Serpent Mound=Meteorite Site

Hints of cosmic crash at Serpent Mound
By Bill Sloat
Cleveland Plain Dealer
April 12, 2005

"Sifting through rocks snagged from twin boreholes punched deep into the planet’s crust, scientists have detected an unearthly substance hidden for eons in Ohio’s basement.

"And its presence 1,412 feet beneath the forests and farmlands near Serpent Mound in south-central Ohio — already on par with Britain’s Stonehenge and Egypt’s pyramids as one of Earth’s most mysterious man-made structures — adds to a puzzle shrouded in legend and lore for centuries.



"When scientists peered into the geostrata that emerged from beneath the mound, they were confronted with pure, weird data. Under their microscope, they saw quartz crystals with flaws like those found at nuclear test sites and in moon rocks brought back by astronauts."

[A picture of my face when I read that: 8-O]

"{This discovery} pointed toward a massive energy burst that left behind tell-tale traces of a cosmic crash. Those findings are now rattling through the world of geology, shaking up long-held conceptions and misconceptions about Ohio’s distant past.

“'I think we can say with authority, today, that this is an impact from a meteorite,' said Mark T. Baranoski, a state geologist. 'It affected the region in a spectacular way.'

"Rock samples from beneath the mound contain significantly higher than normal concentrations of iridium, an extremely rare metal. Because it is so heavy, iridium seldom shows up anywhere but near the planet’s molten core. At Serpent Mound, the levels of iridium measured were 10 times beyond what is usually present in the Earth’s crust.

"Occasionally, volcanoes bring up iridium in lava. But there are no lava fields in Ohio [Indeed.]. So the questions started. Where did the iridium-rich rocks come from? While iridium is scarce on Earth, the silver-gray metal is common in asteroids and comets... {The researchers} have reported that the heavy metal find is 'good evidence for an impact origin' and that dark, stony material recovered from the deepest borehole has a 'significant enrichment' that must have come from outer space...

"Geologists, including researchers from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, describe the recent discovery as powerful new evidence that Serpent Mound sits upon a slightly oblong crater created when a massive extraterrestrial object slammed into Earth. The crater touches portions of Adams, Pike and Highland counties, about 200 miles southwest of Cleveland in the state’s rolling Appalachian countryside.

"The mound, built about 1,000 years ago, straddles land near the crater’s southwest edge and may have had a religious function, although nobody knows for sure what philosophy and beliefs shaped its origin.

"Of course, that hasn’t stopped people from speculating about Serpent Mound’s builders and what they were up to. Some say they were mystics and priests. Others say magicians and soothsayers. Still others see them as prophets. There are those who claim that the builders were shamans who practiced human sacrifice, while some believe that they were ancient astronomers who were the intellectual caste of woodland tribes."

[Well, while the reporter spins wheels, I'll mention: "The head of {Serpent Mound} is aligned to the summer solstice sunset and the coils also may point to the winter solstice sunrise and the equinox sunrise."]

"Doyle Watts, a geophysicist at Dayton’s Wright State University who worked on the international team that studied the core samples, said the impact theory explains why so much of the terrain around Serpent Mound appears jumbled. Some rock formations rise 1,000 feet above the ground. Others look like they have slid straight down.

"John Locke, a geologist who explored the area in the 1830s, thought he had found a 'sunken mountain' and reported that 'a region of no small extent had sunk down several hundred feet, producing faults, dislocations and upturnings of the layers of the rocks.'

"Even more weird was the 1,348-foot-long Serpent Mound, which looked like an undulating snake atop a plateau overlooking Brush Creek. Watts said he believes that the native peoples saw the strange features in the land and were moved to build the mound, perhaps as a sacred monument. He said the native peoples were deeply attuned to the natural world [Again: "Indeed."].

“'It just begs the questions: Why would Native Americans lug tons of soil and shape it into a slithering serpent? Why would they choose to do so on the scar of an ancient impact when they had all of Ohio and the Midwest?' Watts said.

“'My guess is that they could have noticed something strange about the rocks. It has to be more than coincidence.'"



"Serpent Mound is located east of Cincinnati, off of highway 73. It is placed atop a ridge that over looks the Ohio Brush Creek. It is located in the Serpent Mound State Memorial and is accessible to the public."

Main text via Magpie, which followed up this Serpent Mound story with a long piece on the ayahuasa churches in Santa Fe, NM. Refer to my post about plants being the ultimate power tools to know more.