Christianity ?
ANCIENT
ARTIFACTS
Why are the Ten Commandments (in
ancient Hebrew) written on ancient
artifacts found in New Mexico and in Ohio?
It has long been known that the ancient Phoenicians and their
Carthaginian offspring sailed the oceans and visited other continents.
In recent years, it has been well-documented by the Epigraphic Society
that they both explored and colonized ancient America. Greek history
reveals that the biblical Israelites were included in the Greek
definition of "Phoenicia." The Bible reveals that the Israelites under
Kings David and Solomon became close allies with Tyre and Sidon and
that the Phoenician Navy was manned by sailors from Israel, Tyre and
Sidon.
Ancient Phoenician and Carthaginian writings, artifacts and coins have
been found widely in the Americas. A large complex of buildings built
by ancient Old World civilizations was found by early American
colonists in New England, who did not realize what they had found
because they could not read the ancient languages. In Ohio, an artifact
was found in the Mound Builder area which had the Ten Commandments
inscribed on it in ancient Hebrew. In New Mexico, the Ten Commandments
were inscribed in ancient Hebrew on a large stone near Los Lunas. These
(and many other) artifacts confirm that the Israelites were, indeed, in
ancient America.
"The gospel had in very remote
times, been already
preached in America," wrote Ethan Smith. "It is a noted fact that there
is a far greater analogy between much of the religion of the Indians,
and Christianity, than between that of any other heathen nation on
earth and Christianity. "Yates and Moulton, in their History of the
State of New York, reported that a certain Indian tribe in Missouri was
still "retaining some ceremonies of the Christian worship."
Parallels
between Christian and Indian customs were enumerated. Some compared the
Indian's custom of placing the dead person's feet east and head west to
Christian burial customs. It was reported that the Indians had a belief
in heaven and hell, an afterlife of punishments and rewards for deeds
done on earth. Hence the Indians allegedly believed in the immortality
of the soul, a devil which they described as a "great Evil Spirit," and
one God, the "Great Spirit," creator of all things, unchangeable and
omnipotent. Ethan Smith even claimed the Indians believed in the
Christian trinity, basing his opinion on the discovery in one Indian
mound of what he called a "triune vessel," a vase formed of three human
faces said to represent Indian gods. But, argued Smith, the "triune
vessel" could be better interpreted as a representation of "one Jehovah
in three persons."
The
earliest Spanish explorers of Central and South America had also been
looking for Christian parallels. Large stone crosses found in Central
America, for example, were cited as evidence that Christianity had been
preached in ancient America. Cortez reported seeing a cross ten feet
high near a temple in Central America. The Indians, he reported, "could
never know the original how that God of Crosse came amongst them. ...
There is no memory of any Preaching of the Gospel." Although the
natives had no memory of Christianity, the stone crosses, according to
early writer Francesco Clavigero, proved to many that "the Gospel had
been preached in America some centuries before the arrival of the
Spaniards." Antonio del Rio included in his 1822 book a plate showing a
codex of a Mayan offering sacrifice to one of these large stone
crosses. Actually these so-called crosses are stylized or
conventionalized "world trees," a central element of the religious
worship of the Aztec and Maya, who believed that such trees were placed
at the four cardinal points and another in the center.
A belief
that Christianity had existed in the New World led naturally to
questions about how the gospel could have been preached to the ancient
Americans. In 1792 Jeremy Belknap phrased the question this way: "If
the gospel was designed for an universal benefit to mankind, why was it
not brought by the Apostles to America?" He continued, "To solve this
difficulty it has been alleged that America was known to the ancients;
and that it was enlightened by the personal ministry of the Apostles."
Early
Spanish explorers and priests also promoted the story that the apostles
once came to America to preach the gospel. The Mexican god Quetzalcoatl,
described as a man with white skin, was identified by
some Spaniards as St. Thomas. Francesco Clavigero, who personally
doubted the story of St. Thomas's visit to America, wrote:
Dr. Siguenza imagined that the
Quetzalcoatl, deified
by these people [Mexicans], was no other than the apostle St. Thomas,
who announced to them the Gospel. ... Some Mexican writers are
persuaded that the Gospel had been preached in America some centuries
before the arrival of the Spaniards. The grounds of that opinion are
some crosses which have been found at different times, which seem to
have been made before the arrival of the Spaniards: the fast of forty
days observed by the people of the new world, the tradition of the
future arrival of a strange people, with beards, and the prints of
human feet impressed upon some stones, which are supposed to be the
footsteps of the apostle St. Thomas.
