Poverty Point: Archaic Anomaly?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 มิ.ย. 2024
- Poverty Point is the earliest city in North America the largest for centuries. What made such an impressive city possible at a time with no equal. Find out how and why Poverty Point was the anomaly of North America's Archaic period.
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People think hunter-gatherers are primitives but this was never the case. Here in Turkey, we have the oldest known temple in the world. It is called Göbeklitepe and it was built by hunter-gatherers. Both Poverty Point and Göbeklitepe are the proof of human ingenuity. We gotta create stuff. Man, I love being human 😎
Love this reply!! 👏
The early Japanese are also said to have subsisted on hunting-gathering for an extended period of time because their natural environment was so rich they didn't need to take up farming in order to sustain substantial communities. So, it is very believable to me that you can have a 'town' that includes no farming, if there is enough fish, fowl, berries, roots, etc. to live on. And the Japanese didn't need to build mounds to keep above the water; their land is naturally hilly.
The Cucuteni Trypillia had cities and still subsisted at least partially on hunting and gathering. They did have farming and animal husbandry too, but they'd relocate their entire city periodically. Presumably for access to unexploited land.
Just like today cities were surrounded by villages that actually did the hunting and gathering and brought to the city as a place to trade
nice concept, but I doubt it would stay in balance very long. humans like to make babies, and that means a growing population.... you can guess how that ends.
@@johnnynephrite6147 Usually large populations can become nomadic.
@@johnnynephrite6147 that also depends on natural resources, which were by all accounts abundant.
"clay eating?"
Hot clay balls, raked out of the fire pit, thrown into a stew pot will heat it up rapidly. Surprised the 19th century explorer did not consider that use.
... They did. They used stones. They are called soup stones.
The 18th century (white) man often had a fairly tainted view of the achievements of native Americans.
@@IHateThisHandleSystem Some did; some didn't. Some were deeply in awe. Reading what was written in the 1700's, different people had different opinions.
@@friendlyone2706 Valid point. I edited my comment to say "often" so as not to imply that everyone was that way.
@@prunabluepepper From 40 years of hunting south Mississippi not far from poverty point I have found zero evidence of clay cooking balls or heating stones. Not sure how they were doing it over here but no evidence of that?
Uncomplicated might be a better euphemism than "easy" when describing mound building. Moving that much material is never easy
25 to 35 pounds in a tumpline bag not so heavy.
They've found basket marks at the Hopewell Mound in Ohio.
@@KermitFrazierdotcom well, carry a few thousand of those and get back to me
@@quinndawsonosgood5261 that is 136 million baskets just in the one mound (176,000 dump truck loads)
It's not carrying that is the difficult work, it's the digging, the feeding, the time away from vital tasks and the organization that impresses me.
And the organization is interested...on site. But the trade area is enormous.
We tend to think of the lives of hunter-gatherers as "nasty, solitary, brutish and short," but that is only because in historic times, they have been forced into marginal environments. In a rich environment, food can be provided with very little expenditure of time and effort (much less than early agriculture). Plenty of scope for developing complex activities such as mound building.
Well said!
Good point.
One thing with stationary life is that humans will naturally make more humans. Easy to have a big population fast if food is there. Easy to exhaust food with a large population. Agriculture can be more sustainable with large populations. Other than that totally agree
The Nasty, Brutish, and short isn't about food supply. Rather other factors in relation to food supply, like wild animal attacks, broken bones and wounds due to traversing Wildlands, parasitic infection, and a lack of healthcare of these issues.
I'd you become debilitated due to these issues, in order to save the group, you will be left behind if you cannot travel.
If you break a leg, get a bad infection, or suffer severe wounds from an animal attack and cannot hunt/gather, the group will have to move on without you when the time comes.
That's if you even lived without dying from infections, severe wounds, etc.
Where in a sedentary society, you have people & ready food to look after you year round without needing to travel large distances like hunter gatherers do.
@@masstv9052 that is surprisingly very untrue. There are numerous cases of early human skeletons we have found where the person broke a bone and had it fully heal then went on to live years more.
Early humans even had trepanning. Trepanning relieves pressure on the brain by punching a small hole in the skull. This surgery is still used today and has an extremely high success rate.
While medical conditions may not have been the most sanitary. Medicine didn’t really understand sanitation until the industrial revolution.
I live near Poverty Point and have been there numerous times. As an amateur archaeologist I've found lots of poverty point type artifacts many miles away from the actual site, most of them being cooking ball's. Their influence in the surrounding parishes is evident, and shows just how many people it took to supply and feed such a large population.
Very cool!
Do you think it’s a trading center or a settlement I think it’s more likely a massive trade center where while selling rocks you fed yourself on fish but I’m no archeologist
Cooking balls are you sure that they aren't food for the clay eating indians?! Lol
@@ookdagook3047 Yummy, hot clay balls my favorite.
@@calthorp one you eat ur first hot clay ball your hooked.
Hey! I worked here for field school back in 2011 under Dr Ortmann. The most recent dig I remember was on mound c, where we managed to get a really good look at the stratigraphy. It seems that mound C was definitely a major fixture of the mound complex. Dozens (if not hundreds) of small fires had been set over the scope of the occupation, and then covered with thin layers of clay, implying a ritualistic purpose
This channel is everything I have ever wanted but am too mentally ill at the moment to make happen myself. I literally cannot thank you enough. There is so little North American archaeological/anthropological content on youtube and as somecome who holds it so near and dear to my heart... this is magical.
