Mound Builders of Central America - Term Paper Example

The mounds are usually shaped square or rectangular, although some hexagonal and octagonal mounds were also found (Gissing 13-14). Thesis Statement: The purpose of this paper is to investigate mound builders of Central America, examine their history, what the mounds represented, whether the mound builders were religious, and the culture and mound building of the Cahokia. Between 2000 B.C. and A.D.1600, the Indians in the ancient Midwest and South thrived for several millennia. Their settlements transformed the untamed wilderness into an advanced network of complex political and economic features.

The network was often linked by waterways such as the Missippi River. The first important urban centers were created in North America by the mound builders, from Cahokia in southern Illinois to Poverty Point in northeastern Louisiana (USA Today 12). “The greatest concentration of mounds lay in the heart of the continent: Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri” (Silverberg 3). There were subsidiary mound areas in western Tennessee and Kentucky. Nearly every major waterway of the Midwest was surrounded by clusters of mounds.

The mounds built in Central America and Mexico were constructed for the same purpose as those in other parts of the continent. Most of the lower mounds would have been constructed “as foundations for the more important edifices of the mound building people (Gissing 15). Many of the great buildings erected on such pyramidal foundations at Palenque, Uxmal and other places in the region did not vanish over the centuries because they were built of hewn stone laid in mortar. On the other hand, the mound builders beginning their construction works in the lower Mississippi used wood or some other perishable material; therefore there is not even a trace of those mounds to be found today.

The higher mounds with broad, flat summits, reached by stairways on the outside, appear like the Mexican