Joseph Campbell the famous philosopher explains the origins of all those symbols in many of his books. If you have a good public library in town they should have a copy of Bill Moyers interviewing him on P.B.S. The interviews are not only amazingly thorough and scholastically rigorous but he is extremely entertaining as well. I believe he held the chairmanship of the philosophy dept. at Vasser. I know the Masonic Temple is the origin of all that stuff on the dollar. He goes on for quite some time with that explanation. Most of our past presidents were at least 5th degree masons.