Your Daily Giant 8/10/2013
Today's Daily Giant comes from "Cahokia-The Great Native American Metropolis" by Biloine Whiting Young and Melvin Leo Fowler, 2000 pg 26. From the book,
"In 1891 the Reverend Stephen Peet wrote about his visit to Cahokia. "There are also vast quantities of bones hidden beneath the surface and one can scarcely strike a spade through the soil without unearthing some token of the prehistoric races. Mr. Ramey, the owner of the mound, speaks about digging in one part of the field and finding heaps of bones eight feet deep and says that the bones are everywhere present. The workmen who were engaged in digging ditches for underdraining had a few days before come upon large quantities of pottery and skeletons of large size but had carelessly broken them instead of preserving them."
Another interesting Cahokia account comes from the Saint Louis Dispatch in 1906.
"A Mr. Hill who once lived upon it, while making excavation near the northwest extremity, uncovered human bones and white pottery in considerable quantities. The bones, which instantly crumbled to dust on exposure to the air, appeared larger than ordinary, while the teeth were double in front as well as behind."
While these accounts do not give specific measurements like most of these skeletal finds, the large skeletons reported and double rows of teeth is very intriguing. Giant skeletons have been reported at essentially all the most famous Mound Builder sites in eastern America. Grave Creek, Moundville, Etowah, The Great Serpent Mound, Spiro Mound, Aztalan, The earthworks of Newark and Chillicothe and many others. Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site is located on the site of an ancient Native American city (c. 600–1400 CE) situated directly across the Mississippi River from modern St. Louis, Missouri. This historic park lies in southern Illinois between East St. Louis and Collinsville. The park covers 2,200 acres or about 3.5 square miles, and contains about 80 mounds, but the ancient city was actually much larger. In its heyday, Cahokia covered about 6 square miles and included about 120 man-made earthen mounds in a wide range of sizes, shapes, and functions. Monks mound is the largest earthen pyramid ever built in Ancient America, standing 100 high it has a base of 14 acres, one acre larger than the great pyramid of Giza. It required 22 million cubic feet of soil brought from over a mile away to create the four stepped pyramid.
Today's Daily Giant comes from "Cahokia-The Great Native American Metropolis" by Biloine Whiting Young and Melvin Leo Fowler, 2000 pg 26. From the book,
"In 1891 the Reverend Stephen Peet wrote about his visit to Cahokia. "There are also vast quantities of bones hidden beneath the surface and one can scarcely strike a spade through the soil without unearthing some token of the prehistoric races. Mr. Ramey, the owner of the mound, speaks about digging in one part of the field and finding heaps of bones eight feet deep and says that the bones are everywhere present. The workmen who were engaged in digging ditches for underdraining had a few days before come upon large quantities of pottery and skeletons of large size but had carelessly broken them instead of preserving them."
Another interesting Cahokia account comes from the Saint Louis Dispatch in 1906.
"A Mr. Hill who once lived upon it, while making excavation near the northwest extremity, uncovered human bones and white pottery in considerable quantities. The bones, which instantly crumbled to dust on exposure to the air, appeared larger than ordinary, while the teeth were double in front as well as behind."
While these accounts do not give specific measurements like most of these skeletal finds, the large skeletons reported and double rows of teeth is very intriguing. Giant skeletons have been reported at essentially all the most famous Mound Builder sites in eastern America. Grave Creek, Moundville, Etowah, The Great Serpent Mound, Spiro Mound, Aztalan, The earthworks of Newark and Chillicothe and many others. Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site is located on the site of an ancient Native American city (c. 600–1400 CE) situated directly across the Mississippi River from modern St. Louis, Missouri. This historic park lies in southern Illinois between East St. Louis and Collinsville. The park covers 2,200 acres or about 3.5 square miles, and contains about 80 mounds, but the ancient city was actually much larger. In its heyday, Cahokia covered about 6 square miles and included about 120 man-made earthen mounds in a wide range of sizes, shapes, and functions. Monks mound is the largest earthen pyramid ever built in Ancient America, standing 100 high it has a base of 14 acres, one acre larger than the great pyramid of Giza. It required 22 million cubic feet of soil brought from over a mile away to create the four stepped pyramid.
No comments:
Post a Comment