by Chris Parker
Drawing: Mound Builder Artifact from the book: “Records of Ancient Races in the Mississippi Valley, 1887”
Itâ€™s amazing how little we as a supposedly educated culture actually know about the past. Even if weâ€™ve studied the past, much of what is being taught or that is commonly believed is untrue. For instance, Columbus did not â€śdiscoverâ€ť America. He was preceded here certainly by its inhabitants of the time, but also by the Norse, the Chinese, Africans, the Irish and the Vikings to name a few. Nero did not fiddle while Rome burned, Eve did not eat an apple, Egyptians were Africans. Dinosaurs and man Did interact
When in comes to the American continent, Native Americans supposedly came here from Asia 20,000 years ago across the Bering Straight land Bridge. However, a mysterious people, now called the Mound Builders whose works the Native Americans didnâ€™t know were apparently here before them and their artifacts show that they interacted with the mastodon, dinosaurs and aquatic reptiles. Dinosaurs and aquatic reptiles supposedly went extinct more than 65 million years ago.
No one knows for sure who the Mound Builders were and where they came from but one thing is certain; no one believes that they lived with the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The question is; did some dinosaurs and Mound builders live together here on this continent in â€śrecentâ€ť times?
I present here some theories about the actual aimals being depicted here. Of course I could be wrong but I feel that if science believes that the ancient mound depicted on the left represents a Swan rather than a quadruped such as a sauropod that I’m on safe ground.
â€śThe group of cultures collectively called Mound Builders were prehistoric inhabitants of North America who constructed various styles of earthen mounds for burial, residential and ceremonial purposes. These included the Pre-Columbian cultures of the Archaic period; Woodland period (Adena and Hopewell cultures); and Mississippian period; dating from roughly 3000 BCE to the 16th century CE, and living in regions of the Great Lakes, the Ohio River valley, and the Mississippi River valley and its tributaries.
As a comparison, beginning with the construction of Watson Brake about 3500 BC in present-day Louisiana, indigenous peoples started building earthwork mounds in North America nearly 1000 years before the pyramids were constructed in Egypt. Since the 19th century, the prevailing scholarly consensus has been that the mounds were constructed by Indigenous peoples of the Americas, early cultures distinctly separate from the historical Native American tribes extant at the time of European colonization of North America. The historical Native Americans were generally not knowledgeable about the civilizations that produced the mounds. Research and study of these cultures and peoples has been based on archaeology and anthropology.â€ť Wikipedia
Mound Builder Theropod Dinosaur
The author and the experts refer to the depiction as a â€śdragonâ€ť and it might seem presumptuous of me to disagree (particularly since we have only the head of the creature) but I see something else entirely. The Mound Builder creatures surrounding this piece are for the most part recognizable and are sculpted in a realistic style. There is no reason to suppose that this is a mythological creature other than because one has an A Priori scientific belief that these creatures did not exist within the lifetime of man.
Here is the authorâ€™s discussion of the piece in question and the other pieces found with it in the mound.
â€śIn our collection of pottery from the ancient mounds we have several pieces ornamented with dragon-like devices. We give an illustration of two of these; burial vases, with a most pronounced dragon-head standing up from the rim of the vessel. There is the great mouth with the teeth revealed, and protruding tongue, with fierce eyes, and the general aspect, not only of the Piasa, but of those mythological representations of the dragon so frequently found in Asia. We present a sketch of another.
Graphic:Left, Allosaurus, Right Carnotaurus
It is all the more interesting since we found with it a magnificent collection of pottery, of more than a hundred pieces, at the base of the great Cahokia mound, (pictured above, right) in the American Bottom, in Madison County, Ills.