Thank you! I'm glad you enjoy it. If you ever want to start up a channel, feel free to reach out to me and I'll help in any way I can!
I hope you're feeling well these days
Look to the mysteries of the universe for comfort in mental illness
With all the love and curiosity of an explorer, rush headlong into the great mystery of life, through it's unlimited doorways and rabbit holes
May you make peace with your mind
Are you really mentally ill?
I don’t know if you’re in SsRi but they made everything much worse for me. Lost five years of my life because they made me much more depressed than I was before. It was a constant merry go round of adding and taking away medication. I got off of them and have never felt better. It’s like that heavy weight was lifted after about a month of being off. Luckily I never went down the Xanax road. I knew anything that made me forget large portions of the day couldn’t be good so I stopped them immediately after the first day. Anyway, good luck.
It is very difficult to believe that the bayou mentioned ran the same coarse 3 to 4 thousand years ago or even existed at all. The banks of the mississippi delta are not static.
Some posts have suggested that it was built as full circles instead of semi-circles.
It’s definitely our best guess. We’ve even found remains of Poverty Point docks along the Macon. The site also sits on higher ground than the other side of the water, where there’s a floodplain. We don’t see a lot of evidence for erosion on the western side of the Bayou.
The history books don't got the real history.
@@originsdecoded3508 They really don’t. I guess those that document history on tangible writing material can rewrite history however they want
@@318DoubleE Thats whats so fascinating to me. To think theirs a power greater then the devil that makes him hide in fear. Its clear the author of this world, is writing a masterpiece until the times comes to fulfill it all.
your videos are way too well-researched and high quality for their view count. I hope your channel takes off! I am an archaeology and linguistics student considering studying the Classic Maya and Zapotec civilizations for graduate school.
Thanks! You know, if you're a linguistics student interested in the Zapotec, you could work towards the decipherment of Zapotec writing. No one has deciphered their writing yet and we could learn a lot if someone did.
yooo aspiring graduate students in linguistics forthewin!
Actually visited Poverty Point - pretty cool museum there. The rock arrowheads and etc. came from as far away as Illinois.
Hopefully I'll get to visit it someday.
The Entire Mississipian/Missourian Mound Culture was a vast Trading Network, with the Yankton guarding the Middle Missouri & the BlackFeet guarding the Headwaters Passes.
The Caddo and the Natchez were representatives of the Annointed Ruling Class that were all but wioed out by Smallpox & other European Diseases brought in by DeSoto.
"TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER!"
Amazing trade network.
Cahokia
I went there in middle school. The park guide demonstrated how to use an atlatl spear-thrower.
The site is very large, but was obscured by trees and natural overgrowth.
America will really build highways through literally anything huh
Let me tell you a story about a place called Cahokia...
@@AncientAmericas 😂 they built a highway a few feet next to the mount
@@AncientAmericas Farmers from the 1800s and more modern times leveled acres of Cahokia and ruined the site and no one knows the extent of the city now an what was lost
Not just America, sadly.
Amazing what we took for granted, then and now.
I think it's possible that Poverty point was a meeting place for the tribes and chiefdoms of the south. It seems like it was a trade city, central to everywhere, right on the river, and lots of different artifacts can be found there. It would make sense that intertribal politics would be conducted in the plaza or something. The large and numerous ovens may be indicative of seasonal feasting, or feasting to commemorate or celebrate relations between neighbors. This isn't my area of expertise, so I'm not certain how much cultural overlap the natives of the south at this time had with the people of the early modern great lakes, but these sorts of meeting places (usually in the form of longhouses, up there) were extremely common, important, and showed a large degree of exchange and plenty between the polities of the area. I'm sure we all know about the Haudenosaunee and how they came to be.
Not all of us know that story. Older tribes are interesting.
The rivers were highways. People from all over the Mississippi catchment area could get there.
We 100% know that there were large Native American tribes and a tribe is a family. So yeah. Agree.
I would like to see someone do a video on the haudaneesaunee ( sorry about the spelling)... because I have never heard of them.......
@@zenolachance1181 That is the native word for what the French called the Iroquois confederation.
I live along the San Joaquin river in central California, and have been researching the Yokut tribes that once lived on high ground along the river. They were hunter gatherers, but apparently they grew tobacco, and in a way, cultivated oak groves for acorns.
Fascinating! I live in the San Joaquin Valley too, and I learned frighteningly little about local NA presence through school... this is an inspiration to do some personal research!
Yes. If they cultivate oak and hickory groves, are they farming? Also, where I live, mosquitos affect every outdoor activity. I would build a mound to escape them.
The distinction between gatherer-hunter and agriculturalist is a false dichotomy that has been overturned time, time, and time again. Intensive agriculture or limiting one's national food economy to farming was a revolutionary change, but humanity has been farming or engaging in agriculture for millennia all over the world. From the three sisters of Haudenosaunee Country to the oceanside mariculture sites of Coast Salish Countries.
