A Longer Time Ago

If you look closely, you may see the swirl of a tail in a spiral coil.

It's very easy to go north and south in Ohio to the major metropolitan areas of Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland, and Toledo.  However, the Great Serpent Mound is in Ohio's hill country in the south.  The glaciers never made it as far as southeastern Ohio.  The hills in southern Ohio are actually the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.  Now, seriously, who knew that they are some of the oldest mountains in the world?  When they were new, they rivaled or surpassed the Rocky Mountains and the European Alps in height.  Again, who knew that?

A drive into these foothills has no major interstate highway.  It's a winding drive through rural Ohio, tiny villages, along with lots of hills, trees, twists and turns, and farmland.  As I said, a lot of Ohio's farmers are Amish.  If you're lucky, you may see a horse-drawn carriage.  Certainly, you'll see Amish farms without electricity and "road apples" along the way where horses once trod.  And, you'll probably see an Amish woman who somehow successfully manages to maneuver a bicycle in spite of her long, flowing skirt.  How she doesn't get it tangled in the bike chain is a mystery to me.  An Amish miracle!

The Great Serpent Mound     All the information you'll find says the Great Serpent Mound is near Peebles, Ohio.  That's the closest large town.  The little village of Louden is closer, and that's where I saw an amazing log cabin.  Yep, there are surprises all around Ohio.  And, just as lovely was a field of sunflowers not far away.

The early people who inhabited North America built a variety of earthen mounds across the eastern part of the continent over a period of thousands of years.  The Adena (a collection of several mound-building groups) produced conical mounds for burial.  There is a lot about the Great Serpent Mound that remains a mystery, but it may have been built by the Adena around 300 BCE.  Other anthropologists argue that it was built by the Fort Ancient culture 900 years ago.  The reasoning?  The Adena were not known for snake images and the Fort Ancient culture was.  Regardless of who built it, an effigy mound is a raised pile of earth that forms an animal, religious symbol, human, pattern, or other figure.  The Great Serpent Mound is the largest effigy mound of a snake in the world.  It is three-feet-high, 1348-feet-long, and ranges in width from 20 to 25 feet.  The snake was built atop a bluff overlooking Ohio Brush Creek and winds back and forth for 800 feet.  The mouth of the snake is open wide to swallow what perhaps is a very large egg, or an eye, or the sun, or a frog (depending on where you read and who you believe).  The tip of the tail triple-coils around in a diminishing spiral.

These mound builders had no beasts of burden, and certainly no machinery, to help them build the mounds.  All of the material used to create the effigy was transported by human labor.  The Great Serpent Mound was made up of yellow clay and soil.  The edges of the mound were reinforced with an outer layer of rock.

When European settlers came into Ohio and the surrounding areas, they found many mounds.  And, sadly, a lot of the mounds didn't survive their arrival. Thomas Worthington, the sixth governor of Ohio, had an estate that he named Adena, from a Hebrew word that meant pleasure or delight.  The estate had a burial mound that was 26 feet tall. Unfortunately, the mound interfered with the agricultural activities on the estate.  The mound is history, but the name "Adena" was given to the collective group of cultures that created these mounds.

You really need a drone (not allowed) or an elevated platform (closed for repair) to properly view the Great Serpent Mound.  There is no other way to fully take in the entire construction.  Well, of course, you can buy yourself a postcard (which is what I did).  There is a very peaceful path that encircles the snake effigy.  It was not a busy day for tourism at the mound.  I took all the time I needed to get all the angles I wanted with my camera. Well, all the angles except the one on that forbidden viewing platform, which is the one I truly wanted most of all!  If you know my reputation with forbidden areas, it is a wonder that I didn't try to climb over that caged entrance. 

There was still a good chunk of time in the afternoon when we completed our visit of the Great Serpent Mound.  I performed a quick search on my phone to see what else was available in the area.  The first thing that popped up on my phone was a nudist spa.  I didn't know anything like that was in Ohio!  And, ignorance can be bliss.  I don't what to know anything else about that spa.  I continued my search.

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Hopewell Culture National Historical Park     As I searched neighboring counties on the way home, about an hour away in the right direction, I found the Mound City Group, Hopewell Cultural National Historic Park.  I'd never heard of it before.  I had no idea what I might see there.  But, since I'd already explored one mound site, I thought it might be a good thing to go to another site on the same journey.  Upon arrival, I discovered that the Mound City  Group was part of eight mound locations in the area that made up the Hopewell Cultural National Historic Park. And, believe it or not, less than two weeks ago, these eight sites were named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Life is stranger than fiction.  I couldn't have planned it this way.

