this
studio is that when I was in a high school,
I took a couple of soil science classes. And I

(20:16):
don't know if either of you have ever got into
a soiled trench to to figure out what the horizons are.
It's really it's insanely interesting to be able to look
at in a like, let's say, a five ft deep trench,
and you can very clearly in a colored band and
see those things. That's very straight, straight and straight. Yes, yeah,

(20:40):
I went to a weird middle school, so I had
an experienced in high school. Yeah, I was able to
do that, and it's true, it's very interesting. It's very clear.
So all you would have to do is really cut
that mount in half like a cake and they'll take
a look at That's that's I know that the problem
is here is this. It's it's all in a preserve.
So I'm sure that they can't just a back ho

(21:01):
and dig one giant trench from the middle into the
next and then walk inside of it and figure it out.
So I think that might be part of the reason
that we can't get the answer you could take core samples.
Though true, it's very true. I also suspect people don't
really care enough. I'll be honest. We're very interested in it,

(21:22):
but I think that real scientists are probably thinking, oh, well,
that's we have to explore the sea or something. Yeah.
I think that also. Apparently the Gopher Protection Society is
this won't allow that because they're afraid that the core
samp we're tool will puncture a gopher. I mean, that's fair,
that's a fair concern. Well, you actually don't get too
far ahead of us here, Joe. You you are all

(21:44):
about the roading theory. I understand that we're not at
the roading theory. We're in the theory section. But the
first theory is I will admit my favorite theory, which
is glaciers. I'm going to start off, unusually enough with
my favorite. The last glacial period on North America in

(22:08):
the North American continent, I should say, and did about
ten thousand years ago, and there is a lot of
scientific evidence of the shaping that those glaciers did to
this continent. I mean, there's all kinds of things that
we can just look and go, oh, yeah, obviously a

(22:30):
glacier carved that out or left that behind. Yeah, the
Gorge is a great example of that. And there's giant
rocks left all over, so we know that glaciers do
some of it did some amazing and we had some
pretty amazing glaciers here. I mean, I can't honestly remember
the name of the Kardashian glacier. Glacier. I don't remember

(22:55):
the worst that's where are you going after? I really
I can't remember for the name of it, but the
one that carved out the Gorge the Missoula floods. The
Missoula floods, it wasn't an actual glacier glacier. It was
a flood. And what happened for the Columbia River gor
the Columbia and the will Lam it kind of all
of the gorges that we have around here, they were

(23:16):
all formed by what happened was there was this during
the Ice Age. There were these huge glaciers that formed
and they started to melt, and of course they created
an ice dam and so once that damn burst, it
created these huge floods that just ravaged the area and
somehow just like created all of this gorge activity. And
certainly some of it has yeah, and certainly you know,

(23:41):
some of it has been over the ages, you know,
gets deeper and deeper deeper. But that was the general
formation of it. The Missoula floodstock it up, not the
Kardashian glacier kind of bad news for the people that
happened to be living in that little depression. The good
news is nobody was living there. It was it was
thousand plus years ago. Well, actually there were people living

(24:06):
here back then. Back to the point, it's okay, is
that my this first theory that I the one that
I'm hanging on to, the glaciers formed the Mima mounds,
and the soil structure of the mounds, which obviously I
just described is is old and stable. And it's feasible

(24:30):
that glaciers, as they advanced or retreated in their process,
like you were just talking about, their a little bit
formed it um scraping away the ground. I should probably
also mentioned, which I didn't, is that the soil structure
of the Mima mounds is in some of them very old.

(24:55):
It's somewhere up to about thirty thousand years years old,
which will match up to glaciers. And I want to
kinda again, I want to kind of break this down
to things that we see, and so I'm going to
give an example is have either of you seen when
it's freezing cold out and there's a chunk of ice

(25:16):
that's kind of overhanging and it's sunny in the day
but really cold, and then cold at night, and you'll
notice that the ice starts to thaw a little bit,
and on the underside, the droplets will through um what's
the word that I'm looking for, cohesion, They'll come together

(25:37):
and refreeze and you'll get kind of a bulge. And
then in the daytime everything will freeze and you'll get
a slightly bigger bulge, and so you get deep, higher
bulges and deeper ridges, so you get this kind of
weird curvelinear structure on the underside of sheet of ice.