The framing of agriculture vs. gathering/hunting is a harmful, colonial one intended for colonizers to justify the theft of these Indigenous countries because, as the colonialists put it, "they [the natives] are not doing anything productive with their lands, so we the good God-fearing Christians who farm-as opposed to those godless pagan heathens-must put the Lord's Earth to productive use" ... and then they made shitty, shitty laws about this and stole entire continent's worth of countries and fed the population lies about the natives like how they are/were primitive hunter-gatherers with no semblance of country or nationhood
@@danachos sadly for many non-native, that is the paradigmidic view they see native ppl through today.
It is generally thought that tobacco is a new world crop that reached Asia after Columbus. Analysis of preservatives found in Ancient Egyptian mummies reveals that tobacco was included.
I don't hear it talked about much but the forests of the Southern US are incredibly fruitful. From March to November, there is almost always something in season there. And in the winter, there is plenty of game. Just the right latitude for rampant diversity and long growing seasons, but none of the problems that come with full-on tropical jungle conditions. I'm not sure a biome like it exists anywhere else on Earth. If you told me a civilization could exist there just on the bounty of the woods, I'd believe you. And I'd imagine a primitive people would have little incentive to do all the hard work of agriculture when the forests around them were so generous.
Right, and the American Chestnut was a widely used food source throughout the east until they were wiped out
@@cheryld.3616.. ditto the passenger pigeon
Very nice presentation. These very old sites in North America are sorely underappreciated and known to few outside the ranks of archeology. Thanks for a well produced, informative video! New subscriber, hope to see much more!
Thank you!
Thank you so much for your channel and also this video. I am an over-the-road truck driver. I go back and forth on I-20 all the time passed exit 153, signs for poverty point that I have wondered about but never investigated until... yesterday when I drove the truck and parked it at a little corner store a mile from the site and rode my bicycle all around paved paths and trails through the woods. Thank you so much for making me aware of this amazing place
You're most welcome! I'm glad you were able to visit the site!
I lived in Moundville Alabama for several years. Due to my Cherokee heritage and my tribe being in SC. I was granted free access to the archeological site. The annual festival was mostly Cherokee that participated.
I got to actually see and be a part of one of the digs being done.
As a very spiritual person I actually felt a connection and a sort of connection to the park. The Mississippians were similar to the Cherokee in farming with the 3 sisters of corn, beans and squash. There is a extensive trade with other mound cities by river navigation.
You might enjoy a visit to Moundville. I found it very educational and interesting. I would love to see a video of your impressions on it and your relation to this mound site.
I still keep some of my traditions and art forms alive with my tribe. I enjoy your videos and am in the process of watching them all.
I’ve recently learned that the Creek and Cherokee are actually Mayan. Have you heard this, as well?
Channels like this one are just amazing. They provide quality work, great editing, and very interesting subjects that very honeslty most main stream TV would not even cover. I'm so glad I canceled my cable subscription.
I live in SE Louisiana and have always had a trip to Poverty Point on my Bucket List. A visit there has just moved up the list to the Top because of this excellent presentation. Thanks
You're welcome!
There's good fishing at the reservoir there too
@@Patson20 in Louisiana you don’t need to look very hard for good fishing spots. 👍🏻
@@Aswaguespack facts, easy to catch a ton of catfish there on the spawn
The idea of a city without farming sounds similar to the Gobekli Tete site in modern-day Turkey. I personally have always felt societies "before civilization" were more advanced than we assume, but owing to the nature of the archeological record, this has not been recognized.
Assuming that the records released are in fact the real thing.
That was my thought
That it was like Gobleki-Tepe
The people of Poverty Point were far more advanced that we could possible imagine. Northeastern Louisiana was home to a vast number of indigenous people as well as the surrounding areas.
GREAT VIDEO.
I AM A RETIRED PROFESSOR OF ARCHEOLOGY & ANCIENT HISTORY.
Years ago, when a somewhat young Archaeologist, Poverty Point was my introduction Point. Spiro, Heavner, Cahokia and P.P. have been the basis for all the rest of my long years of research across the US.
A humorous note - BCE gives me a chuckle every time I hear it. Political Correctness has never been my long suite. My Jewish colleagues and I have a good laugh. It is good to find humor!!!
A very high compliment! Thank you!
I fear that in the future some will think that the full name of the Savior is "Jesus Common Era".
how much has the river's course changed in the centuries so why the mounts could be "randomly" placed. The areas definitely prone to flooding; there is much less today due to dams and levees. if there were buildings on them seems like it would be to keep them safe from flooding. And the circles are just a way to organize. I think there is an overlap/transition between hunter gatherers and farmers
Corn was still 2 inch cobs in Honduras at the time. Poverty Point predates farming in the United States by 2700 years or so. Farming did not arrive north of Rio grande until about 800-1000 ad.
@@ralphdavis6052 They participated in non-monoculture farming, creating a kind of intiontional food forest as they went. This was better suited to getting the best of both. If you do this well you can really make food a simple matter in most places. It wasn't recognized openly because ya know colonialism but they described eden like forests full of good food that mysteriously vanished after the natives were killed or forced off.
The Mississippi river is still like 50 miles from this location. In fact thats probably why it was built there it was the place where the common flood plain stopped
@@ralphdavis6052 I thought the people in the north grew other crops like squash or sunflowers earlier on than corn?
I live near the site but I’ve never been there. I’ll try to go once the weather gets better.
Better late than never!
I live there, how far from there do you live.
@@SuperChimcham Alexandria
@@DieselWeazel, oh. Yeah it’s pretty interesting.
