author
Cyrus Thomas
1825–1910
Best known for helping overturn the old myth of a lost “Mound Builder” race, this 19th-century American scholar brought careful evidence to the study of Native American earthworks. His career also ranged widely across entomology, ethnology, and the natural history of the American West.
5 Audiobooks
Burial Mounds of the Northern Sections of the United States
by Cyrus Thomas
The Problem of the Ohio Mounds
by Cyrus Thomas
About the author
Born in Tennessee in 1825, Cyrus Thomas built an unusually varied career that included work as a lawyer, minister, entomologist, and ethnologist. He became prominent in the late 19th century for his scientific studies and for his connection to major federal research efforts exploring the American West.
Thomas is remembered most strongly for his archaeological work with the Smithsonian's Bureau of American Ethnology. His investigations of mounds and earthworks helped show that these sites were built by Native American peoples, not by a separate vanished civilization as many had wrongly claimed. That made his work an important turning point in American archaeology.
He also wrote on subjects beyond archaeology, including insects and Maya calendrical symbols, reflecting the broad curiosity common among scholars of his era. Thomas died in 1910, leaving behind a body of work that still matters for the history of anthropology and archaeology.