This is the largest artificial mound in the United States, and perhaps in the world, being one-hundred feet in height, and covering with its base sixteen acres of ground. It is the centre of a group of seventy-two others, which surround it, and of which a description will be given farther on in this work. They are situated on a level plain, miles from any natural elevation. For a complete description and survey of them, see “The Antiquities of Cahokia, or Monk’s Mound’
Upon taking these curious old burial vases from the place where they had rested for ages, it was like exhuming a museum of natural history in ceramics ; for these were the shapes of animals, birds, reptiles, fishes, and aflmost all animated nature, together with the shapes of From Cahoki Mound. ithe human form. Among them were several vases adorned with the dragon heads.â€ť
This is a realistically sculpted creature, posed withn a frog, it is certainly not a lizard and its teeth and head indicate that it is a carnivorous reptile. Quite frequently, such a creature is laabeled a dragon, and if not then a crocodile or alligator. This creature is clearly not one of those. It appears to be a lifelike depiction of a theropod dinosaur; a species similar to the allosaurus, t-rex or Carnotaurus. Are those horns on the top of its head or are those prominent eye ridges as depicted in a number of t-rex renditions. Keep this in mind; the piece you see here may have been done by an eyewitness.
We have compared here the Mound Builder creature with several examples of meat eating theropod dinosaurs. In our minds, the Carnotaurus, to date found in South America, most closely matches the Mound Builder artrifact.
Carnotaurus (pronounced /?k?rn??t?r?s/; meaning “meat-eating bull”, referring to its distinct bull-like horns (Latin carne = flesh + Greek tauros = bull) was a large predatory dinosaur, with horns vaguely resembling a bull’s. Only one species, Carnotaurus sastrei has been described so far. Carnotaurus lived in Patagonia, Argentina (La Colonia Formation) during the Campanian to the Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceous, and was discovered by JosĂ© Bonaparte, who has uncovered many other South American dinosaurs. Wikipedia
Allosaurus and T-rex are North American dinosaurs according to science.
Mound Builder Aquatic Reptile: Champ or Ogopogo
The Tusayan people are named after a ruin located in the Grand canyon National park in Arizona. These ancestral Puebloan people lived in the area until 1,000 years ago archaeologists believe. In American Anthropologist, Volume 5, January 1892, in an article entitled â€ś A Few Tusayan Pictographsâ€ť is a very interesting pictograph showing four long necked creatures.
Aquatic reptiles became extinct more than 65 million years ago as did the long necked sauropods according to science. The pictographs were thought to be a little as a thousand years old, possibly several thousand but certainly not millions of years old. Could science be wrong or are the more benign â€śnothing to see here, move it alongâ€ť explanations of the archeologists satisfactory?
Here we compare the Mound Builder pictographs with; an ancient Roman “sea monster” and with several other classic sea or lake monsters.
Hereâ€™s what the author wrote about the pictograph in question:
â€śIt will be noticed in examining the cut of these four pictographs of the great serpent that one is about horizontal and the other three erect. It will also be noticed that the horizontal specimen has a zigzag outline, as if in motion, which the others do not have. They are undoubtedly, however, figures of the same mythological personageâ€ť.
Ogopogo and Champ
“Ogopogo or Naitaka (Salish: n’ha-a-itk, “lake demon”) is the name given to a cryptid lake monster reported to live in Okanagan Lake, in British Columbia, Canada. Ogopogo has been allegedly seen by First Nations people since the 19th century. The most common description of Ogopogo is a forty- to fifty-foot-long (12 to 15 m) sea serpent. It has supposedly been photographed and even been caught on tape.” …Wikipedia
“Champ, or Champy is the name given to a reputed lake monster living in Lake Champlain, a natural freshwater lake in North America, partially situated across the U.S.-Canada border in the Canadian province of Quebec and partially situated across the Vermont-New York border. While there is no scientific evidence for the cryptid’s existence, there have been over 300 reported sightings. The legend of the monster is considered a draw for tourism in the Burlington, Vermont area.”… Wikipedia
The creature appears to be drawn with a beard which is typical of some “sea monsters” and drawn with a type of headcrest or ears.
Iâ€™m not suggesting that this creature is either Ogopogo or Champ but that it could represent a tyoe of sea or lake monster that has been seen and described by even the Romans and Greeks and by ancient and recent North and South Americans.
It appears that neither theropod dinosaurs or aquatic reptiles died out millons of years ago and were instead seen and memorialized by ancient peoples.