@@SuperChimcham not really lol
Idle speculation on my part, but considering the great flood lore that most early peoples possess, building a high mound as a safe place to escape too seems like a sound strategy.
This is the most reasonable explanation.
Also makes sense why houses would be on raised platforms
@@melialialee5445 Agreed. The Younger Dryas event likely conditioned survivors to build mounds and raised living spaces.
@@hellwardenwot5148 I think you might be on to something there. No one would spend so much effort to prevent seasonal flooding. More likely memories of the YD boundary event made it more or a religious tradition.
@@michaelpacnw2419 I don't get why people think that the younger dryas or its end had anything to do with flood stories. There is no evidence of this being the case. These people lived near rivers that periodically flood. Of course they will have flood myths. No need to tie it all together to some event that took place over the course of generations thousands of years before these cultures existed.
This video was incredibly interesting. I had never heard of this place, speaking as a Brit, and I am so glad that I have now. Your attention to detail, and lack thereof where the details are missing, is highly engrossing. I'm very glad the algorithm decided to grace me with a link to one of your other videos. Please keep up the great work while I enjoy the rest of your back catalogue!
Do not worry about making long videos as there is a lot of info and better to do it right than hurry through it.
I second this notion
Long videos is what I long to watch
@@neak9755 me too
I once had a book called Mysteries of the Past. Its first chapter was called Who Were The Mound Builders? It was about the mound builders of the Hopewell and Mississippian cultures.
@Ed I don't have it right now. I had it in high school, college, and years after that. I think I do.
@Ed You're weclomee. It was a good book. It was published by the American Heritage Institute.
This channel is a great discovery! I just watched the video on archaic copper use in the Great Lakes area. Subscribed.
Thank you! Welcome aboard!
Built by “Hunter-gatherers... makes me think of Gobeklie Tepe in Turkey.
BTW --YOU DO THE BEST ANCIENT AMERICAN VIDEOS, BY FAR, BAR NONE!!!!!!!!!!
Tepe was a meeting place for the clans. Like they show in Clan of the Cave Bear. They were well past cave dwelling, but it was an international swap meet. It’s how the native Indus grasses made their way to the rest of the world.
Thank you!
@@skaetur1 : Gobeklle Tepe is more specifically suspected to be a burial ground, though the relevant archaeology hasn't been done to confirm it yet. Somewhat similar locations in the same general area have been found to have clay-wrapped human skulls built into the walls, so it's suspected that the culture of the area performed "sky burial", and were attempting to in some sense represent the continuity from, or of, the people thus enshrined.
it's entirely plausible that both places may have been the result of tribute under the threat of destruction, tribute in the form of labor and resources. perhaps religious centers with a warrior elite that accumulated the area's wealth, or something even as simple as protection rackets. if you had enough trained and armed men to eliminate any neighboring group of people fairly easily you could definitely demand resources and labor from them. I rarely see this concept discussed for some reason despite it being equally plausible to any other hypothesis.
Kind of a fusion of Göbekli Tepe and Çatalhöyük almost with hunte gather built monumentation and permanent or semi-permanent housing. This site is definitely some food for thought on multiple levels.
I believe that Thomas Jefferson thought that a great civilization existed in North America. I live in Ohio and have seen some amazing mounds including the serpent mound which is truly awesome.
Ohio has a lot of great sites!
There's another serpent mound in Isreal much much bigger but same otherwise
It is little known that the largest mound (pyramid) on earth (so far discovered) is not on the banks of the Nile, but not far from the Aztec capital and now known as Mexico City.
Thank you for enlightening me on the wonderful nature of Poverty Point. It's truly a treasure that I did not realize was there. I look forward to visiting.
Mounds are usually built next to rivers which flood each year and provide transportation for friend and foe. Mounds would have been defensive sites against flooding and provide a view of the river to see any movement of people traveling on the river and traveling over land to your city. With waring tribes you need advance notice when an enemy is coming your way. High and dry land is the best place to set up your camp next to a river.
Currently attending university in northeast Louisiana. Definitely gonna make a weekend trip to poverty point with some friends in the fall. I've heard a lot of my professors speak about it, especially my history professor who I had become friends with, and never realized how important and unique the site truly was.
LSU-M?
It was NLU when I graduated
As someone from the region, Ouachita is pronounced "Wah-shih-tah" around there lol xD all your videos are amazing! thanks!
As you can tell, I've never been to Louisiana. I look forward to being hopelessly lost there someday getting fat on cajun food. But seriously, thanks!
If you mean Ouachita River, that's pronounced WASH-a-taw. It's from the French where OU is like a W. Stress on the first syllable.
Macon is also pronounced May-son
In the Ouachita Mtns were Lead deposits. Perhaps that early explorer was looking too far to the South.
I’ve come to realize all over the world the earliest human made sights are always built by nomadic hunter gatherers and it makes sense. That’s how civilization first evolved. Groups of nomadic people created sights to gather or make camp in their journeys,. Then as time went on and groups split off from groups, it became a community zone for all sorts of groups in the region. Like a giant base camp where everyone in the area come to meet. Eventually some of the groups started staying closer and closer to right on these sights because they had everything they needed close enough by and since many other nomads used these places it was a great place for trade. Eventually “trades” became popularized where you would go to these locations to get stuff your group didn’t know how/didn’t have the resources to make. Or to seek knowledge, medicine, share stories, etc. thus civilization as we know it was made.