In my day of touring, I learned that there were three groups of mound builders in this part of Ohio.  I've already mentioned the Adena and the Fort Ancient cultures.  The third group of mound builders were the Hopewell.  If you hope that these people got their name in a better way than the Adena builders, well, don't get your hopes up.  The name came from Mordecai Hopewell, a Confederate veteran of the U.S. Civil War, who owned a farm in Ross County where a lot of impressive mounds and earthworks were excavated in 1891.  Nobody knows what these mound builders, who flourished from about 200 BC to 500 AD, actually called themselves.  But, today, they are known as the Hopewell culture.  Just like the Adena, the Hopewell are not just one culture or society, but are made up a widely dispersed population.

In 1923, President Warren G. Harding signed the proclamation to protect the Mound City National Monument, which would eventually become known as the Hopewell Cultural National Historic Park.  Over the years, additional lands were included for preservation.  The law to officially establish the national park was signed in 1992.  The site at Mound City is the only fully restored Hopewell earthwork complex.  The area is larger than ten football fields and contains around two dozen mounds.  The entire site is surrounded by an earthen embankment about three-feet-tall.  However, in the 1840s, it was four to six feet tall.

There is no evidence that the Hopewell people actually lived at the Mound City Group.  (Excavation of Hopewell dwelling sites indicate no more than three homes. There were no great Hopewell cities or villages.  The people made their living by hunting, farming, gathering, and trading.) The individual mounds at the Mound City Group were for burial.  Originally a large ceremonial building made of poles and bark was built over a plastered clay floor. Cremated bodies were entombed on the floor of the building with a clay covering. Next to the burial site, works of Hopewell art made of copper, stone, shell, and bone were placed on the floor of the building. After many similar ceremonies, the buildings were either burned down or taken away.  When the building of the house was removed, the construction of the mound began in stages.  The mounds alternated between layers of clay and sand.  

Artifacts recovered from the mounds indicate that the Hopewell traded goods across much of what would become the United States.  The Hopewell were very skilled artisans, and the beauty and richness of the artifacts indicates that the burial site may have been reserved for the most important people in the culture.  The artisans used exotic materials not naturally found in southeast Ohio to create necklaces, headdresses, arrowheads, tools, ornaments, and pipes.  They worked with obsidian from the Rocky Mountains, seashells from Florida's Gulf Coast, flint from North Dakota, copper from upper Michigan, silver from Canada, shark's teeth from the Atlantic shores, and mica from North Carolina.

Saving the Worst News for (Almost) Last     The grounds of the Mound City Group were surveyed in 1846 by Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis when the land was still covered in forest.  These two men actually came up with the name Mound City because of its collection of earthen works.  It was a good move to preserve historical records.  But, that natural protection of the forest didn't outlast the need for agricultural space.  In time, farmers plowed over the mounds and the earthen wall that surrounded them to farm the land for fifty years.  If that wasn't bad enough, during World War I, the area was used as an Army training facility.  Engineers grated the place even flatter than the farmers.  Very fortunately, the level of the original floors was below ground level.  The Ohio Historical and Archaeological Society funded reconstruction of the mound site in 1920-21.  And then, President Harding came to the rescue.

And, Finally     The ceremonial center at the Mound City Group was used for sacred rituals, gatherings, and burials.  But, there is much more to learn about the Hopewell culture in neighboring sites in the area.  The Hopewell people carefully watched the heavens.  With an understanding of mathematics and astronomy that boggle my simple mind, they charted the course of the moon in its 18.6-year-cycle.  I didn't even know the moon had an 18.6-year-cycle!  The Octagon Earthworks (which since 1910 has been home to the Moundbuilders Country Club - FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!  WHAT KIND OF DESICRATION IS THAT?) uses geometric shapes and angles on the ground to chart four moon risings and four moon settings in that very long cycle.  It's the same kind of genius that you think of when you read about the wonders of the ancient Egyptian, Chinese, Maya, and Incan cultures.  That genius may be why I've visited the Pyramids, the Great Wall, Tikal, and Machu Picchu.  It's my hope, that with this new UNESCO recognition, that people will also learn about the Hopewell culture.  The Mound City Group should be added to everyone's list of places to wander.