Medicine wheel

Physical medicine wheels made of stone have been constructed by a number of different Indigenous cultures in North America, notably many of the Plains nations.

[1] Intentionally erecting massive stone structures as sacred architecture is a well-documented activity of ancient monolithic and megalithic peoples.

[1]Stone medicine wheels are sited throughout the northern United States and southern Canada,[2] specifically South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Alberta and Saskatchewan.

This 75-foot-diameter (23 m) wheel has 28 spokes, and is part of a vast set of old Native American sites that document 7,000 years of their history in that area.

[3] Medicine wheels are also found in Ojibwa territory, the common theory is that they were built by the prehistoric ancestors of the Assiniboine people.

Other North American Indigenous peoples have made somewhat-similar petroforms, turtle-shaped stone piles with the legs, head, and tail pointing out the directions and aligned with astronomical events.

Stone medicine wheels have been built and used for ceremonies for millennia, and each one has enough unique characteristics and qualities that archaeologists have encountered significant challenges in determining with precision what each one was for.

Due to that and its long period of use (with a gap in its use between 3000 and 2000 years ago, archaeologists believe that the function of the medicine wheel changed over time.

[8] Joe Stickler of Valley City State University, North Dakota, with the assistance of his students, began the construction of Medicine Wheel Park in 1992.

"[9] The medicine wheel has been adapted into a visual symbol, with associated correspondences and meanings, by pretendian Hyemeyohsts Storm, who first published his invention in 1972.