The legend of St. Thomas's visit to
America was repeated by
Paul Cabrera and others, but the legend of Quetzalcoatl had other
interpretations.
At least
one early writer, Chevalier Boturini (1702-51), found the legend of
Quetzalcoatl more suggestive of Christ himself . Ethan Smith was also
fascinated by Quetzalcoatl--"the most mysterious being of the whole
Mexican mythology"--but he was equivocal in his identification. Smith
described him as "a white and bearded man" and as both a "high priest"
and a "legislator." Smith thus united in one figure the tradition of
Moses the lawgiver and of Aaron the high priest. Unlike Moses, however,
Quetzalcoatl "preached peace to men, and would permit no other
offerings to the Divinity than the first fruits of the harvests." Smith
also compared the healing power of the "serpent of the green plumage,"
a symbol for Quetzalcoatl, with Moses' "brazen serpent in the
wilderness." The New Testament, of course, draws a parallel between the
brazen serpent which was lifted up in the wilderness and the Son of God
who was lifted on the cross (John 3:14). After preaching to the ancient
Americans, this white god disappeared promising one day to return. In
reality the legend of the ancient god Quetzalcoatl was conflated by the
Indians with the story of a tenth-century A.D. ruler named Topiltzin,
who reportedly had fair skin and a beard. He had left his people under
embarrassing circumstances, promising to return one day. Thus the
bearded Cortez was met by the Aztec leader Montezuma as the returning
god.
Samuel
Sewall, a commissioner of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
in New England, pointed to another biblical passage which he thought
helped to place the Indians in God's scheme of things. He, like Ethan
Smith, based his imperative to preach the gospel to the Indians on a
belief that they were in fact of Israelite descent. In a work he
published in Boston in 1697, Sewall quoted the passage from John 10:16
in which Christ refers to other sheep of a different fold to whom the
gospel will be preached. Sewall noted one Protestant theologian who
interpreted the "other sheep" as a reference to the ten tribes. "If it
be no heresy to say, the Ten Tribes are the Sheep," argued Sewall,
"Why should it be accounted Heresy to say America is the distinct
Fold there implied? For Christ doth not affirm that there shall be one
Fold; but that there shall be ONE FLOCK, ONE SHEPHERD!" Sewall believed
that the passage prophesied that the Indians would hear Christ's
"voice" when he would eventually come to America and establish the New
Jerusalem.
Early
nineteenth-century Americans thus had available to them two seemingly
contradictory traditions about the Indians and their ancestors. On the
one hand, Indians were savages--at best lazy and slothful, at worst
murderers and devil worshipers--entirely incapable of civilization. On
the other, they were degenerate Jews who had every possibility of being
restored to their former civilized condition. Those who cast the
Indians as inherently "savage," however, had to explain the existence
of the earthen works in North America as well as the great stone
buildings and temples of Mexico and Peru.
Many
could only reconcile such contradictions by proposing that there simply
must have once been a civilized, productive group in America in
addition to the Indians. Ethan Smith's optimistic assessment of Indian
potential led him to propose that the Indians had separated from the
more civilized tribes, resorted to hunting, and eventually degenerated
into wild savages. In time, he speculated, the Indians destroyed their
more peaceful brethren, somewhere in North America. This theme he
repeated several times:
Israel brought into this new
continent a considerable
degree of civilization; and the better part of them long labored to
maintain it. But others fell into the hunting and consequent savage
state; whose barbarous hordes invaded their more civilized brethren,
and eventually annihilated most of them, and all in these northern
regions!
But the savage tribes prevailed;
and in time their savage
jealousies and rage annihilated their more civilized brethren.
It is highly probable that the
more civilized part of the
tribes of Israel, after they settled in America, became wholly
separated from the hunting and savage tribes of their brethren; that
the latter lost the knowledge of their having descended from the same
family with themselves; that the more civilized part continued for many
centuries; that tremendous wars were frequent between them and their
savage brethren, till the former became extinct. ... No other
hypothesis occurs to mind, which appears by any means so probable.