(25:59):
Have you been this before? Yeah, I mean you're basically
talking about the formation of icicles. But yeah, well yeah,
but but but on a big flat plane, so it
doesn't have that large drop. But I guess only on
the underside of things. I don't think I've ever seen
it on the overside of things exactly. Okay, Well, but
that's the thing is if this is on the bottom

(26:19):
of a glacier which is huge and heavy, and that
water through cohesion, it's coming together and then freezing. And
this of course wouldn't be on a day night cycle,
but over a year's cycle, that weight is going to
shove the soil underneath it around. Think about the underside

(26:41):
of this glacier like egg crate foam, you know, that
silly egg crate foam that sleeping pads are made out of.
If it was something like that, but it's really strong
and hard and it's pushing down on the earth, it's
gonna shove the dirt around and make those ridges. Of course,

(27:01):
then when it melts, we've got this egg crate shape
going on, give it ten thousand years. Some erosion happens
and instead of these perfect divots between them, the plane
of the soil evens out between them. So now all
we have is these random bulges at different places. That's

(27:26):
where this theory goes. And I don't know if that
makes sense the way of explained it to you, or
you have a better way to describe now. I mean,
I understand, I understand what you're saying. I think that
if it's water and it's pushing into the ground, it's
probably going to get absorbed into the ground, not stick.
It's melting. It's melting down into those bulges and then

(27:47):
refreezing and of course meting. It's melting. Glaciers are really
really widly creatures. No, I I understand where you're saying it.
If it's water, why doesn't it go into the soil?
I understand where you're headed with that. I can see that,
but I I can't explain it because I'm not I

(28:10):
can't explain the glaciers to that degree. I just look
at it from what I have seen anecdotally in nature,
and then add all that weight and pressure. I guess
my other problem with that theory is um the glacier
has to escape somewhere. Right, So either it melted on
a massive scale without moving and sliding anywhere, because you

(28:33):
don't see those big gouges in the earth, right. So
either it because you would expect if it had these
big divots that that would be a like a rake
pattern almost across the landscape. But it's more melting and
they're freezing and building back. I understand that, But I'm saying,
at the end of the ice age, right, is it
just melting away and every and the water just washes

(28:55):
away and it leaves these divot marks? Or is it
that it's melting and it's going to elt on the bottom?
You know? And is it sliding somewhere? Is it gouging
something out? I don't know that it would. And I
don't claim to know a lot about glaciers, but munder
standing of glaciers is the way they were able to
grind out big valleys and stuff. Would you see all
the way all all over around here, is that as

(29:17):
it grows, the way it grows and it starts sliding,
moving forward and adding on and stuff. And then so
that's when the grinding occurs, is when it's growing. But
when it's retreating, it doesn't like, it doesn't slide backward.
It's quite the same way. When it's retreating, it just
gets thinner and thinner. So it just it's just slowly melts,

(29:38):
and it melts from the top, not in the milt.
But the only problem I have with the glacier theory
is that you would think that there would be it
would eventually a lot of the water that came off
of the glacier as it melts, would wash a lot
of this stuff away right now. And while I like
the glacier theory the most, if this theory were correct,

(30:00):
this is going to come up multiple times in the
theory section. We should see this in more than just
this place and there, And like I said, it's continentally
for the United States. You see this, You see it
in some places in the South, in some of the East.
But you think that you would see it more consistently,

(30:21):
But that also you might not see it because of
farming practices. That might be a reason that we don't
see it anything cleared away. But also that's another thing
I problem I have with this theory is that it
is seen in the South, where as far as I know,
there was never any glaciation. Yeah, you're right, and again

(30:42):
there are some other things that might be responsible for
this in the South, and that's actually well, I was
just gonna ask one more question, is that you see
these singularly as well, right, And that obviously can't have
and if you if you're saying it was a divot
in between a bunch of things. You can't create just

