Ask The Archaeologists : The Ohio Great Serpent Mound
The
Great Serpent mound is a huge construction in Ohio in the shape of a serpent.
Built out of baskets of soil piled together, its astronomical functions
remain a mystery. However, some people and sites like The
Great Serpent Mound Mystery Site suggests that the serpent is modelled
after the western constellation of Draco. We decided to ask some archaeologists
to help us out on this.
To
start out, we emailed Dr G(name with held), an expert in Oregon archaeology
(prehistoric and historic), cultural ecology, general systems theory in
relationship to anthropological theory, PaleoIndian & Early-Middle-Late
Archaic cultures of NW Coast, Columbia Plateau, Inter-Mtn, Great Basin
and California Chaparral ecozones which merge in Oregon, Prehistoric technology,
flintknapping, and artifact replication.
His reply to us:
To be concise: no.
Why? There is no record of any culture in the Americas having created or named groups of stars. This is a tradition that comes out of the Middle east in the old world. Draco means "dragon".
It is possible to create stellar alignments out of anything even constructed on the earth. Putting out an alignment of a "serpent" mound with the "dragon" looks like typical uncontrolled comparisons. They would have to have hard core evidence that the group who built it named the constellations and know those names and show that they had schools of astronomy, etc., etc., in order to demonstrate a set of related data before making any measurements... then it would be science because it would be extrapolation from the known to the known instead of from the unknown to the unknown...
Uncontrolled comparisons is the pseudo-science of creating patterns out of unrelated variables. Great examples of pseudo-science are theories about Atlantis, the pyramid-idiots, the alien landing fields in Peru, etc.
There is, unfortunately, more "crap" (and I use that word deliberatly) on the net than there is real data. It is supposed to be the "information" revolution... but it is difficult to separated out the real from the fantasy because anyone can put anything out there and somebody will fall for it.
The best bet it to turn to hard core scientific publications. Every state has a State Archaeologist. I suggest you contact http://www.uiowa.edu/~osa/nasa/index.html
(if I got that right from memory).
Thanks
for asking. Please ask others as well, you may get a different answer.
Well, that was one perspective. We took his advice and emailed the Ohio State Archaeologist.