Ellen Lloyd - AncientPages.com - Thousands of ancient ceremonial pipes have been found in North America.
What makes the spider pipes unearthed in Tennessee unusual is not only their appearance, but also the possibility that these artifacts were not made by Native Americans. What were the pipes true purpose and how can we explain their bizarre shape?
Left: Front view of the spider pipe. Credit: Wayne May - Right: Shaman - Artist unknown
According to British scholar Alfred Dunhill, who has collected pipes from all across the world, the spider pipes found in Tennessee, has “led many investigators to doubt their Indian authorship.” Dunhill who examined the pipes stated that the artifacts “are far superior to the work of the same character executed by Indians since the discovery.”
“In the history of every nation, we may observe such cycles of growth and decay in the sphere of the plastic arts, as a study of Egyptian and Greek sculptures and of European paintings will immediately reveal. The mound-builders were the ‘Old Masters’ of the Indian tribes,” Dunhill wrote in his Pipe Book.
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