By Brad Lepper | Special to The Columbus Dispatch
For most of us, living in or near cities, light pollution makes it impossible to fully appreciate or even to see the Milky Way.
The first time I saw the Milky Way, it came as a revelation. I was camping in the Big Horn Mountains in Wyoming, shivering in my sleeping bag but completely dumbfounded by the brilliant, twinkling swath of millions of stars arching overhead.
The editors of the Journal of Skyscape Archaeology, Fabio Silva, of Bournemouth University, and Liz Henty, of the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, recognize that the Milky Way “must have been awe-inspiring to prehistoric or early historic peoples” who didn’t have to contend with city lights.
They invited a number of scholars to contribute short essays to a Forum on how the Milky Way helped to shape the cultures, stories, and worldviews of ancient societies. I was one of those invited to contribute and I chose to write about Ohio’s Serpent Mound.
Serpent Mound is a monumental sculpture of the Great Serpent, Lord of the Beneath World. In many indigenous American traditions, this huge and powerful being appears in the night sky as the Milky Way.
Ohio has only two effigy mounds, mounds built in the shapes of animals: the Serpent in Adams County and the so-called “Alligator” in Licking County, which likely represents an Underwater Panther, another denizen of the Beneath World.
In contrast, Wisconsin had thousands of these mounds built between about AD 700 and 1150 by the aptly named Effigy Mound Culture. Many of them occur in groups, which appear to telling stories.
My colleagues and I propose that Serpent Mound is actually three separate mounds representing the two key figures in the genesis story of the Dhegihan Sioux: the Great Serpent and First Woman. First Woman is depicted somewhat abstractly as a wishbone-shaped mound with a large oval earthwork partially framed by her spread legs and the gaping jaws of the Serpent. We think the oval represents the opening to First Woman’s womb, which is also the portal through which the Sun sets in the evening.
We interpret this group of mounds as a depiction of the pivotal moment when First Woman mated with the Great Serpent and thereby acquired his powers of regeneration, which she then used to create all life on Earth. If this interpretation is correct, Serpent Mound isn’t just a sculpted portrait of the Lord of the Beneath World; it is a story written in the earth.
My colleagues and I think that Serpent Mound was built in AD 1100 by the Fort Ancient culture. We based our conclusion partly on radiocarbon dates obtained from the effigy and partly on the importance of serpent symbolism in Fort Ancient era societies. We think the mound represents a fusion of local Fort Ancient cultural traditions, artistic styles from the Mississippian civilization centered at Cahokia near what is now St. Louis, and the Effigy Mound Culture’s idea of using effigy mounds as a way to tell sacred stories.
If you ever get to see the Milky Way in all its glory, recognize that you’re looking along the mostly flat plane of the spiral galaxy that is home to our solar system; but also give a thought to the monstrous Great Serpent in his home in the Beneath World.
Brad Lepper is the Senior Archaeologist for the Ohio History Connection’s World Heritage Program
