It will thus be seen
that the area covered by the mound of Cahokia is about as large as that
of the greatest pyramid of Egypt, Cheops, although its height is much
less.
The number of monuments left by the Mound Builders is extraordinarily
great. In Ohio alone there are more than ten thousand tumuli, and from
one thousand to fifteen hundred enclosures. Their mounds were not cones
but four-sided pyramids-their sides, like those of the Egyptian
pyramids, corresponding with the cardinal points. (Foster's "Prehistoric
Races," p. 112.)
The Mound Builders had attained a considerable degree of civilization;
they were able to form, in the construction of their works, perfect
circles and perfect squares of great accuracy, carried over the varying
surface of the country. One large enclosure comprises exactly forty
acres. At Hopetown, Ohio, are two walled figures--one a square, the
other a circle--each containing precisely twenty acres. They must have
possessed regular scales of measurement, and the means of determining
angles and of computing the area to be enclosed by the square and the
circle, so that the space enclosed by each might exactly correspond.
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