Ethan
Smith was not the only proponent of the possibility that there were two
groups of people in ancient America. Indeed, he only adapted a theory
which was already widely held in late eighteenth- and early
nineteenth-century America. His unique adaptation reconciled his own
belief about the origin of the Indians and his personal imperative for
missionary work among them. His belief that the Indians were
descendants of the lost ten tribes who came to a land "where never
mankind dwelt" compelled him to construct a theory which posited two
groups of Indians but only one migration from the Old World. Previous
writers had posited one migration for mound builders and another for
Indians. But even some who did not necessarily believe that the Indians
were of Israelite descent found the theory about two groups compelling.
Jeremy Belknap, speaking to the Massachusetts Historical Society in
1792, articulated the theory in this way:
Mounds and fortifications of a
regular construction
were discovered in the thickest shades of the American forest,
overgrown with trees of immense age, which are supposed to be not the
first growth upon the spot since the dereliction of its ancient
possessors.
The most obvious mode of solving the difficulty which arose in the
curious mind on this occasion was by making inquiry of the natives. But
the structures are too ancient for their tradition. ... Indeed the form
and materials of these works seem to indicate the existence of a race
of men in a stage of improvement superior to those natives of whom we
or our fathers have had any knowledge; who had different ideas of
convenience and utility; who were more patient of labor, and better
acquainted with the art of defense.
... At what remote period these works were erected and by whom; what
became of their builders; whether they were driven away or destroyed by
a more fierce and savage people, the Goths and Vandals of America
[Indians]; or whether they voluntarily migrated to a distant region;
and where that region is, are questions which at present can not be
satisfactorily answered.
Governor
DeWitt Clinton also believed in two groups. Interested in the Indian
mounds of his state, he personally visited many of them and speculated
about their origins at a meeting of the New York Historical Society in
1811:
There is every reason to believe,
that previous to
the occupancy of this country by the progenitors of the present nations
of Indians, it was inhabited by a race of men, much more populous, and
much further advanced in civilization. The numerous remains of ancient
fortifications, which are found in this country, ... demonstrates a
population far exceeding that of the Indians when this country was
first settled.
Clinton speculated that in ancient
times a large group from
northern Asia migrated to North America. Once in America they built
mighty cities and became numerous. In time, they were invaded and
attacked by a more savage group from Asia and eventually annihilated.
"And the fortifications," he concluded, "are the only remaining
monuments of these ancient and exterminated nations."
John
Yates and Joseph Moulton related an Indian legend in their 1824 history
of New York which seemed to corroborate such a theory: "Before and
after that remote period, when the ancestors of the Senecas sprung into
existence, the country, especially about the lakes, was thickly
inhabited by a race of civil, enterprising, and industrious people, who
were totally destroyed, and whose improvements were taken possession of
by the Senecas."
Solomon
Spalding wove his story around the mound-builder myth. He described two
distinct nations: the one lived in huts, hunted, and were uncivilized,
dark-skinned savages; the other built houses and cities, worked metals,
kept records, tilled the earth, domesticated animals, wore clothes like
Europeans, and were a fair-skinned civilized people.
Such
sentiments found their way into newspaper accounts, even in the
neighborhood where Mormon Prophet, Joseph Smith grew up. In 1818 the
Palmyra Register
opined that the mound builders "had made much greater advances in the
arts of civilized life" than any Indians, and the Palmyra Herald
declared in 1823 that the fortifications were "the work of some other
people than the Indians."
These
mound builders were believed by some to have been a white-skinned race.
Ethan Smith referred to James Adair's remark that "the Indians have
their tradition, that in the nation from which they originally came,
all were of one color. "The color, according to Smith, was "white," as
the Indians "have brought down a tradition, that their former
ancestors, away in a distant region from which they came, were white."
In 1816 the Philadelphia Port Folio reported that "it is a very general
opinion, prevailing in the western country, that there is ample proof
that the country in general was once inhabited by a civilized and
agricultural people" who were eventually destroyed by the Indians. "It
is a current opinion," the periodical continued, "that the first
inhabitants of the western country were white people." One Indian
tradition reportedly held "Kentucky had once been inhabited by white
people, but that they were exterminated by the Indians. "Yates and
Moulton also argued that the mounds and fortifications had been
constructed by a white race which had been destroyed by the Indians in
the Great Lakes region.
