Hi Luis,
I saw a lot of information before, but it is almost endless. I was thinking that maybe they are like the pyramids. These mounds have a mystery behind them, they call them. Also known as the flat-topped pyramids.They are here for a reason,maybe we will learn soon. We will just keep searching for the right answer.
Blessings,
Myrna
I copied this, there is just to much here to leave anything out
Mound Builder is a general term referring to the
Native North American peoples who constructed various styles of earthen
mounds for burial, residential, and ceremonial purposes. These included
Archaic, and
Woodland period, and
Mississippian period Pre-Columbian cultures dating from roughly 3000 BC to the 1500s, and living in the
Great Lakes region, the
Ohio River region, and the
Mississippi River region.
The term "Mound Builder" was also applied to an imaginary race believed
to have constructed these earthworks, because Euroamericans from the
16th-19th centuries generally thought that Native Americans did not
build the mounds.
The namesake cultural trait of the Mound Builders was the building of
mounds and other
earthworks. These burial and ceremonial structures were typically flat-topped
pyramids or
platform mounds,
flat-topped or rounded cones, elongated ridges, and sometimes a variety
of other forms. The best known flat-topped pyramidal structure, which
is also the largest pre-Columbian earthwork north of Mexico at over 100
feet tall, is
Monk's Mound at
Cahokia. Some
effigy mounds were made in unusual shapes, such as the outline of culturally significant animals. The most famous effigy mound,
Serpent Mound in southern Ohio, is 5 feet tall, 20 wide, over 1330 feet long, and shaped as a
serpent.
The Mound Builders included many different
tribal groups and
chiefdoms,
probably involving a bewildering array of beliefs and unique cultures,
united only by the shared architectural practice of mound construction.
This practice, believed to be associated with a cosmology that had a
cross-cultural appeal, may indicate common cultural antecedents. The
first mound building is an early marker of incipient political and
social complexity among the cultures in the Eastern United States.
The most complete reference for these earthworks is
Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, written by
Ephraim G. Squier, Edwin H. Davis and Samuel Morton. It was published by the
Smithsonian Institution in
1848.
Since many of the features they documented have since been destroyed or
diminished by farming and development, their surveys, sketches and
descriptions are still used by modern archaeologists. All of their
sites located in Kentucky came from the manuscripts of the deceased
C.S. Rafinesque. A smaller regional study in 1931 by author and archaeologist
Fred Dustin charted and examined the mounds and Ogemaw Earthworks near
Saginaw, Michigan. Archaeological survey and recording of mounds is an ongoing task.
Many engraved
conch shell artifacts, such as this one from a mound in Tennessee, have been found.
Eras
The Moundbuilding cultures can be divided into roughly three eras:
Archaic era
Poverty Point in what is now
Louisiana
is a prominent example of early archaic Mound Builder construction (c.
2500 BCE - 1000 BCE). While earlier Archaic mound centers existed (see
Watson Brake), Poverty Point remains one of the best-known early examples.
Woodland period
Throughout the United States, the
Archaic period was followed by the
Woodland period (c. 1000 BCE - 1000). Some well-understood examples would be the
Adena culture of
Ohio and nearby states, and the subsequent
Hopewell culture known from
Illinois
to Ohio and renowned for their geometric earthworks. The Adena and
Hopewell were not, however, the only mound building peoples during this
time period. There were contemporaneous mound building cultures
throughout the Eastern United States.
Mississippian culture
Occupied between 1250 and 1600
C.E.,
Mississippi's Emerald Mound is the second-largest ceremonial earthwork in the United States.
Around 900-1000 CE the
Mississippian culture
developed and spread through the Eastern United States, primarily along
the river valleys. The location where the Mississippian culture is
first clearly developed is located in Illinois, and is referred to
today as
Cahokia.
The Moundbuilder Myth
Through the mid-1800s, Native Americans were generally not believed to have built the mounds of the eastern U.S.
A key work in the widespread recognition of the true origins of the mounds was the lengthy 1894 report of
Cyrus Thomas of the
Bureau of American Ethnology,
which concluded that the prehistoric earthworks of the eastern United
States were the work of Native Americans. A small number of people had
earlier reached similar conclusions:
Thomas Jefferson,
for example, excavated a mound and noted similarities between mound
builder funeral practices, and the funeral practices of Native
Americans in his time.
Several alternate explanations were forwarded as to the origins of the mound builders:
Benjamin Smith Barton proposed the theory that the mound builders were
Vikings who came to America and eventually disappeared. Other people believed that they were
Greeks,
Africans,
Chinese or assorted
Europeans. The
Ten Lost Tribes of
Israel were often given credit for the mounds by Euroamericans who embraced a
Biblical worldview.
The
Book of Mormon (first published in 1830) records that a Mesopotamian group possibly around 3100 and 2200 B.C. (called
Jaredites), and Israelite groups in 590 B.C. (called
Nephites,
Lamanites and
Mulekites)
settled in the Americas. They built magnificent cities (including large
burial mounds), only to be later decimated by warfare around A.D. 400.
