Serpent Mound Essay

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SERPENT MOUND An effigy mound is a raised section of land built in the image of either an animal, human, symbol, or any other image that was of great importance to the creators, commonly known as the Mound builders. Mound builders were a Prehistoric group of people that inhabited North America now know as the Midwest in states like Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Ohio from around 3000 BCE to the 16th century CE. The effigy mounds that these people constructed were believed to be built primarily for religious, astrological, and sometimes burial purposes. These mounds hold significant value to many different cultures, primarily Native American, and are also important to the science community but are under an immediate threat. Despite lasting centuries and centuries of natural deterioration, they are being looked at as bumps in the ground that need to be flattened out for urban growth and ever expanding land for farming. Located in Adams County, Ohio on the Plateau of Serpent Mound Crater along the Bush Creek stands perhaps the greatest of all effigy mounds constructed, and still around, known as the Great Serpent Mound. Depicted in the shape of a great snake, the mound is measured at 1,300 feet long, averaging 4 ft all, and 20-25 ft in width. Serpent Mound, despite winding and coiling around, is known as the largest effigy mound ever created. Despite being an internationally famous historical sit there are many questions and uncertainty when it comes to Great Serpent Mound. Many of which are very basic, like, who built it, when was it actually constructed, why was it built, and to what purpose did it serve? And when it comes to answers to these questions, the results, are speculative at best. Today, when trying to answer who built it and when was it constructed, it is believed that Serpent Mound was created around 1070 CE and was built by a

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