I believe large food sources contribute to the gathering idea
I'm more intrigued by this tidbit.
Poverty Point is near several excellent clay deposits, they utilized it but seems to have exported the clay, or less likely, they exported the finished pottery.. lack of shards, firing kilns, or a actual pots seem to preclude the trade of pots.
If they traded clay, they would have experience moving earth, have piles of overburden and mounds would make sense. Plus it would generate influence and wealth for the import of goods.
Your "Sources and Bibliography" pages are quite impressive.
Your scholarship is impeccable.
Each of your videos have more information than a 3 semester unit college class.
If you really aren't a college professor, then you have many people fooled.
It's refreshing to find a YT Channel that assumes that the viewer actually has a brain.
You flatter me but I thank you!
Wonderful video! Subscribed and looking forward to more!
Thank you. Production is currently stopped due to technical issues but we'll be back up and running next month hopefully!
I recently moved to Louisiana. I haven’t been able to visit Poverty Point yet but I’m eager to!
I haven't been there either.
Welcome to Louisiana! Enjoy the cuisine 👍🏻
Bring bug spray when you go. Mosquitos there are no joke.
@@laurahill9643 mosquito repellent is an absolute must if you plan on being outdoors in any natural setting for any period of time however short or long it may be. I’ve personally experienced attacks by swarming dense clouds of mosquitoes in natural environments. Late November through very early February is a better time to enjoy the natural Louisiana environments with fewer mosquitoes. After the very wet April and May we have experienced they will be very troublesome for some time to come.
I would like to visit too. An archaeological wonder right here in and not too far.
This sounds so much like an American Çatalhöyük, right down to the proliferation of clay cooking balls in the site. Really interesting as both are early pre-agriculture cities. I'd love to see a comparison between the two.
Well worth looking into. The tendency to break history into eras does not account for the fact that people give up a successful way of living gradually thus we see transition in culture.
Been watching a number of your videos and I really enjoy them!! You've done a very great job organizing and explaining the information you present, and I love the range of Pre-Columbian topics you cover. Places like Poverty Point are very fascinating to me, especially nowadays as more research is done on sedentary hunter-gatherer societies and how frequent there presence now seems to have been in prehistoric times (like the Calusa in Florida as an American example), even before the Holocene. Thank you for providing a great resource for everyone and sharing your love of archaeology :)
Thank you!
Could be it was a complete circular construct before the river changed course during a flood, and destroyed the other half. Looks like there was a landslide on that one side of the circle.
It would be interesting to take core samples and find out where the ancient river channel used to be. If it was a circle it would probably have run just to the side of it. I'm actually surprised no one has done that yet.
The site is on a ridge that is about 15-20 feet higher than all the land east of it which is all Mississippi river floodplain. The museum there mentions this and indicates could have all been shallow water east of it anciently with the Mississippi river much wider.
@@dhr161 The Mississippi River meanders due to dropped silt forming sand bars that alters the current and by flooding that cuts new channels to and from ox bow lakes. The river can deposit 6 feet of sand inland during a single flood which also will block the flow of the small tributaries to the river. Their water will back up to flood the bottomlands until it gradually drains out thru the soil and by evaporation. The Caddo that lived in my area of East Texas built burial mounds in some bottomlands near a river that carried a lot of sand sediment. It would get left behind after the flood waters receded and make large sand bars along the river banks. They scooped up that sand for their mounds so the users of Poverty Point probably did the same on an annual basis to keep the bayou channels in place and to uncover productive soils that were farmed with the wild plants that the video mentioned.
Great video! This place has a few similarities to Gobleki Tepi; pre-agricultural, ceremonial complex.... it's really time that we revisit the long-held theory that agriculture was the spark that led to civilization... Maybe the purpose of poverty point was a religious center; the inhabitants maintained it for festivals and ceremonies where groups from all around could worship, trade, find brides, etc. It's centrally located between a variety of regions with access to different, useful resources. The location is both easily accessible by water and seems least likely to be impacted by flooding (compared to the locations of older sites in the area, as well as other mounds at Poverty Point, which were all much closer to the water) I definitely want to look up the history of flooding in the region to see if that may have been a factor in the location. Also, learn more about the trading relationships in the area and whether goods from outside were merely brought to Poverty Point and left (as offerings or tribute?) Or traded amongst the groups... I'm no archaeologist, though. Just my amateur two cents.
I always enjoy a well thought two cents. I like that you make the comparison to Gobleki Tepi (and by association Catalhoyuk). I think that their stories have a lot of interesting similarities to Poverty Point. I wouldn't entirely dismiss the role of agriculture in the rise of civilization but Poverty Point and Gobleki Tepi do show us that there very notable exceptions and that people can come together for different reasons and by different means. I personally think a lot of it depends on environment and the people.
Poverty Point is pretty safe from flooding. At least that's what I gathered from my research but I'm sure you could look much deeper into it. There's a lot of good literature on the site that is very accessible.
The trade is very fascinating and it invites a lot of interesting speculation. I wish we knew a lot more but archaeologists almost always have a limited picture to work with. Someday, I'd like to do an entire episode on just pre-columbian trade across North America, Mesoamerica and South America but thats still a long way off.