(31:04):
one mound from a divot. You've got to have at
least two probably, I can see it. Well, No, let's
let's okay. We've got a flat sheet ice, and for
some reason it's got a thin spot on the top,
and so the water in the thin spot on the
top is melting and it's seeping down through itself, and
then it's going to create that pattern radiating away. Again,

(31:25):
not perfect, I understand. I mean you're saying two different
things are happening. Then at that point, No, it's it's
there's a thin spot at the top, so that's where
the melt happens. So then it's gonna melt down and
it's going to radiate down and create a cone essentially, right,
So that's exactly what I'm saying, is you're saying, no,
and it doesn't work. I guess it doesn't work. I

(31:48):
like this one the best, and we beat the crap.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry better, And we're gonna go through
some fairly mundane serious here, just to let your folks know,
but don't despair. There's gonna be some aliens before and
to fuzzy things. And I've got a theory of my own,

(32:09):
and I'm going to attack in it all of the better.
Hurry up. Our next theory is plant and or wind.
This is going to take a little bit of explaining
to but the theory centers around basically the interaction between
large plants, the wind and blown sediment. Um And tell

(32:35):
you right now, the beginning of this theory does not
hold up for the state of Washington. This is more
of an arid region theory. But we'll kind of try
and see how it could work. In the process of
wind blown sediment is what is known as an Aeolian process.
I hope I'm pronouncing that right. I believe that's right.

(32:59):
And what that is is that you've got dry earthen
materials that are picked up by the winds, so sand
and silt, they're blown around. It runs into vegetation, so
a tree or a bush or whatever it is. Of course,
then it's knocked free and it drops to the ground.
As that continues to happen over an extended period of time,

(33:23):
you get a mound of earth built up around this plant.
If we think about trees, which can live on the
scale of hundreds of years, that means that you can
get quite a large mound built, and then when the
plant dies and rots away, all this left is the mound.

(33:43):
And actually, what I like about this theory is that
it's very much like dunes. Well exactly, if you look
at these mounds of pictures of them, they look like
sand dunes. But they're different in one way, which is
that instead of forming into kind of rows and stuff,
they come sort they come sort of their mounds. But
when you look at especially a sort of like a

(34:04):
high level, like looking at it from above, and you
look at the spacing between them, it's not completely even,
but it's the kind of spacing that you would see
between say, trees in a forest. In other words, they're space.
They're spaced enough apart so that they don't choke each
other out. And that is what is known as vegetation

(34:24):
spatial patterning exactly. And it looks like it looks exactly
like that if you look at the aerial photos of
the Mima mounds. And we're going to get into vegetation
spatial patterning. But let me just finish up one little bit.
Devon's rolling your eyes, But one little bit about the
problem with the alien process is that, as I said,

(34:48):
this is a process that happens in arid regions. The
Pacific Northwest is by no means an arid region, nor
has it really ever it has not anything that I
could find even suggested that the that area was ever arid.

(35:10):
It's oh, he's been wet. So this doesn't hold up.
So I admit there's a giant flaw in that, but
it is something that's pointed at. I guess another problem
that I would have is that didn't you say that
there are rocks and a lot of these mounds. That
is another problem. Yeah, there are small stones and there

(35:32):
are large stones under the surface and on top. So yes,
windblown material, that's a problem because the wind doesn't throw
big That's that's an issue. Uh. If we go to
the spatial patterning that we were that Joe was alluding
to or discussing, um, this and what what vegetation spatial patterning,

(35:55):
which is an easy phrase to say not. Uh. This
is is the theory that or the practice that individual
or groups of plants, so we've got a number of
them growing together will spread their roots out and they
will drain the surrounding area of all of the nutrients

(36:18):
that are in the soil. Making it a waste land
for other plants, for other plants, so nothing else can
grow there. And then you have no roots holding the
top soil down, so then that that dirt washes away
and then you end up with these strange rivulet patterns

(36:38):
between them. Here's something to think about. An easy way
to envision this is if anybody has ever seen mangroves.
You see them, they have those giant, weird root patterns
and there they arch up above the water. Now, think
about something like that where its roots are still underground,
but the dirt that would be on top between them

(37:00):
is gone. You would have the same kind of mounding
humping pattern that you find at the mime amounts. It
makes sense. I'm not going to buy into it, but
it makes sense. But it also does help what Devon
pointed out, which is the issue with the stones and rocks.

