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Last updated 5/30/2004 1:43 AM

 

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shwelling@tswelling.com

 

 

 

 

I would like to remind my readers that this is an under construction site.  I am adding material on a constant basis each page, each branch sometimes goes months with out, and sometimes each branch gets new and updated information on a daily basis.  So please be patient my research is ongoing, and I find new and interesting things on almost a daily basis.  Keep checking back; see the last updated on the index page.  Any and all questions please do not hesitate to go to the yahoo groups listed below join and ask any question you like.   Your input has helped shape the way I present the information, and helps me to be more definite with issues in showing my work.

 

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Theory second mound builders

 

 

With due respect to Arthur Montague, I am only using this article as a reference to my greater understanding work.  No copy write infringement more a reference to the work I am doing.    Only the article boxed is his writing everything else on this page is my writing.

 

I wanted to give you a glimpse into the world in which you are very familiar, the world where the symbolic cultures do not exist and the evidence they left behind that was not destroyed builds a picture of confusion and frustration. Because the answer simple does not make sense.

 

I write this with the knowledge that my theories are interesting and based on the knowdgle that I found the language first but had no idea the full extent of the world in which I had taken a giant leap into.

 

One of the things which caught my attention the most about all this stuff was that even though there are thousands of points of evidence, and thousands of points of missing keys to the evidence destroyed bragged about my conquest tribes.  No one had put the pieces together.  Individualy those pieces are nothing by themselves they prove nothing other then a bunch of junk that is too old to truly understand what it was or where it came from.

 

Put together the pieces build a puzzle of profound knowledge, wisdom, understanding, and organization of a people who knew how to live there lives.  Under at times the worst conditions imaginable.

 

The thing which brought my attention to a head the fastest in the mound builders was that in st. Louis their was a hand made mountain.  No kidding a mountain on the banks of the Mississippi that was over 1000 feet tall all hand made.  As st. louis expanded the mountain was determined to be an eye soar and in the way of development and was torn down but the fact that it was there is still a fact.  To build something by hand that is over 1000 feet in the air is really and truly something to behold.  And takes engineering the likes the pyramids builders would envy.

 

The reason the mounds builders sometimes used them to burry and sometimes not is which culture build and occupied the land, was it the first mound builders the Nordics, or was it the second the Aztecs.  We are all well aware of the Aztecs and there rituals.

The mound builders of America

The mound builders of America: what are the origins of the massive, man-made mounds discovered by America's early settlers?

As European cultures spread west across the Alleghenies into the Ohio River Valley, discoveries of massive man-made mounds began to be described in their journals and diaries. For the most part, these seemed to be burial grounds, some containing human bones, others the ashes of human bones. Some did not. As well, many contained artifacts completely foreign to their location and out of keeping with the native American life the settlers observed around them.

Most cultures throughout recorded history have attached great importance to the ritualizing of death and dying. Much of what we know of some cultures has been found only in ancient tombs. The Adena, Hopewell, and Mississippian cultures of America, the so-called Mound Builders of

America, are three such.

Over the years, since the discovery of the first mounds, many theories were advanced as to their origins. Variously, the mounds were attributed to the survivors of Noahs flood; survivors of Atlantis; one of the ten exiled tribes of Hebrews, most often Gads; to Greeks and/or Egyptians; and to Mayans. None of these theories has stood the test of serious contemporary research.

Moreover, many have been discounted because, at the time the theories were advanced, they simply served politico-religious self-interests of their propounders, not least being to justify displacement of native Americans from their traditional land.

The earliest discovered mounds date back to approximately 1000 B.C; however, one anthropologist believes mounds may have been extant as early as 3000 B.C. These are considered evidence of the Adena culture, located primarily in Ohio, but possibly spreading cultural and religious influences as far east as the Chesapeake Bay.

Researchers have suggested that mound building was simultaneous with agricultural development and its stationary life style. Agricultural development may have been a significant accelerant for later mound builders but almost no evidence has been found to suggest that the people of the Adena culture were other than hunters and gatherers. For these, more likely, returning to the same locales of abundant food year after year resulted in the degree of permanence required to construct their mounds.

The Hopewell culture rose as the Adena seemed to fade. The former spread southward as far as Florida. Rather than being a cohesive nationalistic identity, the organization appeared more informal, as a network of trading relationships. Trade goods were exchanged; architectural ideas, religious concepts, and other socio-political concepts shared or borrowed. There is evidence some of the groups in the Hopewell culture were practising formal agriculture. This culture lasted about 700 years, to be followed by the much more advanced Mississippian culture.

The latter is famous for Monks Mound, located in Collinsville, Illinois. Monks Mound covers fourteen acres and rises to a height of one hundred feet. It is part of a Cahokia site that is considered to have supported a population of up to 20 thousand people in a very sophisticated social structure ruled by a chief and a strong shamanistic religious body.

The Cahokia site is also well known for its sun calendars, named Woodhenges because they were built of logs. Excavations also indicate the site was surrounded by two miles of wood stockade, an indication, perhaps, that defence remained a need, despite the size of the settlement.

The Mississipian culture reached fruition in the lower Mississippi Valley, the area between St. Louis and New Orleans. Trade certainly continued as a means of cultural transmission. By 600 A.D. this culture developed a religious elite, in ritual and in art. Mexican influences became evident, human sacrifice among them. Some religious images, symbols and designs also derived from points far south.

Members of De Sotos expedition, beginning in Florida in 1538 saw the Mississipian culture first hand. So, too, did later French traders who lived with the Natchez Indians for a time. By then, however, the culture was in serious decline, ravaged by the communicable diseases introduced by the Europeans. The cultures infrastructure was disintegrated as its elites were blamed for the diseases and then exterminated.

Mound building extended from New York State to Florida and other Gulf States and westward as far as Nebraska and Arkansas. That it helped support a major culture is evidenced by one lasting federation to the 18th and early 19th centuries. The Cherokee, as an example, numbered some 60 thousand people in 100 settlements.

Doubtless, as with other cultures worldwide, mound building began for burial purposes with ritualistic significances developing around the sites. Other mounds known as effigy mounds, notably the one quarter mile long Adena Serpent Mound in Ohio, were symbolic. Platform mounds, perhaps the oldest mound form in Meso-America, thought to originate with the Olmecs, did not make their appearance in the north until the Mississipian period.

Most of the history of the mound builders has been lost, many of their artifacts destroyed, their oral history distorted by time and re-telling. The evidence remaining suggests the social organization and cultural strength of a sophisticated civilization in the western hemisphere far predating the arrival of Europeans.

 

 

Written by Arthur Montague
Copyright 2002 by PageWise, Inc

 

 

 

 

 

 

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T Shawn & Emma Welling