New England Antiquities Research Association

 

What (and why) is Serpent Mound?

Reprinted from azcentral.com

by Dan Kincaid

 

 

December 2, 2003

 

Question: What is Ohio's Serpent Mound?

Answer: The Serpent Mound, or Great Serpent Mound, is an ancient Native American earthwork in Adams County in southeastern Ohio that is said to be the largest prehistoric effigy of a snake in the United States.

The mound averages 4 or 5 feet in height, 25 feet in width and is more than 1,300 feet long.

It appears to depict a great undulating snake with a coiled tail and its mouth agape, about to swallow an egg, although some think the "egg" is actually the snake's head or eye.

Like the great prehistoric figures incised into the deserts of Peru, the Serpent Mound is best viewed from above. (There is an observation tower at the site.)

Scholars became aware of Serpent Mound in the 1840s. It has been thought to have been raised by the people of the Adena culture, which flourished from perhaps 1000 B.C. to about A.D. 200. Adena burials have been found near the mound.

Recent radiocarbon dating, though, suggests that Serpent Mound was erected much later, between A.D. 900 and A.D. 1200, with one researcher dating it around 1070, about the time the Normans conquered England.

If the new dating is correct, then the "Fort Ancient" culture rather than the Adena culture probably built it. The Fort Ancient people were fond of using images of snakes in their artwork.

Some researchers believe Serpent Mound is aligned with the summer and winter solstices. Others note that a supernova was visible in 1054 and speculate that this apparition led to the raising of the mound. The brightest recorded pass of Halley's Comet occurred in 1066, and this, too, may have inspired the construction of the mound.

Interestingly, the mound is believed by some geologists to lie within a greatly eroded prehistoric meteor crater. The crater, if that is what it is, was formed as long ago as 320 million years, ages before humans appeared, and the Indians' erection of the mound in it must have been purely coincidental. Or was it?

Information on the Serpent Mound: http://www.ohiohistory.org/places/serpent/

 

 

 

 

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