The daily Alaskan., 1909-08-25

Thought to Be More Than Two
 Thousand Years old-The Enigma
 of Those Who Reared Them.
 Scattered through the middle west and in other parts of the United States are more than 10000 monstrous, odd shaped mounds" Some are built like forts, others in queer, sharp geo metrical figures, others shaped like huge serpents, crocOdiles, bufraloes, turtles, eagles, lizards, dragons with eggs in their mouths, etc. Some of these mounds are mile long, some much smaller. In Newark, O., stands continuous mound. constructed in q perfect circle. more than 1000 feet in circumference. The mounds are often covered with trees that are many cen turles in age, These strangely shaped structures are thought to be more than 2,OO0 years old.
 Who built them?
 Certainly not the North American Indians. The Indians have ever been lazy, rowing race, making their live lihood chiefly by hunting and fishing. seldom remaining long In one neigh borhood and using tents or the rudest huts as their dwelling places.
 The mysterious people who built the mounds were not race of rovers. An infinitely long time must have been required for erecting each huge earth shape. Nor were they ignorant savages, for the mounds show deep knowledge of geometry as well as of astronomy and of the principles Of building. Carefully laid out military Notifications abound in the mound builders country, indicating that the aborigines had martial lore and en- glneering skill and that they under stood many modern principles of at tack and defense.
 There are also sepulchral mounds, some of them sixty feet high. These contain human bones, skulls, etc, as we'll as copper utensils and bits of pot tery. The bones when exposed to air crumble at once to dust As the bones of Europeans who died twenty cen turtles ago are often found intact and strong, many authorities believe the mound builders date back at least several centuries before the time of Julius Caesar.
 CIeverly made pottery and copper or bronze implements of war and peace are found all through the mounds. Ancient abandoned copper mines on the banks of Lake Superior show that the mound builders well understood the art of mining. The workmanship of the copper bracelets, bronze knives, etc, prove their skill at the forge.
 In one of the prehistoric Lake Su- perior mines has been found mass of copper weighing eight tons, resting on a high platform, ready for removal to the upper earth. This implies the use of well constructed mine machinery. Pictures that have been found etched upon copper and ivory portray much artistic skill.
 From all this 1t seems that in some remote age the central part of North America was inhabited by race of warllke, industrious, decidedly clvl- lIzed beings who had splendid skill at building, at the arts of mining. en. gineering and higher mathematics and who flourished apparently during nu- merous centuries. Yet so long ago did the mound builders cease to exist that in all Indian folklore there is no men, tIon. uo memory, of them.
 None know where the Indians them selves came from. Yet they apparent ly settled in America long after the mound builders had vanished. The skulls discovered in the mounds arc not shaped in the least like skulls of Indians nor even of Europeans. Some archaeologlsts claim to find strong re- semblance between the mound build CTS skulls and those of the ancient Egyptians. If there were any conhec- ton between the two, who can explain how an Egyptian race chanced to flour ish in the middle west?
 The fate of the mound builders Is as mysterious as the strange people themselves. After reaching so high a civilization and thriving for so long time 1t seems strange that they should have been completely destroyed. No satisfactory explanation has ever been offered. Perhaps the mound builders moved south and became merged with the Mexican Aztecs or Peruvians, or some savage race from the north may have swept down and utterly destroy cd them. or wholesale pestllence may have wiped out their nation.
 The weird looking earthcn monu- ments Cthc purpose of most of them a puzzle to the best archaeological are the sole remaining proof that this great lost American race ever existed. New York World