Mound builder areas may be one of the theoretical places in which
Bountiful stood, a prominent city named in the Book of Mormon. The hill
Cumorah (near present-day
Manchester, New York) is said to be the place where the Book of Mormon record was buried.
Reverend Landon West claimed that
Serpent Mound
in Ohio was built by God. He believed that God built the mound himself
and placed it in Eden, which apparently was in Ohio. Some people went
as far as to attribute the mounds to mythical cultures:
Lafcadio Hearn suggested that the mounds were built by people from the lost continent of
Atlantis.
The removal of most Indians from the mound builder regions by the 1830s, by means of the
Trail of Tears,
was partly justified by the theory that the Indians destroyed the mound
builders. Because people thought that the mound builders were sometimes
believed to be ancient Europeans, the removal of the Indians was
justified in order to reclaim their land.
The mound builder myth was not just a simple hoax, but a
misinterpretation of real data from valid sources. The myth was widely
accepted by scholars and laymen. Reference to this alleged race appears
in the poem "The Prairies" (1832) by
William Cullen Bryant [1] The widespread acceptance of the myth was based on a number of factors.
One was the belief the American Indians were simple beings that could
not have constructed such magnificent earthworks and artifacts. The
stone, metal, and clay artifacts were thought to be too complex for the
primitive Indians to make. However, in the American Southeast,
Northeast, and Midwest, there were numerous Indian cultures that were
sedentary and participated in agriculture. Numerous Indian towns even
had walls surrounding them for defense. If they were capable of this
type of construction, building mounds should have been no more
difficult. People who believed that the Indians were not responsible
for the earthworks also used the argument that they could have not
built them because they were
nomadic
peoples who followed their food. In this view, they could not have
devoted the time and effort to construct mounds and other
time-consuming projects.
When Europeans first arrived in America they never witnessed
the American Indians building mounds; and when asked about the mounds,
most of the Indians did not know anything about them. Yet there were
numerous written accounts about the Indians' construction of the mounds
by Europeans. One detailed account was by
Garcilaso de la Vega,
who wrote about how they built the mounds and the temples that were
placed on top of the mounds. There were even French expeditions that
stayed with Indian societies who built mounds.
People also claimed that the Indians were not the mound
builders because the mounds and related artifacts were older than the
Indian culture itself.
Caleb Atwater's misunderstanding of
stratigraphy led him to believe that the mound builders were a much older civilization than the Indians. In his book,
Antiquities Discovered in the Western States
(1820), Atwater claims that Indian remains are always found right
beneath the surface of the earth. Since the artifacts associated with
the mound builders are found fairly deep in the ground, Atwater argued
that they must be from a different group of people. The discovery of
metal artifacts further convinced people that the mound builders were
not Native Americans because the Indians were not known to engage in
metallurgy. This was another ignorant perception that was based on the
assumption that all Indian cultures are similar. Some artifacts that
were found in relation to the mounds were inscribed with symbols. The
Europeans did not know of any Indian cultures that had a writing
system, so they assumed it was another group who created them.
Hoaxes
Several hoaxes were designed to reenforce the Moundbuilder Myth.
In 1860, David Wyrick discovered the “Keystone tablet”, containing
Hebrew language inscriptions written on it in Newark, Ohio. Soon after, he found the “
Newark Decalogue Stone" nearby, also claimed to contain Hebrew. It was later discovered that a Reverend John W. McCarty created these "
Newark Holy Stones" and put them in a place where Wyrick would find them.
Another hoax related to the mound builder myth was the
discovery of the Davenport tablets by Reverend Jacob Gass. These also
bore inscriptions on them that later were found to be fake.
The
Walam Olum hoax had considerable influence in the mound builder myth.
Constantine Samuel Rafinesque
published in 1836 his translation of a text he claimed had been written
in pictographs on wooden tablets. This text explained the origin of the
Lenape
Indians in Asia, told of their passage over the Bering Strait, and
narrated their subsequent migration across the North American
continent. This “Walam Olum” tells of battles with native peoples
already in America before the Lenape arrived. It was assumed by others
that these original people were the mound builders, and that the Lenape
Indians overthrew them and destroyed their culture. David Oestreicher
later branded Rafinesque's story a hoax, arguing that the Walam Olum
glyphs derive from Chinese,
Egyptian, and
Mayan
alphabets. Meanwhile, the belief that the Native Americans destroyed
the mound builder culture had earned widespread acceptance.
The
Kinderhook Plates ("discovered" in 1843) were another hoax planted in Native American mounds.
Other groups that have developed myths about the moundbuilders
are certain sects affiliated with the Black nationalist Moorish Science
philosophy. They argue that the moundbuilders were an ancient advanced
Black civilization that developed the legendary continents of Atlantis
and Mu as well as ancient Egypt and Mesoamerica.
Like other moundbuilder myths, they posit that the American
Indians were too uncivilized and unable to develop cities and the
technology necessary for building these mounds.
See also