An Ohio Pyramid

This is the Great Mound in Miamisburg Ohio. The largest conical mound east of the missisippi and one of the largest in the world.





Yeah those are people at the top, It's huge!





The view from the top. Some theories suggest the mound may also have been used as a signal tower. Although you really cant see when the pictures are this size a tiny bump on the horizon in one photo is the skyscrapers of Dayton in the distance. You can see miles and miles of the river valley.





.The Mound was probably over seventy feet tall when new and sits on top of a large ridge overlooking the river. The circumference is 877 feet. After climbing the 116 steps to the top the view is amazing. I can't imagine the power or esteem someone must have been held in for his people to have went to this incredible amount of work to bury him.
The mound was built by the Adena people sometime between 1000 bc and 400 ad.(1400 years, they must have been quite a people to rule for so long)The Adena people, or the mound builders as they are sometimes called, were the first to make pottery in what in Ohio. Big pots as large as eighteen inches high and twelve to fourteen inches in diameter have been found.The Adena used tools made of stone and bone but used copper for jewelry. The Adena also made art seemingly just for srts sake. They created stone tablets with absrtct designs varved all over them and made pipes in all kinds of animal and human forms.
The Adena were the first people to grow food in addition to being hunter/gatherers and grew plants like pumpkins and squash. Their principal weapon was the spear.
The only real archeological excavation of the mound was in 1869 when a vertical shaft was sunk from the top to the base, with two horizontal tunnels extending from it. One skeleton covered with barkwas found eight feet down; a second "vault" 36 feet from the top surrounded with logs was discovered but nothing was found inside. Layers of ashes and stone were found which probably mean the mound was built in stages over time.





This is a photo of Monk's Mound near Collinsville, Illinois I found online. Monk's Mound covers 16 acres; it rests on a base 1,037 feet long and 790 feet wide, with a total volume of approximately 21,690,000 cubic feet, a base and total volume greater than that of the pyramid of Khufu, Egypt's largest. Its just about the same size at the base as the pyramid at Giza. All built by carried baskets of earth! Untill the Pentagon and big skyscrapers were built it was the largest manmade structure in America.