Blog Question #2

After looking at the Lascaux Cave and reading chapter four, five, and six in the Indian Mound book, I believe that the animals drawn in the cave and the effigy mounds are drastically different.  I think that the effigy mounds have a much greater chance of being tied to religion than the cave drawings do.  I interpret the cave drawings as the indigenous people being interested in animals. These people hunt them and live the land with them and are therefore interested in the way these animals act.  But these pictures in the caves were only drawings, nothing more.  I don't believe they marked anything special or held any other significance to the indigenous people other than something to pass the time and enjoy looking at.

I interpreted the effigy mounds as something much different and much more important to the people who created them than the cave drawings were to their artists.  When the effigy mounds of the Late Woodland tribes were investigated, there was conclusive evidence that the dead were placed in these mounds.  There were also grave offerings in these mounds, such as spearheads, to accompany the person after death.  Already, this is a clue that the effigy mound creators believed in an afterlife.  

I also personally believe that these mounds can help us conclude that these people believed in some sort of divine being, or a god.  Just by seeing the size and shape of these mounds helps me conclude that these people thought a god existed.  For example, one of the effigy mounds was of a bird with a 624 foot wingspan.  The only way that the entire mound could be seen would be by something flying, or by a god dwelling in the heavens.  Since human flight did not exist in the time of these mounds, the later is the only probable explanation.  Also, the fact that these people buried the dead in these mound along with tools to be used in the afterlife, strengthens the argument for religious belief.  For these reasons, I believe that the effigy mounds and cave drawings in the Lascaux Cave are very different and the mounds are of much greater significance to history and the study of ancient culture and religion.