Sunday, November 8, 2009

The blog's question is answered...

An alert and loyal reader discovered that Horace Mann DOES have an obelisk. It's on the campus of Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. The photos I found online leave no doubt that it's a great obelisk. Too bad that Antioch College is in a state of suspended animation. At least Wiley's Winston-Salem "common schools" are still in business. But Mann's obelisk is on top of a small Indian mound, which is pretty special. The mound building people lived in Ohio from about 3000 BC through the 16th century...during the early years the Egyptians were busy building obelisks while the Ohioans were busy building earthworks...both types of monument persist, but I think it is fair to say that neither is very popular these days.

3 comments:

  1. I did not realize the obelisk was an on an Indian mound, though now I see it. Andrea, unfortunately being of Ohio birth, has an Indian mound connection. The small town she is from in Ohio, Enon, has a "large" mound in the middle of town (it is much larger and steeper than this one, at least). Andrea has frequently mentioned the mound and I even got a chance to see it once. It was underwhelming. Perhaps it was built up too much. However, I understand there is an apple butter festival that takes place around the mound. Climbing the Enon Indian mound is prohibited, but the split rail fence did not prevent Andrea and her young hoodlum friends from doing just that.

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  2. I find that most people are unaware of how dedicated early North Americans were to building mounds. Mounds are actually quite abundant in Illinois, too, so I've seen scores of them. In fact, the site of one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates was a mound. But surely you've been to Cahokia Mounds, just across the river from St. Louis?

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  3. No one sane goes across the river in St. Louis.

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