(37:20):
There's a lot of evidence that roots will grab and
move stones through pressure that they grow next to. I mean,
we've all seen they'll break stones to push them around.
So this does happen, and it will push them to
the surface it gets big enough, Yes, I I agree

(37:43):
with that. The problem I'm having is, uh, the size
of a lot of these mounds, right, I'm willing to
go there for the smaller ones. But if we're talking,
I mean hundred and sixty fee feet round, was that?
I think that's that's kind of rare. That's on the

(38:04):
large Sure, it's on the large side. But okay, well
bear with me. Okay, how big do you think the
rutch structure of say a mature oak would be. Which
oaks get huge? Pretty big? Yeah, it would be would

(38:25):
be huge. So I'm not saying that this is something
that happens in a matter of five years, but those
oaks live hundreds of years. If that oak lived hundreds
of years, and there's i mean, the odds of this
happening with oaks, I understand is infantestimal. But I'm just
using it as an example. If we've got a forest

(38:48):
of rows of oaks that all have these giant root
balls that eventually die, that could explain the structure. I'm
not all for it, but I am. That's just my
my little bit of fence force. Yeah, if if Washington
was an arid place, yes, but no. But this this
is why I think that the thing that I need

(39:10):
to point out is for this uh, for the spatial
pattern ng is part of it is erosion because the
roots are holding it in. So now we're getting erosion
with the root patterns as well. I've essentially at this
point discounted the wind theory, but now we're factoring in erosion,
so we're adding that's and that's the hard part of
this theory or this story in general, is that things

(39:33):
get added and discounted left, right and center. And I'm
doing my best to keep them separate. But this one
is one of those weird ones where they say, well,
the wind brought it in and then the plants held it,
and then the water washed it away, and it makes
it awkward. Awkwards the word I'm going to use, speaking
of awkward, Let's just leave that theory mind. Let's move

(39:55):
on to the next one, which says that the mimmounds
are creature created and this is the mammal version, and
that would be pocket gophers make cute little devils. Okay,
let just let go You've never heard of a pocket

(40:17):
go fer, No I have. I'm just I'm just laughing
that they could have created these things. I'm just letting
you go for it. Likes him. He's gonna make a
pocket go for me next week. Pocket gophers are industrious
little critters. Actually, they they can move a lot of dirt.
They can, uh. The pocket gopher theory has actually been
around for a long time. Came out in the late

(40:40):
nineteenth century and it was theorized that the mounds were
actually built by the pocket gopher. Anybody who doesn't know
what a pocket gopher, his pocket gopher is a rodent.
It's really On average they weighed less than half a
pound there. Any are from six to eight inches long,

(41:01):
and that includes their tail and of course their gophers.
So they have really terrible ice sight. They don't come
above the ground very much. And unlike most gophers, which
will either dig a hole and push the dirt into
the bottom of their tunnel structure or just push it
up out and keep going, pocket gophers seem to have

(41:26):
the habit of pushing all of the dirt they dig
out to the top of the mound of dirt that's
above their tunnel and continue to push it towards the top.
So if you've ever had gopher holes in your yard
and they're those goofy mounds, now imagine they keep coming
to the same spot, but they keep pushing all the
extra dirt up top and building it up higher and higher.

(41:50):
That's what they do, and that's what's got people kind
of intrigued as to why they think that these little
boogers are responsible. Yeah, the and actually I'm kind of
liking this series, not just because the gophers are cute,
but it also fits a lot of facts, like there
their territorial You're exactly right, They're they're very territorial little critters.

