Talk:Serpent Mound

message: I've done some major expanding on this page.  If you could clean it up or wikify it more, it would be greatly appreciated. Last Pantagruelist 03:41, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: deleted?  I just noticed the same thing.  Annoying.  +sj + 18:22, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: Does anyone know why the footnotes were removed from the bottom of the article?  The footnote superscripts are still in the body of the article 205.133.190.7 01:37, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Got me.. looking at the history it seems that it must have been some time ago. I added a reference section with the reflist template, so there are footnotes again. Also renamed "Bibliography" to the more common WP "Further reading", and moved "External links" below that, following regular WP section ordering. Pfly 19:56, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Footnotes 

message: The article should be titled, IMO, "Great Serpent Mound" vice "Serpent Mound"--there are other serpent mounds such as the serpent mound in Ross County Ohio!  Thoughts? Doc Rock 16:10, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  HEAD 

message: The 1848 map illustration suggests an obvious sperm/vagina interpretation, but the article does not seem to mention any sexual possibilities. -69.87.200.153 22:57, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Although I suppose I see what you mean, it is unlikely prehistoric Native Americans had ever seen sperm, which are microscopic. TriNotch 05:34, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sexual interpretation 

message: The present introduction contains a detailed description of the snake figure which does not belong in the introductory paragraph at all. Other stuff belongs in the introduction however that aren't there. __meco (talk) 16:05, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: WP:SOFIXIT §hep  •  ¡Talk to me! 21:26, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Bad introduction

message: "which suggest the mound may have been built 3,000 years ago. "  Unless it is sourced, we can draw our own conclusions, thank you.  Carptrash (talk) 17:11, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  I just removed this 

message: Please do not reinsert this material, ,  User:Ross hamilton unless you have reliably sourced WP:CITEs showing that other scholars disagree with the current attribution of the mound to the Fort Ancient culture. Edit warring over this matter without providing the relevant requested citations will only exacerbate the situation. Heiro 18:15, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[WP:WEASEL]] wording concerning attribution of mound to Ft Ancient 

message: I'm sitting here dumbfounded by the fact that 1000 years ago, people were capable of projecting a 2D image onto a 3D surface and then somehow pulled enough workers into the project to carve it out. I'm not going to touch the page at all but shouldn't there be some wiki page about causality? Even if it's just conjecture it's part of the evolving wiki. Are there really no sources to try to explain why and how these geograms exist?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.87.1.230 (talk) 23:12, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Progeny/Mathematics 

message: I'm a very serious scholar of anthropology, linguistics, and archaeology, and I find the above discussion amateurish and close-minded.  So what if there is no connection between Egyptian snake-eclipse myths or such and Serpent Mound ?  Then at least there is a conceptual connection worth mentioning if it's not original research.  What editors like Hiero represent is the grass-roots version of the USA nationalistic propoganda goal of erasing Indians, no, Amerinds, no, now Native Americans from public, private, or academic discussion by intolerating any conceptual or possibly actual connection they might have to the larger Eurasian historical paradigm.
Sigh.  So many other Wikipedia pages at least give some (disdainful) voice to these "dissidents" or "creative thinkers" and their proposed theories.  Apparently I find here that the Serpent Mound is a backwater of Wikipedia, which is not surprising considering the memory-genocide the USA government continues to wage against the Indians : that first it sought to slaughter them without warning under General Sherman and now under with the pens of men like Lyle Campbell it writes the Indians out of American memory and discussion.
And as all humans are probably from the same place, and the Native Americans supposedly came over here from Eurasia some 25 thousand years ago or so, does it really boggle the mind of editors like Hiero that they might share myths with peoples living in Eurasia ?  Are myths and religions known to be so transient that they change completely over time, or more conservative ?  Editors like Hiero not only seem to view the Serpent Mound Builders (let's call them the Cherokee, gasp) but also Pre-Islamic Egypt and Israel as irrelevant, though they seem to mean a whole lot to people all over the world and in every country.
But I suggest that future contributors try to find in the literature these things, and add them :  Solstice-equinox alignments are known from many other ancient sites around the world.  Apparently, knowing the seasons helped humans do their hunter-gatherer or early-agriculture thing, along with structuring a religious calendar of worship of their perceivedly supernatural beings.  Also, even slightly unusual geological phenomena are used the world over by every religion that has ever existed.  The Kaab in Mecca supposedly houses a meteorite, and hills and big stones and nice waterfalls, etc, are prime places for designation as a place of worship the world over.  (And mentioning the Kaab is nonsense?)  The Serpent Mound is not some big mysterious thing IF you study a whole ton.  It could be a fluke that they built it at the rim of a million+ year old meteorite crater - look at all the other mounds and stuff we have from Indians in America, are they built next to craters ?  No.  The Indians perhaps found a nice cliff.  And what if they were led by some supernatural entity?  Most peoples do claim things like this.  Is it the place of Wikipedia to surpress theories of supernatural phenomena ?  Well, apparently it is, since neutral point of view tends to wind up being modern Western academiaical Socialist-Atheism, but it shouldn't be this way.
Also, totally lacking from the internet as a whole, and from this article, are the viewpoints of the people who think Serpent Mound is evil and should be destroyed, or even what local people think of it.  From my reading and travels, I have encountered people like this, and I think the article as it stands sounds too much like what the State of Ohio has at the site and on its websites.
Dwarfkingdom (talk) 04:27, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Please go read WP:SOAPBOX and WP:FRINGE. And this page is for bettering the article, not ranting because you cant insert fringey nonsense into articles. Heiro 08:24, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, it would be useful for Dwarfkingdom to read more work of religious scholars such as Mircea Eliade, who have shown how numerous cultures have independently developed religious symbolism that appears to have some similarities and is based on natural features of the world: the sun, moon, tides, water, seasons, etc. It has not been developed in only one culture or at one historic time.Parkwells (talk) 19:57, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Open Presentation of Conceptually and Actually Related Topics 

