North America
There are a number of earthwork step pyramids within North America. Often associated with mounds and other mortuary complexes across the Eastern Woodlands (concentrated in the North American Southeast), step pyramids were constructed as ceremonial centres by the Mississippian cultures (900-1500CE), and are regarded as a facet of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex.
The largest earthen work step pyramid of this type in North America is Monk's Mound, located in present-day Cahokia, Illinois. With the base of the structure exceeding 16 acres Monks Mound is also one of the largest pyramids by area in the world (after La Danta and Great Pyramid of Cholula).
Read more about this topic: Step Pyramid
Famous quotes containing the words north america, north and/or america:
“The North American system only wants to consider the positive aspects of reality. Men and women are subjected from childhood to an inexorable process of adaptation; certain principles, contained in brief formulas are endlessly repeated by the press, the radio, the churches, and the schools, and by those kindly, sinister beings, the North American mothers and wives. A person imprisoned by these schemes is like a plant in a flowerpot too small for it: he cannot grow or mature.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)
“When the Somalians were merely another hungry third world people, we sent them guns. Now that they are falling down dead from starvation, we send them troops. Some may see in this a tidy metaphor for the entire relationship between north and south. But it would make a whole lot more sense nutritionally—as well as providing infinitely more vivid viewing—if the Somalians could be persuaded to eat the troops.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am an American.... America is the only idealistic nation in the world.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)