Ohio Mound Builders and Elephants
"My theory that the prehistoric races used, to some extent, the great American elephant or mastodon, I believe is new. * * * Finding the form of an elephant engraved upon a copper relic some six inches long and four wide, in a mound on the Red House Creek, in the year 1854, and represented in harness with a sort of breast-collar with tugs reaching past the hips, first led me to adopt that theory. That the great beast was contemporary with the Mound Builders is conceded by all, and also that his bones and those of his master are crumbling together in the ground." " It is a wonder, and has been since the great mounds have been discovered, how such immense works could have been built by human hands. To me it is not difficult to believe that those people tamed that monster of the forest and made him a willing slave to their superior intellectual power. If such was the case, we can imagine that tremendous teams have been driven to and fro in the vicinity of their great works, tearing up trees by the roots, or marching with their armies into the field of battle amidst showers of poisoned arrows." — Larkin (preface)
"My theory that the prehistoric races used, to some extent, the great American elephant or mastodon, I believe is new. * * * Finding the form of an elephant engraved upon a copper relic some six inches long and four wide, in a mound on the Red House Creek, in the year 1854, and represented in harness with a sort of breast-collar with tugs reaching past the hips, first led me to adopt that theory. That the great beast was contemporary with the Mound Builders is conceded by all, and also that his bones and those of his master are crumbling together in the ground." " It is a wonder, and has been since the great mounds have been discovered, how such immense works could have been built by human hands. To me it is not difficult to believe that those people tamed that monster of the forest and made him a willing slave to their superior intellectual power. If such was the case, we can imagine that tremendous teams have been driven to and fro in the vicinity of their great works, tearing up trees by the roots, or marching with their armies into the field of battle amidst showers of poisoned arrows." — Larkin (preface)