message: Substituted at 05:48, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment

message: MAybe I am missing something.  The lede says it has been attributed to three cultures, Adena, Fort Ancient, and then Adena again.  By my count, that is only two cultures. Am I missing something (is the lede missing something)? Agricolae (talk) 03:27, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Not sure why that was like that, to my knowledge never attributed to any other actual native cultures (unless you count the 19th century mythical "mound builders"). Fixed. Heiro 03:40, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  'Three cultures' in lede 

message: I just read in 'Hamlyn History - Archeology' by Maev Kennedy © 1998 'that the Great Serpent Mound could not have been built by a small community'. My back of envelope calculation disagrees: 
Using data from the book: 
1.6m high, 6m across 
=> cross area ~ 6sqm
370m length
=> volume ~ 2.500cum
Assumptions:
10 liter buckets, 5 min per bucket 
=> ~ 21.000 man hours
16 men at 3 hours/day
=> ~ 450 days
Formulas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_segment
Ing.walter.hartmann (talk) 10:15, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: interesting but our articles have to be based on what reliably published sources say and our own research can’t be used. See WP:NOR and WP:VERIFY. Maybe you can find another source. Doug Weller talk 11:19, 28 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Building time 

message: Does anyone have a source for the museum discussion?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by DkcOhio (talk • contribs) 18:10, 7 November 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Museum 

message: The dating of the mound is no longer disputed too much. I clarified the matter somewhat. Eio-cos (talk) 02:18, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I propose we got back to the disputed version of this article. The dating still seems to me to be much in doubt. The citations don't indicate any resolution of the issue. DkcOhio (talk) 21:33, 23 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  dating 

message: Graham Hancock's account should be considered that serpents mount is over 20,000 years old. 2603:8080:DC00:A4D8:1ED0:2490:C0A7:1E00 (talk) 19:00, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I can’t imagine why, he doesn’t meet our criteria as a reliable source. Maybe if that date is discussed in some actual reliable sourced, eg peer reviewed archaeological papers. Doug Weller talk 19:03, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Even suggesting this shows you do not have the requisite knowledge of the subject to edit it. As Doug Weller states above, bring an iron clad WP:RS or this will not even be considerd. JFW. Heiro 22:18, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks to Doug Weller and Heiro for following this article so closely and preserving it. I would like to help. I'm not sure where some of the changes started, maybe with the NYU student group, but there seems to be a confusion of the terms "culture" (as in Adena or Fort Ancient cultures) and "civilization". It was my understanding that "civilization" has a specific meaning in anthropology and archeology, and these ancient cultures do not qualify. I have changed the use of "civilizations" throughout this article to "cultures." It was my understanding that Norte Chico and Mesoamerica were the two first independent civilizations that arose in the Western Hemisphere. Parkwells (talk) 20:39, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Good changes/improvements in the cleanup/copyedit, Parkwells. - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 21:16, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

text: Besides not being an "iron clad reliable source," Hancock did not even speculate that "Serpent Mount is over 20,000 years old". What Hancock imagined was that Serpent Mount is 12,800 years old and stated that North America "...was covered by an immense ice cap over a mile deep..." at 20,000 years ago. It is sort of ironic and fitting that Hancock is misquoted by one of his supporters. Paul H. (talk) 21:47, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

text: IIRC, I've only done fairly minor edits here. So if you would like me to press the button, I could semi the article. I'd probably start with a month as it's never been protected before. - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 20:12, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it's worth the attempt. Due to the Netflix shows spread we are getting so many one off IP edits on this subject, a filter may slow it down. A month would be fine, if it pops back up afterward, we can address it again then. Heiro 20:52, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Done - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 20:58, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: ThanksParkwells (talk) 21:05, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

text: Thanks Paul H. (talk) 21:48, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Date of creation 

message: Given the much earlier dates shown in recent radiocarbon analysis, the "meaning" section comes off as anomalous. It begins with a reference to the CE 1070 date as if it's solid fact. If one is reading the article from the beginning, that date has already been fairly convincingly set back at least a millennium or two. So the references to Halley's comet and a supernova around 1070 are, well, kind of ridiculous, and contribute nothing to the reader's understanding. It might be better to say "we just don't know" than to perpetuate a hypothesis that, while reasonable, seems more to be based on faulty assumptions. Kellymac (talk) 05:20, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Meaning"