Mounds

In the east of North America, one of the most striking and mysterious structures of the ancient Indians - mounds - has survived to this day. Sometimes this word is translated as "barrows" - a translation that is close in meaning, but not quite accurate.

In the east of North America, one of the most striking and mysterious structures of the ancient Indians - mounds - has survived to this day

In general terms, Mounds are very diverse earth embankments and various structures of clay or stone. Some of the Mounds were indeed mounds - that is, earthen embankments over burials. Other mounds are artificial hills on which a wooden temple was erected. To such "temple mounds" belongs, for example, one of the most famous groups of Mounds, discovered in 1925 near the city of Etowa in the state of Georgia.

Mounds of the third type look like stepped earth pyramids. This is, for example, Mound Cahokia (Illinois). This is the largest "pyramid" of North America. It has a footprint of 350x210 m and a height of 30 m.

The most interesting group is the so-called figured mounds, common in the states of Wisconsin, Ohio and a number of other places in the US. They represent extensive embankments, the outlines of which reproduce the repeatedly enlarged contours of the body of an animal. So, in the state of Ohio, there are two mounds, built in the form of a bending body of a snake. One of them - "Big Snake Mound" - has more than 300 m in length, while the "snake" several times bends and ends with a giant spiral.

"Crocodile Mound", located near the village of Licking (Wisconsin), has a length of about 60 m and depicts, as is clear from its name, a crocodile (more precisely, an alligator). "Great Mound" in South Dakota is made in the form of a turtle.

Why were the mounds built? By whom and when? The mystery of these mysterious structures has been worrying for several generations of American scientists. However, the designation of all known Mounds has not yet been fully elucidated.

An unequivocal answer to the question of the appointment of mounds can not be given, if only because these structures, despite the general name, clearly differ from each other. With the Mound-burial mounds, it seems as if everything were simple - they were cemeteries of ancient Indians. "Figured Mounds," depicting birds, deer and bison, apparently served religious purposes.

But the creation of such structures required a huge number of workers. So, for example, to build a pyramid-mound Cahokia required about 635 thousand cubic meters of land. And this despite the fact that the Indians of North America at that time, apparently, did not know what a shovel was!

Meanwhile, in the history with the mounds, not everything is so hopeless, and the research of American scientists, which have been conducted for more than a hundred years, have given answers to many questions. First, today, with good reason, it can be argued that the builders of different types of Mounds themselves differed from each other. Secondly, it was possible to establish that the oldest type of mounds are unconditionally mound burial grounds. In North America, they appeared about three thousand years ago (700 BC). Their creators were people of the so-called Aden culture.

Like many ancient tribes, the people of Aden culture professed the cult of their ancestors. Over the graves of the dead, they built funerary mounds, some of which (for example, Grave Creek Mound in Virginia) reach 25 m high.

Traditions of Aden culture were adopted and developed by a new culture - the Hopevelian, which existed until about 8-10 centuries. AD Its representatives not only poured huge mounds, but also for the first time began to use them for funeral rites, which were performed on top of Mound.

Hopewell culture was replaced by the so-called Mississippi culture. It was the people of this culture who built giant temple mounds and earthly stepped pyramids. Often mounds were erected in the center of extensive agricultural settlements - "cities", some of them were significant even by modern standards.

The significance of the Mississippian culture for the history of this part of the continent is so great that it naturally raises questions: who were its creators? Where is their homeland? Where did these amazing cultural impulses come from in the Mississippi basin?

Very seriously studying the mounds of one of the American presidents of the United States, William Henry Harrison. It was Harrison who first suggested the hypothesis that the Mound builders were probably the ancient Mexicans - the Aztecs.

This view is now gaining increasing recognition. Almost the south and southwest of North America were quite achievable for the inhabitants of Central America. A well-known Americanist Paul Redin ascribes the construction of the largest mounds not to the Aztecs, but to the descendants of the Maya. Copper plaques found in the mounds of Georgia have similarities with Mexican products. Gold jewelry from the same mounds, too, is more in tune with the tastes of Mexicans than the "fashion" of the then Indians of North America.

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