@@AncientAmericas I can't help but wonder how many pre-agricultural sites are still waiting to be found... I think they will support that the traditional benchmarks of "writing," "ceramics," and "agriculture" cannot be universally applied.
Western cultures all seemed to follow a linear progression that involved those milestones, but the Americas clearly show that a lack of "ceramics" or "writing" are in no way indicative of a "lack of" civilization. When I read about Andean cultures, they are always compared to these Western benchmarks that don't necessarily apply.
The first cities on Peru's coast were built around a fishing economy. I think the first agriculture was developed inland and consisted of cotton, not grains. The cotton was made into nets that the people inland traded with the fishing villages on the coast. They also used reeds and cotton to weave mats and sacks.
Ceramics were being developed in the Amazon and amazonians were trading with Norte Chico. But Norte Chico did not need ceramics because they could store and transport their food in the sacks and baskets they made. And those sacks didn't shatter like ceramic!! So when archaeologists comment on what a crazy anomaly it is that these people didn't have ceramics for another thousand years, they forget that they are coming from a Western bias and thinking of a very specific technology. Like you said, depends on the people and the environment. Maybe the milestone could be broadened to "develops methods for storing and transporting food."
Similarly, the earliest examples of cuneiform supposedly are ledgers, which track accounting and trade. A khipu, also used for accounting, has been found at Caral. Over the next 4500 years, khipus evolved dramatically. Most of them were burned and researchers haven't been able to translate the khipus that remain, but I still think they were more than "just accounting" devices. We may not understand it, but the Andeans had a record-keeping system that allowed them to perform complex calculations, engineer elaborate constructions and record history.
Anyhow, I could go on about this forever, but as older sites emerge and as archaeologists in the Americas catch up with the rest of the world, I think it will become increasingly clear that we need to broaden our definitions, instead of comparing every other culture in the world to the developmental stages first documented in the West. (If it wasn't so late, id go back and edit this down to be more concise, instead of my two cents, I shared a few dollars worth of pocket change. Seriously, one of my favorite topics and I really do enjoy how your videos get my wheels spinning - thanks!)
I think you are correct. Agriculture didn't spawn the modern age, the end of the Ice Age did. Agriculture was just a side effect.
@@giggletitty : As far as I understand, all of the things that you mentioned have actually been abandoned as markers of "civilization", to the extent that there's some consideration of whether some animals should be considered to have civilization.
Probably better to replace "invention of civilization" with "invention of cities" in most cases, as that _does_ seem to characteristically be tied to at least agriculture & pottery, though even those should probably be considered to be linked with the ability to have a city- irrigation to get a reliable source of enough food for a city, and pottery as an easier way to hold and/or use some or all of those foods (e.g. to make porridge from grains- _there's_ a reason for why any fishing-centric civilization might not care about pottery).
sites like these definitely feed the idea that it was civilization that lead to agriculture and not the other way around, and more and more it seems our understanding of the "Traditional Technology Tree" is quite flawed even for the places we've based it upon,
I'd imagine that these sites started as some sort of focal point for the locals with some worth to it, the passage point for something, the end goal of whatever wandering animal group they happened to call Lunch, or some other long lost reason one could only speculate,
over time the site grew in importance and note, as the tribe grew and began to split up, or other tribes wandered in and over time from a meeting point it became a trade hub with people settling down to live from trade and local food sources focussing in making things to trade or to facilitate people who came to trade
and to add to the Norte Chico example, China was fairly late with Glass and even then it had peripheral interest in it as their porcelain already filled most direct uses
Great video! Thank you. Poverty Point WHS is a wonderfully intriguing site and well done for putting it in it's interesting wider context.
You're welcome! I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Such a site reminds me of rich, settled hunter-gatherer sites on rivers discussed in by Scott (and others), which adds easily planted and harvested wild plants to the diet. It's called "flood-retreat" or "decrue" or "recession" agriculture. Scott at p. 69:
A very good observation. What's the title of that book?
Fascinating.Thank you for all you work to create this informative video. Great job!
Thank you!
geaux tigers indeed. they've recently closed off the mounds on campus, but for years they let students and visitors walk all over the site. hard to imagine we'd treat the archaeological record of other societies the way we've treated indigenous Louisianians.
The mounds were not burial sites, so there is little evidence that the natives themselves did not walk all over them too. Many of the mounds of Mississippi were removed, and their contents used to elevate roadways. I'd rather my monument be one where hope is born, than bulldozed like the mounds of Mississippi were.
I did a little volunteer archaeology at Poverty Point 10 years ago and knew all the archaeologists there in those days. What you say here is pretty much what they told me then, which was just after they'd discovered that the mounds had been built so fast. There are 2 main differences I would like to point out. In those days, they had also just done a big GPR survey of the plaza and determined that it probably never was a big open space. It's completely covered with post holes forming dozens of rectangles and circles from small to huge, many of which overlap, and there's no apparent order to the arrangement. So, it appears that the "plaza" was actually home to a bunch of structures of varying purposes and the configuration changed quite a few times. This doesn't sound like a sacred space but like utilitarian. Maybe this was the marketplace or something.