Much
debate centered on the Indian's skin color. Those most eager to promote
the pre-Adamite theory emphasized the different skin colors among the
nations as evidence of separate creations, but conservative Christians
tried to explain the difference as a result of climatic and
environmental influences and thus to keep the dark-skinned peoples in
the family of Adam. One skirmish in this debate was initiated by Lord
Kames (Henry Home) in his book Sketches of the History of Man. Kames
rejected the climate theory, referring instead to the diversity of
color as evidence of separate creations. His ideas were subsequently
attacked by the Reverend Samuel Stanhope Smith of Philadelphia and by
James Adair. Both argued that the Indian's skin color was due to
climatic and environmental conditions. Wrote Adair:
Many incidents and observations
lead me to believe,
that the Indian color is not natural; but that the external difference
between them and the whites, proceeds entirely from their custom and
method of living, and not from any inherent spring of nature. ... That
the Indian color is merely accidental, or artificial, appears pretty
evident.
Adair believed that the reddish
color was not the original
one. In his travels he had seen Indians of various hues, he wrote, even
white Indians. The Indians also had a tradition that they were once all
of one color but they did not know which. However, according to Adair,
they seemed to prefer dark skin since they would constantly anoint
their bodies with bear grease mixed with a red root. He also observed
that the years of exposing their bodies to "parching winds, and hot
sun-beams" had tarnished their skin with a "tawny red color." If the
Indians' ancestors had also persisted in painting their skin and
exposing their bodies to the sun, Adair speculated that nature might
have effected a permanent change: "We may easily conclude then, what a
fixt change of color, such a constant method of life would produce:
for the color being once thoroughly established, nature would, as it
were, forget herself, not to beget her own likeness. Adair was
encouraged in this belief by stories of strange births. He had it on
"good authority," he wrote, that a negro child had been born to a
Spanish woman "by means of a black picture that hung on the wall,
opposite to the bed where she lay." He also heard of the birth of two
white children to black parents and the birth of a white child to
Indian parents long before the arrival of white men. Adair therefore
found it reasonable to assume that the Indians' ancestors, due to
climatic and environmental conditions, gave birth to dark-skinned
children.
Late in
the nineteenth century, the director of the Smithsonian's Bureau of
Ethnology, J. W. Powell, assessed the popularity of these beliefs which
by that time had been superseded. "It is difficult to exaggerate the
prevalence of this romantic fallacy, or the force with which the
hypothetic 'lost races' had taken possession of the imaginations of
men," he wrote. "For more than a century the ghosts of a vanished
nation have ambuscaded in the vast solitudes of the continent, and the
forest-covered mounds have been usually regarded as the mysterious
sepulchers of its kings and nobles.
The
mound-builder myth thus made manageable for many Americans a complex of
persistent problems with the Indians. Traditions persisted that the
ancient inhabitants of the Americas had demonstrated knowledge of
Jewish law and Christianity. Certainly the archaeological record
displayed evidence of what white settlers would term
"civilization"--cities, temples, and fortifications. Yet Americans had
come to justify their harsh behavior towards the Indians--taking their
land, proselytizing only half-heartedly--by talking about the Indians'
inherent savagery, their inability to be civilized. The mound-builder
myth reconciled such contradictory ideas about the Indians. Early
Mormons quickly took advantage of the situation, reported the Unitarian
in 1834, by claiming that the North American mounds were "proofs that
this country was once inhabited by a race of people better acquainted
with the arts of civilized life, than the present race of savages; and
this, they contend, is satisfactory presumptive proof of the truth of
the [Book of Mormon's] history.)
The Book
of Mormon's explanation is that shortly after Lehi's family arrived in
the New World, Lehi died and his colony divided into two major groups.
The civilized, peaceful group, called Nephites after Lehi's righteous
son Nephi, built cities, worked metals, kept records, tilled the earth,
managed flocks, and wore clothing. The uncivilized group, called
Lamanites after Lehi's oldest and rebellious son Laman, lived in tents,
hunted, went virtually naked, and were savage warriors. The savage
group thus descended from the
civilized one, just as in Ethan Smith's theory.
The
Nephites were a "white and delightsome" people, but the Lord eventually
cursed the Lamanites with "a skin of blackness" for their wickedness (2
Ne. 5:21). Thus a people of Jewish descent became dark-complexioned.
However, when the Lamanites repented of their sins "their curse was
taken from them, and their skin became white like unto the Nephites" (3
Ne. 2:15). Moreover, the Book of Mormon promises that when the
latter-day Indians repent, "many generations shall not pass away among
them, save they shall be a white and delightsome people" (2 Ne. 30:6). Thus the editor of
the Vermont Patriot and State Gazette, a paper published in Montpelier,
could acknowledge in an 1831 article that one object of the Book of
Mormon was to give "the cause of the dark complexion of the native
inhabitants of the forests.")
