| Above,
Ohio's Great Serpent Mound, recently more accurately radiocarbon
dated to the Adena (Early Woodland) Period, roughly 300
BC. The image is popularly
interpreted as a snake swallowing an egg, but this author has
long been proposing that the "egg" is exiting the serpent's mouth,
consistent with the quite ancient motif of one creature
emerging from the mouth of another.
Consider the Mayan
"Vision Serpent", from whose mouth the head of
a spirit or ancestor emerges:
| And there is
this serpent sculpture in a Mayan ball court, a
warrior's head emerging from its mouth: |
| Below, F. W.
Putnam's 1888 photo of the sandstone
protuberance directly below and in front of the
Serpent's mouth and the "egg", here looking very much like an
emerging creature: |
|
Above,
an aerial LiDAR image of the site. The
yellow arrow on the left indicates the location
of the sandstone figure in the cliff, above
which the serpent is clearly visible.
Early
in 2013 this author noted the zoomorphic appearance of the raised landform
itself, with the serpent across its head and
aligned to its mouth. Pareidolia,
certainly, but something of which the Adena
likely would have been aware just from
walking on it. And of course the terrain creature's head looks into the summer solstice
sunset, as does the serpent's.
(Click
here to see further zoo-anthropomorphic artifact
finds from the Serpent Mound.) |
|