The other main difference was that they staff was trending away from the idea that the "plummets" were weights for fishing nets. First, they'd be hugely over-engineered for that purpose as any old rock would work for that. But more importantly, many if not most show a lot of abrasion and chafing around the circumference of their widest sections. This was making the staff think they were instead loom weights for making textiles. If so, textiles might be the missing trade good Poverty Point bought all its imported stone with, as the number of "plummets" would support industrial-scale production. Also, textiles would rot away and thus leave no trace where the stone came from. And the area is home to several plants whose fibers are suitable for this use.
As to the imported stone, the really fascinating thing is that Poverty Point imported pretty much EVERY type accessible via rivers and coastal travel in the eastern half of the US. As each type of stone has different properties, they used each for its best purpose. Some types they used for war points, some for hunting points, some for axes, some for hoes, some for hammers, some for blades, and some for jewelry (along with copper from the Great Lakes), some for bowels, etc. This implies a lot of pre-existing knowledge on where to get the best rock for each job, and thus the pre-existence of huge trade networks, which Poverty Point was able to exploit on an industrial scale.
Something I noticed while I was there is that the site has a superabundance of wild garlic and wild onion growing on it today. These plants are scattered in patches throughout the whole region but Poverty Point is literally swamped with them. When they mow the grass there, it'll make your eyes water. So I'm thinking the inhabitants were growing these in gardens to season their meals and they're still there today.
But yes, Poverty Point is a huge enigma. It seems to have sprung up out of nothing within a generation or so and lasted a few centuries. Somebody was REALLY good at selling ideas--I wish I had that skill. The inhabitants must have known they had something special because they traveled the continent getting all their different rocks and saw nothing similar at all. And so perhaps they didn't trade, they just TOOK. After all, they had the manpower concentration to project power far afield had they so desired. Yet despite having contact with literally everybody in the eastern half of the US, their ideas don't seem to have rubbed off on anybody else. And after Poverty Point fell (likely due to exhausting the firewood available within easy transport distance), it was a few centuries before anything else came along, and that way up in the northeast with the Adena and Hopewell. But those DID spread everywhere.
Speaking of which, you REALLY need to do a show on the Adena-Hopewell phenomenon.
You've taught me a lot I didn't know earlier. Thank you! That point about the post holes is very interesting. And rest assured that the adena and Hopewell will get episodes someday. I actually just went through southern Ohio recently and hit up a few adena and Hopewell sites. The interest is definitely there but they just need to wait for their turn.
@@AncientAmericas Adena might be called "Pre-Classic Hopewell" or Hopewell might be called "Classic Adena" as latter seems to have elaborated on the former. :) But the really amazing thing is how the core ideas of this complex (although with noticeable local variation) were taken up by pretty much everybody east of the Mississippi (and a few slightly west of it) in a pretty short timespan. Again, somebody was REALLY good at convincing the masses to adopt a new lifestyle/religion/culture/whatever, even better than the founder of Poverty Point, who only convinced his immediate neighbors. So. I'm eagerly looking forward to your presentation.
Just found your vids - absolutely amazing! I was at Poverty Point in October of 2022 and the size is absolutely unbelievable especially considering it's millennia older than the other mounds in the upper Mississippi/GA that I'm more familiar with. Loving the channel man!
Thank you!
Wish l could recall where in the south it was. A temple center was leveled for a Sam's Club mid 1990s. Sad.
It's a tragically frequent occurrence.
@@AncientAmericas The tragedy is that we believe we live in an unbounded system and don't recycle and reuse ALL the resources we use. Museums that are more interested in preserving artifacts than preserving the Earth and our species are shortsighted and contribute to our demise. Artifact collections should be replaced by information storage- Measure, document and preserve the information so it can be accessed by EVERYONE, not just museum visitors or wealthy collectors.
Documenting ("understanding") the past does NOT help us in the future EXCEPT for things with practical application, or human behavior. Historical anthropologists being able to understand how or why ancient people lived as they did is not going to help humanity survive unless we have a post-apocalypse future where that knowledge is available to assist.
Regarding large scale artifacts:
Unlike species that depend on a local environment to survive, humans in general are very mobile and adaptable. We reshape everything around us to its limits.
Archaeologists in general have found little physical of actual value that remains from previous millennia. Where a culture flourished, it endured and kept building. Where it didn't it moved on. Only people too poor or too ignorant to move stay where the environment keeps destroying their neighborhoods ( New Orleans, Des Plaines Illinois) and keep repeating things that failed.
It's not hard to understand things like this ancient settlement being redeveloped into new things or surviving. We currently build large area structures that have applications that last only a short time (Olympic stadiums and World Fairs) then fall into disuse and are abandoned (Chicago, Knoxville). Sometimes their original reasons for construction produce unanticipated effects that require their elimination (Colorado River retention dams, over-development of the southwest and water shortages).
The only reason the remains or archaic construction endure is their construction materials and locations. Flood plains, deserts and mountains surrounded by jungles discourage modern development.
Thanks for the video. Seems like there are a number of similarities to Chaco Canyon. Similar geometry in construction, trade hub etc.
You're welcome!
Great video, as always
Indeed it is!
Thank you! Glad you're enjoying them!
Your channel is incredible. Thank you so much for all of the research and hard work you do to put into these incredibly informative videos about Turtle Island 🙂
Thank you!
