TV Reviews : ‘Rediscovering America’ Explores Earthworks of a Prehistoric Tribe

“Rediscovering America,” a Discovery Channel special airing at 6 tonight and again Friday at 9 p.m., is a fairly entertaining history lesson--if you can get past its preachy tone. If you can stomach its quasi-Indian “re-enactments” and irritating quasi-Indian music. If you tune out its smug tone of “I’m politically correct--and you’re not.”

That’s a lot of ifs to get past, but “Rediscovering America” nevertheless does a decent job proving its premise: that there are significant aspects of our history that get short shrift in the textbooks.

The greater portion of the show is devoted to a look at the wondrous earthworks of the prehistoric tribe we call the Hopewell. Scattered across Ohio, these huge constructions are sophisticated monuments that track the sun and moon in perfectly aligned geometric shapes. Once, there were hundreds of thousands of these works from a people who built pyramids to rival the Mayans and constructions that dwarf Stonehenge.

One sledgehammer example of how we treat this history shows a golf course that weaves its way through the mounds, treating the works as just so much dirt to be played over or around.

After about 40 minutes of this, “Rediscovering America” makes a big leap to a segment on master architect Louis Sullivan. The link: Sullivan was responsive to nature just like those mound builders. Wow. Thankfully, Sullivan survives this; his talent and imagination shine through.

That leaves just enough time for a two-minute look at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, wherein host Roger Kennedy finally gets down to what he’s been itching to do the entire show--trash the Eurocentric view of life. Kennedy, the director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Natural Museum of American History and writer of this show, is a decent, folksy sort of host who is fine when he sticks to traditional anthropology--less so when he ventures into politics.