Way Back in Days of Old...

We made a nice little tour through north eastern Louisiana and Mississippi. This 4 night campout marks the 17th or 18th nights this year out in the camper. I know people make much longer trips even living in their campers but we are getting good use from ours and with local visits to our favorite fishing holes, trips to music festivals and this trip that had as it's main interest the ancient Mound Builder Culture of Poverty Point, La.      

I have documented through this blog on my trips to the old places where I think it's important to stand in the places long ago where things happened that we don't quite understand and ponder what is happening now, to us personally and to the world in general. Poverty Point dates back to 3500 years go to the time of Stonehenge and the Pyramids of Egypt. 

They have just barely scratched the surface of what was going on here. What they do know is that periods of occupation and abandonment stretch through the history, the people that lived here were hunter gathers, there was no evidence of farming, no domesticated animals other than dogs, no burials, there was a trading network with other groups and someone knew something about societal organization and engineering.      

The white markers indicate a pole circle. Other places in the world circles like this seem to be linked to celestial observation but they believe this was used as a barricade to keep something in or out. They have found 37 circles so far and believed the cypress posts used were often picked up and moved over to be reset in a new circle for unknown reasons.  

The semi circles indicated on the map are ridges, believed to have been 6' tall where rows of huts sat in an orderly formation. Most ridges are reduced to less than 2' by the farming of the area from the 1840s to the early 1970s. Note the large mound that is centered.  

The view from 70' up on the large mound A. Through the gap in the center I believe that is the oldest mound which is on private property. While most mounds show stop and start construction through the centuries the large mound seems to have been built in one push that moved 30,000 dump trucks of dirt in 30 to 90 days. I think modern man can take a lesson in problem solving from this effort. 

The mounds are either flat or conical tops which possibly indicate different purposes. This mound is flat topped, and may have had a structure on top. It's made of 18 layers of soil which our tour guide told us makes quite a striking pattern of different colors when viewed in an excavated hole. We don't know what that was about. All flat plaza areas, once part of the Mississippi River flood plain with drainages creeks and sloughs were raised and leveled.  These were prehistoric people using the most primitive methods. 

I once wrote a song with the line, "...modern man has ruined his brain, he's lost sight of the cosmic plane..." I'm not saying this was aliens but stand in an old place and feel the difference. It will make a difference.