Serpent Mound is an impressive and massive earth sculpture of a snake biting an oval, possibly eating an egg or biting the world. Located in Adams County, Ohio, it has been a place of
controversy since it was discovered. The effigy is built on the top
of a high ground referred to as a plateau by the timid. Even the
early scientist in previous centuries knew it wasn't formed by the
forces that shaped the rest of the Midwest. They refereed to it as a
“Crypto-geologic Uplift”. A long winded term meaning “We don't
know what happened.”
The controversy was a result of the
conservative scientists' determination to attribute it to vulcanism
when there was no evidence of volcanic activity in the region. They
couldn't accept the idea that rocks can fall from the sky , and this
had to be a very big rock.
Serpent mound has been constructed on
the center uplift of a very large meteor creator. It is estimated to
be less than 320 million years old.
The age of the mound itself is a little
contested. Originally it was believed to have been constructed by
the Adena culture (We don't know what they really called themselves.)
at about 1000 to 100 years BCE or about as long as 3000 years ago.
Recently, improved radiocarbon dating of two samples of wood charcoal
taken from undisturbed parts of Serpent Mound both yielded a date of
ca. A.D.1070, about 2000 years more recent than previously believed.
This makes it likely that it was built by the Fort Ancient culture.
Both of these culture have been linked to the Mounds at Anderson,
Indiana.
The image however, is hard to deny. An
effigy that has been described as a fiery serpent taking a bite out
of the Earth is sitting on top of a place where an object that would
have been seen by ancient peoples as a fiery serpent did
take a bite out of the Earth. Of course it did this over 300 million
years before the effigy was built.
Is it
possible that a precolumbian genius watched the streaks of meteors in
the sky, occasionally saw them impact, and made the connection with
the landscape surrounding Serpent Mound? This seems more likely than
other explanations.
If you have the opportunity to visit Serpent Mound its worth the trip. Directions can be found easily on the internet.
