Caption: Great Serpent Mound image from The Century Magazine, 1890, Apr06, Volume 39, Issue 6.

Features:

1. The Great Serpent Mound is 411-meters-long, 1-meter high prehistoric Native American effigy mound in Adams County, Ohio (see Wikipedia: Great Serpent Mound).

2. The age and builders of the Great Serpent Mound have NOT been established.

   It is possible that the Great Serpent Mound was contructed by one Native American culture and then reconstructed by one or more later Native American cultures.

3. Radioactive dating of bits of charcoal found at the site have a date of circa 1070, but the bits may NOT be representative of the age of Great Serpent Mound (see Wikipedia: Serpent Mound: The Fort Ancient culture).

   Other dates have been proposed going back to circa 300 BCE (see Wikipedia: Serpent Mound: Origin and chronology).

4. The Great Serpent Mound counts as an astronomical monument of alignment astronomy and archaeoastronomy since the snake's head and oval (being swallowed) are more or less aligned with the geographic direction the summer solstice sunset point on the northwest horizon. Other astronomical significantions have been suggested (see Wikipedia: Great Serpent Mound: Meaning of the mound).

5. A mythological astronomical meaning of the Great Serpent Mound is that the oval being swallowed by the great serpent may be the Sun going into total solar eclipse (see Wikipedia: William Romain (1948--) and James Harpur (1956--), Jennifer Westwood (1940--2008), 1989, The Atlas of Legendary Places, p. 113).