Such an answer was significant for a generation who saw the various
skin colors as a challenge to their belief that all men were
descendants of one white-skinned man, Adam. The Book of Mormon is not
explicit about how the metamorphosis from white to dark or dark to
white takes place, but the Lamanites' curse came only after they had
"dwindled in unbelief" (1 Ne. 12:23; Morm. 5:15). While a few instantly
turned white (3 Ne. 2:15), the Book of Mormon explains that latter-day
Indian converts will become white within a few generations (2 Ne.
30:6). Although there were stories circulating about a few
eighteenth-century Indians turning white,) Joseph Smith
evidently believed that the change in the Indian's skin color would
result from a gradual and natural process. In 1831 he reportedly told
missionaries that it was the Lord's will that they should take Indian
women as their wives in order that the Laminate "posterity may become
white, delight some and just.")
The Book
of Mormon's description of the Lamanites sometimes sounds like an
exaggerated version of contemporary stereotypes about North American
Indians. After their separation from the Nephites, the Lamanites were
led by their "evil nature" to become "wild, and ferocious, and a
blood-thirsty people, full of idolatry and filthiness; feeding upon
beasts of prey; dwelling in tents, and wandering about in the
wilderness with a short skin girdle about their loins and their heads
shaven; and their skill was in the bow, and in the cimeter, and the ax.
And many of them did eat nothing save it was raw meat" (Enos 20). When
dissident Nephites joined with the Lamanites, they "marked themselves
with red in their foreheads after the manner of the Lamanites" (Al.
3:4). Moroni records that the Lamanites were cruel to their prisoners
of war, raping and "torturing their bodies even unto death" (Moro.
9:9-10).
The
Nephites were continually harassed by the Lamanites. Late in the fourth
century A.D., the Nephites were driven by the Lamanites into "the land
northward" where they were destroyed in a region described as having
"large bodies of water" and "many waters, rivers, and fountains" (He.
3:4; Morm. 6:4), presumably referring to the Great Lakes region.
The Book
of Mormon describes the Lamanites as practicing both idolatry and human
sacrifice. They took many Nephite prisoners, writes the Nephite prophet
Mormon, "both women and children, and did offer them up as sacrifices
unto their idol gods" (Morm. 4:14, 21). And when the Lamanites are
discovered by Europeans, they will still be a "dark, and loathsome, and
a filthy people, full of idleness and all manner of abominations" (1
Ne. 12:23).
The
Nephites, on the other hand, are described as "industrious" (2 Ne.
5:17, 24). They preserved a knowledge of the Hebrew and Egyptian
languages (Morm. 9:32-34). Nephi explained that he made his record "in
the language of my father, which consists of the learning of the Jews
and the language of the Egyptians" (1 Ne. 1:2). Since the Book of
Mormon claims to have been written in "reformed Egyptian" characters
(Morm. 9:32), some scholars have concluded that Nephi meant that he
wrote Hebrew words using Egyptian script.) This description
seems similar to the early nineteenth century habit of comparing the
Indian's language to Hebrew and their pictographs to Egyptian
hieroglyphics. The Nephites also kept the "law of Moses" (2 Ne.
25:24-30) and possessed "the five books of Moses" and other Old
Testament scriptures (1 Ne. 5:10-22). The Book of Mormon actually gives
few details of the observance of the law. It mentions temples but not
the ceremonies, priests but not their robes or temple duties. The
Nephites, according to the book, observed the Sabbath (Jar. 5) and
offered sacrifices and burnt offerings from the "firstlings of their
flocks" (Mos. 2:3).
The Book
of Mormon has been called "the American Gospel" because it contains an
account of the visit of the resurrected Jesus Christ to America (3 Ne.
11-26). It describes Christ, in words reminiscent of some descriptions
of Quetzalcoatl, as both a "high priest" (Al. 13) and "he that gave the
law" (3 Ne. 15:5), who taught the Nephites that their posterity would
assist one day in building the New Jerusalem in America (3 Ne.
20:15-22, 21:22-25; see also Eth. 13:1-12). He said that those in
America were his "other sheep" and promised one day to return (3 Ne.
15:21-24). Thus the Book of Mormon solves the problem of how the gospel
came to ancient America.