(42:14):
And it turns out that the spacing of the Mima
mounds corresponds relatively speaking to the territorial distance that a
pocket gopher will cover somewhere between a hundred and a
hundred and fifty feet. So that's that makes sense. Uh. There.

(42:35):
There's a researcher at San Diego State University that he
wanted to see if this theory could be right. And
what he did is he took and made a computer
model factoring in the speed that these little gophers build
at and it turns out, indeed, note this, eventually they

(43:00):
can make a mound that is upwards of six ft tall,
and that takes a bit of time. It does take
a bit of time. Now, other people have jumped on
the bandwagon and they're saying, oh yeah, and and they're
building them that tall so that they can escape the
water table of where they're living, because, as we've talked about,
it's a very boggy area, so the water table is

(43:23):
pretty high. Yeah, a lot of a lot of big
clay area and clay area that that holds water and
actually prevents water from draining into it. Yes, which means
they would have flooded tunnels. So yes, it makes sense
they would build up to have a dry area. But
it's it's a little weird. But here's the problem. There

(43:44):
are a lot of problems. Well, yeah, there's there's a
whole lot of problems, which is that, well, to start with,
it would take five to seven hundred years for gophers
to build mound that tall. Problem number one. Problem number two.

(44:04):
Pocket gophers, no matter how cute they are with the
little pockets in their cheeks, only lived to be at
most five years old, which says, well, how does this happen?
People have said, oh, well, other other other little gophers
come in and they take over their mouths and they
keep building them, and that's how it happens. But the

(44:28):
research that I've read, nothing in there says that after
a gopher dies and leaves its burrow or its tunnel structure,
does another one come in and take it over? But
they all seem to start from scratch themselves. Yeah, but
isn't it possible you can inherit as it go? For

(44:49):
the family home? Let me go first, have go first,
have babies. I guess my problem number three gopher family home.
Well no, I mean seriously though, I mean I mean,
if you if you have, if you have baby gophers,
and then eventually you die, why should they move off
somewhere else to start a whole new tunnel network when
they've got one right already there. I'm gonna kill that

(45:09):
right now with the I don't believe that they're a
communal family structure. I think they all move on on
their own. But Devin, you were no. My problem number
three is that the if this is a mound that's
built by digging out, right, the top layer should correspond

(45:31):
to the bottom layer of the soil, the top layer
of the mound, because that's what they've been digging out last,
And the bottom layer should correspond to the top layer
of the soil that they were digging out. Not the
way that it goes right, No, I know where you're
headed here. If gophers were digging and mixing the soil constantly,

(45:53):
it shouldn't be easily divided into horizons. It should actually
be one giant mishmash mixed up. It should be an
undistinguishable layers. And even if it was layers, it should
be flipped layers at the bottom layer of the mound.

(46:14):
Should be breaking into the simplest factory. Yes, it should be.
The clay should be on top, should be. Yes. And
there's the problem with the stones that we talked about earlier,
which is a half pound critter cannot move a ten
pounds stone, right, I guess also a problem that there
aren't like huge tunnels running through these things, are there?

(46:37):
I would be another anything that said, here's a picture
of a pocket go for tunnel in a mime amount.
Haven't seen that. I haven't seen any that now. I cute? Yeah,
I know, I know. We're going to move on to
the next creature created theory. Okay, this one, I am
going to it right off the bat I put in

(46:58):
because it's in the rees church, but I don't buy it.
But it's still in the creature area, which is termites.
Gross they are gross. There are people out there who
say that the mounds are made by termites. And before
anybody has their head pop off, let's just think about

(47:22):
termite mounds that we see in places like Africa. You
see these giant, giant termite mounds similar bear with me,
the giants above and below ground. So theoretically those critters
die off and then erosion takes effect. But you're right,

(47:43):
there is no record of that kind of termite in
that region, or you know, the different layers in the
mounds or the no holes or the five pound stones stones.
But the biggest problem that is is that is that
it's kind of hard to believe that there would be

