Serpent Mound

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When Landon West, a minister from Pleasant Hill, Ohio, visited a nearby structure known as Serpent Mound near the start of the 20th century, he thought it was a sign from heaven. The mound of earth clearly represents a snake, with a long, sinuous body, a coiled tail, and a flared head that looks like it's swallowing something -- perhaps an egg. Reverend West thought it looked like the serpent was swallowing an apple, so he thought the mound was created to mark the spot of the Garden of Eden.

Modern-day archaeologists tell us the site was almost certainly sacred to the people who built it -- the Fort Ancient culture of the Ohio River valley. And it probably had another kind of "heavenly" significance -- it was linked to the Sun.

A millennium ago, American Indian tribes built villages and cities with astronomical connections across the eastern United States. Many aligned with the rising or setting Sun on the solstices or equinoxes.
The tribes also built great mounds of earth with cosmic significance. Some of the mounds, which are scattered across several states, may have been part of seasonal calendars. And at least one served as home to the chief -- the earthly embodiment of the Sun god.

Visitors watch special sunrises and sunsets from these sites even today -- observing acts of nature that were potent symbols for a long-ago culture.

Bear's Lodge and the Kiowa

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Eight Kiowa children -- seven sisters and one brother -- were playing in the forests and grasslands at the edge of the Black Hills, when the boy was struck by powerful magic. He was transformed into a bear and began to chase his frightened sisters. A tree called to them, and when they climbed in its branches, it grew to an enormous size.

The angry bear scratched and clawed at the tree, gouging deep grooves in its bark. But the sisters were borne into safety in the sky, where they became the stars of the Big Dipper. Each night, they look down upon the petrified remnant of the tree that saved them -- the Bear's Lodge, a massive stone tower at the edge of the Black Hills in Wyoming.

To geologists, the Bear's Lodge, which is also known as Devils Tower, is a pedestal of volcanic rock that formed beneath the surface 50 million years ago. It slowly emerged as wind and water stripped away the softer rock and soil around it. But to the Kiowa and at least two dozen other American Indian tribes, it is a place created by the gods -- a reminder of the connection between heaven and Earth and the people who populate it.

Chaco Canyon and the Anasazi