Poverty Point

My thwarted archeological self rose to the foreground last week when I visited a place called, you guessed it, Poverty Point.  The name comes from a former plantation however an ex-plantation was not the draw.  Poverty Point is the site of ancient civilization.  By ancient I mean around 10,000 BC.  And still, a couple of stray Clovis points were not the draw.

So, why am I taken with the place, some of you may ask with a sigh of resignation?  Around 1500 BC there was a largely idle well-fed population of about 2000 people living at the Point.  I know there was much potential idleness or maybe lots of slaves even then because somebody carried 100,000s of baskets of dirt to build a series of half-circle mounds and also an enormous bird.  They leveled about 40 acres and then ‘painted’ it by hauling in differently colored dirt.
I’m not exaggerating; the archeologists who have studied the place figured it took at least 1 ½ million 40-pound baskets of dirt to build the earthworks.  That’s enough dirt to build the Great Pyramid of Egypt.  And after all the studying they still don’t know why they were built.

This is all delta land and before that was shallow sea so there aren’t what upper midwesterners would call rocks, a few pebbles maybe however no rocks.  Keep in mind the point has been farmed for 100 years.  Those farmers just plowed right over the smaller mounds and the central plaza (about as long as 3 football fields).  Even after all the farming, over 40 tons of stone have been found.  That stone is not native, its been carted in from as far north as the Great Lakes, east from the Appalachians and from northern Florida.  Most of it has been worked into useful stuff like bowls, net and throwing-stick weights or jewelry.  And after all the studying they still have no idea what the people who lived here used for trade goods.

I could bore you even more with other intriguing detail however I choose not to share.