Who Made This?

The Serpent Mound in Ohio dates from no later than 1070 CE (Common Era, which historians use instead of A.D., indicating the number of years since the year traditionally designated for the birth of Christ). In fact, it might be much older. Historians and archaeologists continue to debate the evidence.

That means the Serpent Mound was at minimum centuries old when Columbus and other Europeans arrived in the Western Hemisphere and kept coming back.

Who built this amazing effigy (the term for a raised pile of earth used to depict an animal)? It's just three feet high but is 1,348 feet long, and is composed of layers of clay, ash, and rocks, with soil on top. Physical evidence indicates that long before Columbus, someone repaired it because it was already old and its condition had degraded.

Who made it? Centuries later, who repaired it? What people believed that the enormous amount of labor needed to construct it had value, and was that value religious or astronomical or political or some combination?

We'll hint at the answers when we cover another ancient site next week, Cahokia (near the present-day city of St. Louis).

For now, please consider how interesting things were in North America for a long time before Columbus ever showed up.