The mounds of Europe and Asia were made in the same way and for the same
purposes as those of America. Herodotus describes the burial of a
Scythian king; he says, "After this they set to work to raise a vast
mound above the grave, all of them vying with each other, and seeking to
make it as tall as possible." "It must be confessed," says Foster
("Prehistoric Races," p. 193), "that these Scythic burial rites have a
strong resemblance to those of the Mound Builders." Homer describes the
erection of a great symmetrical mound over Achilles, also one over
Hector. Alexander the Great raised a great mound over his friend
Hephaestion, at a cost of more than a million dollars; and Semiramis
raised a similar mound over her husband. The pyramids of Egypt, Assyria,
and Phoenicia had their duplicates in Mexico and Central America.
CARVING ON THE BUDDHIST TOWER, SARNATH, INDIA
The grave-cists made of stone of the American mounds are exactly like
the stone chests, or kistvaen for the dead, found in the British mounds.
(Fosters "Prehistoric Races," p. 109.) Tumuli have been found in
Yorkshire enclosing wooden coffins, precisely as in the mounds of the
Mississippi Valley.
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