(48:03):
literally trillions of termites living in this plane with you know,
I mean, I mean seriously think about it. And when
you see aunt hills and termite hills there, there's like
they're kind of a one off kind of thing. You
don't see hundreds and thousands of them next to each other. Well,
actually you see them sometimes in the plains of Africa
where they're they're close to each other, not nearly this close,

(48:26):
but they are let's say, five hundred to a thousand
feet apart instead of miles apart. I know where you're going,
and I agree, But there are cases where you see
them close but not nearly this close. Yeah, no, I
mean because I mean, if if you've got nothing but
termites living in this fast area, there's nothing to eat
except each other, that's it. So I just don't see that. No, no,

(48:49):
I admit, I put this one in just because it's there.
I don't, I don't. I don't buy it. And everybody
loves termites except one to the next one, which I
actually love how this one came about. Their the theory
got created. But the theory is that it is earthquakes
or seismic vibrations are causing the mounds there. The theory

(49:16):
goes as a basic premise that there are vibrations due
to seismic or volcanic activity that is shaking the dirt
around and at that point that's causing it to heap
up into small mounds. This is where my favorite part
of this theory comes from. Is there's a gentleman by

(49:38):
the name of Andrew Burg who is an actual geologist,
somebody who just came up with this idea on his own. Yeah,
I know him. I'm sorry, I don't know the idea. Yeah,
he was. He was building a doghouse of all things,
with a bunch of sheets supply wood that had ash

(49:59):
on them. Mine. I don't know what kind of ash
was it in the volcanic ash? Oh yeah, it wasn't
the eighties, which means it would have been St. Helen's head.
I was. I was around in those days, and yes
there was a lot of ash. Okay, So now we
know why there was ash on his plywood. And he
is hammering nails into the plywood to build the doghouse,

(50:21):
and he notices that the concussive vibrational force of each
blow on a nail transferred through the plywood. He's causing
the ash to vibrate and mound up. I kind of
like that theory. It's very simple at its root. Yeah,

(50:41):
I understand that well. And also clay behaves fairly similarly
to ash once it's wet. Well. I think the clay represents,
in this case, sup plywood and then all the stuff
that never mind, I don't like basic very much like plywood.
The theory the dirt of the mind him amount or
the mima plane is like the ash. The clay and

(51:06):
the bedrock are like the board, and every time there's
seismic activity, and those seismic waves are rattling around underneath
that cross and they're hitting fractures and whatever the case
may be. Down there, they're making that vibration which is
causing that soil too, for lack of a better term,

(51:29):
kind of clump up and boil up. Okay, My problem
with this is if that were the normal case, again,
why don't we see that in other areas? And there
is a practical example that I want to point to

(51:50):
which causes me some concern because he's saying that there
is some serious seismic activity that is going through the area,
not low grade, but it seems it needs to be
a relatively big bunch of psychic activity in order to
do this kind of thing. Yeah, that's really a lot

(52:11):
of pounds of dirt. The example that I'm going to
point to is a location in California, which is another
place that mounds like this are found. In the fifties,
we had kind of talked about this in some of them,
possibly in some of the places, but in the fifties
those mounds were plowed under for farmland plowed them down.

(52:34):
In the eighties that farmland was abandoned for farming, and
low and behold mounds began to arise again on their own.
Huh yep, the mounds have started to come back in
that area. That truly leaves me with more questions than

(52:56):
answers because it's only been like, what thirty five years years,
so it couldn't have been We've had two major and
I used air quotes, your major earthquakes in the that
region of California, kind of that Bay area, northern California.
There hasn't been It's not like the place has been

(53:17):
rocking and rolling for a long time. There's been a
couple of them. There's been a couple of decent size,
that's it. But this theory seems to say that they're
they infer that it's got to be kind of a
big thing to shake that much soil around long term,
for to clump up that much, and yet it's still happening.
I just thought, literally discounts every theory that we've had

(53:41):
that they reform like that, there's no and there's no termites,
and there's clearly not glaciers egg carton ing the things. Nope, Nope, no,
no glaciers. Yeah. I think I think didn't. I. Yeah, yeah,
I think what it is is the soils is forming
around and reflecting like massive structures built underneath and buried

