Serpent Mound Tour - Day 52

  Today we had the privilege of receiving a private tour of Serpent Mound, perhaps the most important Native American effigy in North America.

We will walk past this mound in a few days, but this was a great opportunity to learn more than one ever can from signs. And we learned that the signs aren't necessarily correct because there are many more questions than answers associated with Serpent Mound.

We are already in Adams County. Nice murals in the village of Peebles.

Here's another for the village which features an image of Serpent Mound.

Jeff Wilson, from Friends of Serpent Mound, was our guide. He knows just about everything there is to know about the site. Our current host, Nikki, arranged this for us! For starters, I did not realize the serpent was constructed at the center of an impact crater where a meteorite about 5 miles in diameter once hit the earth. Large craters have a central uplift structure because the impact melts the rock, which then splashes up in the middle. So the serpent is on a dome of rock in the middle of the crater.

You can see the sides of the crater-- the far level rims in these two pictures. Perhaps you can see that I'm taking the pictures from a similar elevation with a wide valley between. That's the floor of the crater.

The site also has burial mounds that have been used by several cultures over the course of millenia. How many millenia is still in question, but possibly as long ago as the last glaciation period.

The first historical record of Serpent Mound was made in 1848, and this depiction was made around 1900.

This picture from today shows the central oval of the head pretty well. The structure is 25 feet wide and about a quarter of a mile long, so it's really hard to see the whole thing from the ground.

The observation tower is closed in winter, but here is a picture I took one year in the summer. You can at least see the curving body.

So, what is Serpent Mound? There is quite a lot of evidence that it served a similar purpose as Stonehenge. The curves of the body are aligned with major solstices and equinoxes. There are alignments with the travels of the moon. There is some evidence that it was constructed when Thuban, in the constellation Draco, was the north star. (Because the earth wobbles on its axis, north changes in a 26,000 year cycle.) The pyramids are aligned with Thuban. The Serpent Mound may mirror Draco.

No one even knows who first built it. Carbon dating projects have yeilding conflicting results, and careless backfilling by early archeologic digs have muddled the evidence.

No matter who built it, it's amazing, and its preservation is something of a political miracle.

We then went out to eat, bought groceries and came "home." Back on the trail tomorrow.

See Chicken Hollow and Suck Run