Interesting.... anyone here have a clue what they really are????
"There are many unusual prostrate mounds in the remote prairie area northwest of Chehalis, Washington. The "Mima Mounds," as they are known, estimated at one time to be close to a million in number, at places reach a density of 10,000 per square mile. The largest mounds are about seven feet high and anywhere from 6 to 70 feet in diameter, and more than commonly than not, almost perfectly hemispherical.
There are many unusual prostrate mounds in the remote prairie area northwest of Chehalis, Washington. The "Mima Mounds," as they are known, estimated at one time to be close to a million in number, at places reach a density of 10,000 per square mile. The largest mounds are about seven feet high and anywhere from 6 to 70 feet in diameter, and more than commonly than not, almost perfectly hemispherical."
http://www.meta-religion.com/Archaeology/N...mima_mounds.htm"In Lost Cities of North and Central America, David Hatcher Childress mentions the similarity between the Mima Mounds and mounds found on the island of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf that are acknowledged to be the work of ancient man. In Guatemala, mounds can be found spread throughout the Petén jungles that are believed the be the remnants of platforms or small pyramids used to raise homes off the jungle floor. Childress postulates that the Mima Mounds might actually be the remnants of a lost civilization over 10,000 years old. "
http://ludb.clui.org/ex/i/WA3190/ 
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/loca...1_mima17m0.html"Storm says she leans more toward the geological explanations. But her research, which she is working into her Ph.D. dissertation, doesn't attempt to answer that question. Instead, as an ethnobiologist, she studies how the native people may have used the mounds to their advantage.
The Indians harvested many wild plants that sprouted on the prairies, perhaps none more important than the bulbs of the blue-flowering camas lily that still carpet the wavy landscape. The Indians ate the staple vegetable year-round, raw or baked, or pressed and preserved in flat cakes, which could be added to stews or used to sweeten boiled salmon.
Storm is attempting to prove that the repeated hills and dales of the Mima Mound prairies, long discounted on settlers' maps as second-rate growing land, created a uniquely varied ecosystem that allowed more diverse plants to grow and made for longer growing seasons.
To prove it, she has been performing tests on the mounds to determine whether they hold moisture and heat better than the troughs between them.
She hopes she may even be able to help show that the benefits of the mounds may have helped Indians settle in the area many thousands of years ago, and sustained them generation after generation.
Dave Peter, an ecologist for the U.S. Forest Service who studies the prairies, said it has long been observed that camas blooms at different times on top of the mounds than at the bottom.
"These ideas are pretty well accepted," he said.
"But she is among the vanguard of scientists who are actually documenting it and putting it into some formal record."
Throughout western America from Washington to Texas, strange mounds found dotting the landscape have perplexed both scientists and interested onlookers for over a century. No one is sure how the mounds were formed, but the theories surrounding them seem endless. About an hour south of Seattle lies one of the most accessible examples of these strange landscape features that have been dubbed the Mima Mounds.On our trip from Los Angeles to Vancouver up the Pacific coast, my friend Eric and I had already visited one mound site several days earlier. Frankly, we were unimpressed with this previous site located in central California, but we decided to stop and have a look at the Mima Mounds Natural Area Preserve and I’m glad we did.As we pulled into the parking lot, I could immediately see that this was a much more interesting place than the previous mound site we had seen. Encompassing well over 400 acres, the preserve is set up to really show off the mounds and educate the public about the many theories that surround them. 
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