(54:05):
by aliens. Okay, Joe, stop, we're moving on before you
start making up something that confuses our listeners because it's
all made up. We're gonna go to the next theory,
which is actually real, which I think is a very
solid one as well, is the shrinking and swelling of
the clay layer of soil. If you guys remember earlier

(54:30):
in the beginning, we talked about how the b and
the sea layers horizons have clay in them, and the
density of clay can vary, so it's a low density
or a high density. So some layers are very very
thick with clay and some are not. That might be

(54:50):
the simplest answer of what's responsible. And here's why. Clay,
though it doesn't seem to absorb water, does have either
of you had to dig in dirt that was full
of clay. Oh yeah, my my yard is full of it,
and I did. I hate digging in it in the
winter time because it's just a sticky, matt nasty mess.

(55:13):
But actually that's a lot better than digging in in
the summer time, it is better. It turns out I
never realized this until I started doing the research, is that, yeah,
clay does absorb water, and it absorbs it at varying
ratios because depending on the mineral count and the density

(55:36):
of the clay, it can absorb more or less. In
other words, think of it this way. There's pockets in
between in the clay. So if it's really dense, there's
not a lot of pockets of areas that water can
get into. But if it's a low density, there's a
lot of areas that that water can infiltrate, and those

(55:58):
thinner areas will swell as the water gets in. So
what that means is that as it swells, it's got
it can't push down into the bedrock, so it's gonna
push up and it's gonna push everything above it upwards. Well,
the areas in between the mounds are very thin, they're

(56:19):
very dense. They can't absorb a lot of water, so
they don't really expand, although then the clay drays, that
dries out and it goes flying. That's kind of what
I was thinking there. I have seen some research and
the validity of this I cannot stand behind. But I
will put out is that as things expand from water

(56:43):
and then that water drains out and evaporates, they will collapse,
but they will not compact their original volume. They will
stay larger. Think about it. You stick a sheet of
water or a sheet of paper and water and it
gets all wet, and then you dry it out, and
then it's all puffy and rough and it's a little thicker,

(57:05):
not much, but it's a little thicker. Now, think about
a two foot thick layer of dirt that that fills
with water and puffs up. It's gonna shrink back down
a little bit, but it's not gonna go all the
way down to what it was originally. Yeah, and it
would help explain why mounds were reforming. I think the
key is for us to get some shovels and go

(57:27):
up to um. Well now, maybe, but there should be
this should be a big pocket then, like even even
in the dry times, there should be a big hollow
pocket underneath these things. So let's go punch through some
of those mounds and see what's underneath there. Joe is
always wanting a field trip that requires everybody else dis
you manual labor while he sits in his director's chair

(57:47):
with the umbrella over him and my tie in his hand, saying, Dick, there,
this is not happening. We've done that too many times, right, Yeah, sorry,
Forest park. Our final theory is, are you ready devon aliens? Yeah?
Not really makes sense? Why not aliens? When you read

(58:09):
about the Mima mounds are all over the places like
they were done for aliens. They were done for aliens.
I really am afraid that the alien connection here was
made up sarcastically by a bunch of weitty writers to
be able to immediately discount it, because every time you

(58:31):
see something about aliens, it says, but there's no evidence,
and why there really is. There's nothing that says why
aliens would do it because as corresponding information is just
three sentences and then they move on to the rest
of their story. Now, it's it's very well documented that aliens.