The Book
of Mormon overtly discusses the ramifications of such ideas for early
American history. It details, for example, a vision given to Nephi in
which he foresees the early history of America. The vision portrays a
sense of mission for America which parallels the self-proclaimed views
of many Puritans and other Americans.)
God inspires Columbus to discover "the promised land" of America (1 Ne.
13:10-12). Seeking religious freedom, the Puritans and Pilgrims are
later led "out of captivity" to the New World, bringing with them the
Bible which they preach to the Indians (1 Ne. 13:13-24, 38). "The wrath
of God" is upon the Indians, and they are scattered and smitten by the
early white settlers (1 Ne. 13:14). The Revolutionary War is won by the
aid of God, and a nation under God is founded (1 Ne. 13:17-18, 30). The
new nation is to be "a land of liberty" with no king as long as they
obey God's commandments (2 Ne. 10:11). Again the Indians are scattered,
this time by the Americans, but the Lord will not allow them to be
completely destroyed (1 Ne. 13:30-32). Later the Book of Mormon returns
to this topic of early American history and explains in terms which
would have pleased proponents of vacuum domicilium why the colonists
were successful against the Indians:
But behold, when the time cometh
that they [the
Lamanites] shall dwindle in unbelief, ... if the day shall come that
they will reject the Holy One of Israel, the true Messiah, their
Redeemer and their God, behold, the judgments of him that is just shall
rest upon them. Yea, he will bring other nations unto them, and he will
give unto them power, and he will take away from them the lands of
their possessions, and he will cause them to be scattered and smitten.
(2 Ne. 1:10-11)
Though
the Book of Mormon is perhaps harsher than Ethan Smith in its judgment
of the Indians, with such adjectives as wild, ferocious, bloodthirsty,
filthy, idle, loathsome, abominable, and drunken, it shares his
enthusiasm for Christianizing the Indians. "And for this very purpose
are these plates preserved," Joseph Smith was told in a revelation in
July 1828, "that the Lamanites [Indians] might come to the knowledge of
their fathers, and that they might know the promises of the Lord, and
that they may believe the gospel" (D&C 3:19-20; see also Enos
11-18). The title page of the Book of Mormon states that its purpose is
to show the Indians "what great things the Lord hath done for their
fathers; and that they may know the covenants of the Lord, that they
are not cast off forever."
The
mound builder myth embodied the values, ideals, aspirations,
assumptions, prejudices, and fears of early nineteenth-century
Americans. The mound builders were white, agriculturalist, industrious,
and Christian. The myth also reinforced prejudice against the Indians
and justified fear of Indian vengeance. Thus the mound-builder myth
flourished despite contrary evidence. In 1803 the Reverend James
Madison of Virginia published an essay questioning the lost-race theory
and reasoning that the Indians had built the earth works. In 1805
Thomas
Jefferson demonstrated that the mounds contained the remains of those
who had been buried over a period of time rather than the single mass
burial of those killed in battle.
Even earlier, explorers had discovered Indian tribes inhabiting
palisaded towns.
Near the
end of the century, such observations finally began to undermine the
popularity of the myth. By 1890 the Smithsonian's J. W. Powell could
finally write:
The spade and pick, in the hands
of patient and
sagacious investigators, have every year brought to light facts tending
more and more strongly to prove that the mounds, defensive, mortuary
and domiciliary, which have excited so much curiosity and become the
subject of so many hypotheses, were constructed by the historic Indians
of our land and their lineal ancestors.
Archaeologists
generally believe the mound-builder culture of eastern North America
began around 1000 B.C., lasted until about A.D. 1700, and was generally
divided into two groups, the Aden and the Hopeful. The Aden culture
of Ohio and surrounding states dates from 1000 B.C. or earlier and
represents the Woodland tradition which lasted until about A.D. 700.
The Adena buried their dead in conical and animal-shaped mounds such as
the Great Serpent Mound in Ohio, built about two thousand years ago.
The demise of this culture is difficult to date, but the Adena
apparently overlapped the Hopewell culture of the Mississippi
tradition, which began sometime between A.D. 200 and 500 and is
responsible for stockaded towns and temple mounds such as Monks Mound
in Cahokia, Illinois. Although for uncertain reasons Hopewell culture
began to decline around A.D. 1000, they continued to use burial mounds
and to construct stockaded towns until about A.D. 1700.
