BELLBROOK — The Bellbrook Historical Society will present the next talk of its 2022-2023 lecture series at 7 p.m. Monday, April 17 at Bellbrook Presbyterian Church, 72 W. Franklin Street.

The lecture “Walking Ancient Ohio” will be presented by former First Lady Hope Taft, who shared a hiking adventure with Buck Niehoff, retired lawyer and author, and several of their friends. They walked from the spring equinox through the summer solstice of 2021.

Their 160-mile walk took them through the Ohio countryside from Fort Ancient through Chillicothe to Newark to see and highlight eight ancient Hopewell ceremonial sites nominated for the UNESCO World Heritage List that includes only two dozen of the most important places in the United States, such as the Statue of Liberty and the Grand Canyon. The walkers followed in the footsteps of the ancient people who, like them, made pilgrimages between these sites.

Once a country signs the World Heritage Convention and has sites inscribed on the World Heritage List, the resulting prestige often helps raise awareness among citizens and governments for heritage preservation. Greater awareness leads to a general rise in the level of the protection and conservation given to heritage properties.

The group’s goal was to link the sites by taking the backroads of Ohio and to explore some of the most beautiful architectural achievements ever created in Ohio. Built more than 2,000 years ago, these structures were sacred spaces with remarkably accurate alignments to the cycles of the sun and moon.

They discovered that the spaces between these earthworks were equally important to the sacred experience of the earthworks themselves.

Reach Karen Rase at 937-502-4534.