(58:52):
Aliens historically come to the Earth, they do random stuff,
and then they leave again. Then the bottom of their
ships or formed like egg crates, and that through landing pads.
It could be that, or it could it could be
that actually, these these things are are kind of like
Morse code dots in the in the surface of the planet.
And when we get it says eat here, it says

(59:15):
high we are aliens just wanted to stop by and
say hello. And when we eventually manage to decode the message,
and I'm sure the s A is on it, you know,
then that will be the first message from another race.
I mean, I think more times than not, we try
to assign a meaning that we, as lowly humans could
possibly understand to alien activity, right if we're assuming that

(59:38):
aliens exist, which we are, of course, because they do.
But there's no way that our puny, little tiny not
being able to go out into space and travel through
all of that, could possibly comprehend what they may or
may not have been doing. So they might have had
very good reasons for doing We just don't know what
it is, yeah, exactly. So yeah, alright, so there's another

(59:59):
thing that's much overlooked, but yeah, let's have it. In
this particular area of southeast become the dominant tribe in
the area before the white man showed up was put
up Indians, and the Indians were noted for not having
internet or cable or anything quality. They had a lot

(01:00:19):
of time on their hands, and so they spent their
time just building mounds, because it's kind of like the
Incas spent their time shaping stone and building these incredible
stone structures. They made these really cool sort of mounding areas.
I don't think that's true. I yeah, know, the fact
that we see mounds re rising in other areas, I

(01:00:40):
can't agree with that. The other hard part about this is, Okay, again,
we've only focused in this episode on the Mima Mounts.
There are mounds in the south of the United States,
in the California's, there in Europe, there in Africa. I
mean this, this g logic structure happens for multiple reasons

(01:01:03):
in multiple areas. So to just say, well, this particular
one is because people were born, I'm just gonna tell
you right now. No, no, actually I think that even
though the serious been put forward by many prominent scientists,
I don't take it too seriously. Myself was that prominent
scientist your cat? Uh, somebody like my cat? Anyway, that's

(01:01:27):
what I thought that for fun. Obviously there's there's an
interesting process which perhaps someday our grandchildren will understand here,
but possibly, yeah, we don't quite get it yet. Well,
that's that's the theories that we've got. Obviously, none of
them fit or are perfect, though some of us subscribe
to others more than some. That that made sense, I swear.

(01:01:51):
If you want to take a look at some of
the research that we've done on this particular episode, you
can find that on our website. That website is Thinking
Sideways podcast dot com. Of course, we have the episodes
there to stream, but chances are you're listening to and
downloading us somewhere else. There are a bazillion streaming sources

(01:02:16):
out there, and we are on pretty much all of them,
so you can find us there if you use iTunes,
which I know a good portion of people do. Please
when you're there, take it the time to to subscribe
and then leave the comment and the rating, because of
course that helps other folks find us, which is great

(01:02:36):
because other people need to find us. We are on Facebook,
so we have the group and this the Facebook page
which is ever growing, and tons and tons of fun
conversations going on there, so anybody can join. Let us know.
Joe's favorite phrases is it find us, friend us like us?

(01:02:58):
Um No, I think it's uh yes, I think that's
close enough. But I think I put it a little
more in fat find us, friend us, like us okay,
well emphatically saying I'm not gonna say that. Well, you
can also find us on Twitter. We are on Twitter
at Thinking Sideways, so drop the g off of thinking

(01:03:20):
and you can follow us on there and we put
some stuff out on Twitter. And of course if you
have thoughts or story suggestions, agreements, disagreements, love hate, anything
like that that you want to send us and you
want us to read, you can send that to us
at our email, which is Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail
dot com. Don't have anything else that I can think of,

(01:03:42):
just I did want to add this one thing, and
that is that if you have a shovel when you're
then you want to build my amount of your most instructions. No,
we're this This is not a instructibles website. We're not
going to tell them how to build their own mon
not stuff you should know. You know, I'm sorry who

(01:04:03):
doesn't want to mind amount of their very own I
know someone and I lived with them, she would not
be happy if I built a six ft by a
hundred and sixty ft mound in our backyard. You also
have to have a bigger yard. Yeah, there's that but
you know what, Yeah, my neighbors don't want that, so yeah, yeah,
you might bring in gophers and termites. Bad idea, Joe. Well,

(01:04:29):
ladies and gentlemen, we're going to go ahead and roll
this one up, put in the can and call it done,
and we'll talk to you next week. Everybody. By guys,
it was probably go fers, but not really probably go first,