Been to this site with my uncle who had a strong amateur knowledge of the archeology there. Your presentation was excellent & concise. Enjoyed it very much. Btw - I'll let you in on a secret that only people in Arkansas and Louisiana seem to know: "Ouachita" is pronounced, "Washitaw." (It's how we locals know who's not!)
Thank you!
Mississippians know it too.👊
I'm surprised you didn't mention that the river has almost certainly been diverted over time into the site, and thus probably destroyed part of it. There are some high spots opposite the river that fall on the extended full circle of the rings. They're too heavily eroded to make out any details, but it's not implausible that they're indications that the full site was originally a complex of complete circles with a courtyard about twice as big as the extant one.
Yo! You're doing such a good work. Your channel is so underrated you deserve so much more subscribers
Thank you!
Stumbled across your channel and now I subscribed, bringing your content, and looking up and ancient sites near me right now.
Welcome aboard!
Geaux Tigers indeed! And even the hunter-gatherers would recognize a good place to live. As you note there's fish and game, edible plants, berries are in the area as well, BUT no doubt they experienced periodic flooding. The risen areas would make sense as they could stay in place rather than having to abandon then resettle the area.
Considering that you said Poverty Point seemed to be a tech hub, plus their apparent expertise in astronomy, geometry, and surveying, perhaps there was a high population of academics, building tools for other people and sharing their knowledge of the world to other societies; they could then have kept the excess materials, or made a profit, to keep their livelihoods going.
Another excellent video, thank you.
Not sure if I should be celebrating the algorithm for bringing me to your fantastic work, or lamenting that it took the algorithm this long to bring your work to my feed.
I look forward to working through your whole library!
Thank you!
Ditto
I had never heard of this site! Now, it's a must see. I love that this culture was able to thrive off the land, as well as trade for all kinds of amazing objects. Life there must have been relatively comfortable for the times.
Native cultures live with nature and respect the land. We need to respect them and their knowledge, which can likely help with the problems that "civilization" caused.
This was very informative and engaging. Loved that journal selection..."clay eating indians"! Perhaps, he enjoyed a few mud pies as a child!😁
💜🌎🦋✌️😸
Hmm Earthen crock pots with clay cooking balls in them could keep food simmered, and ready to eat until it is finished or spoils. You'd never have to rely on refrigeration and the food would last more than one meal.
Being born and raised in Louisiana I really appreciate you bringing attention to Poverty Point! I learned a lot from this video that I was ignorant to, and I lived 15 minutes from the site.
Pay it a visit sometime and stay safe out there.
Really entertaining video. Nice work. Increased intrigue.
Thank you!
I visited Poverty Point years ago and it's great to see a video focusing on this treasure. It was a lovely experience and the effort that has gone into the visitor center, exhibits, walking paths, self-guided tour materials, etc., was exemplary. I also found interesting the large borrow pits scattered around, used as a source of dirt needed to build the mounds.
I see the feathered serpent here with the rings representing the wings and the large mound representing the head of the serpent. Note that the smaller mounds near the river are equidistant from the path of the river so represent the winding body of the serpent. Those mound builders sure loved their effigies!
Apparently remains of a processional way connecting 'Mound E' (Ball court mound) have been discovered.
Were the mound builders actually pre-Clovis?
@@dalelane1948 do you really expect to get the true answer to that in the flippin TH-cam comment section??
@@roscoe4092 "It could happen". 🤓🍻
@@dalelane1948 nope, the clovis were long gone by that time. compare poverty point, less than 4000 years old, to the clovis culture that persisted 13000 to 11000 years ago.
Really nice job. Thanks for doing this!
Thank you!
If houses were built on top of the rings then they were probably built in response to seasonal flooding from the bayou. Moving away to higher ground would have separated them from the resources and transportation/trade afforded by the waterway.
you were not lying when you said i would enjoy this episode.
Glad you enjoyed it!
@@AncientAmericas obup
I've always thought that pre agriculture, large communities were possible around the world. If their economy was based on fishing and these sites might become trade centers for much smaller groups of more traditional hunter-gatherers.
If I’m not mistaken, the Calusa people of the Florida Everglades lived in rather large settlements without agriculture, but rather thriving mostly on their access to seafood.
fantastic presentation of this amazing site - Thank you for this
You're welcome!
Another wonderful glimpse into prehistoric North America. Thank you for these fascinating videos.
Thank you!
Can anyone explain to me what the hell Walters was talking about with the 'eating clay balls' thing? I have the impression I'm missing something.
I wish I could give you an answer, but I can't. I assume he's referring to the cooking balls that the people of Poverty Point used for cooking but I'm not sure why he was under the impression that the locals ate them. The book that I got the quote from doesn't give any details about that statement either. Sorry.
It was common for northern indians to drop rocks heated in the fire, into bark containers of liquids in order to cook or boil the liquid. Maybe the natives in that area, lacking stones to heat their water, used baked clay balls heated in the fire, then dropped in the water? To someone unfamiliar with the process, it might appear they were cooking the clay, in order to eat it?
@John Barber typical
@John Barber piss off boy
I scrolled so far down to find this comment. Why he thought they were eating clay is beyond me.😂🤣
Related reading:
1491 by Charles Mann
Excellent read about the pre-Columbus Americas.
Ha! I actually have that on my bookshelf! It is an excellent read.
@@AncientAmericas I was stunned to find out the level of tech and culture they had. It's no wonder the colonies had such a problem with people "going native". When I went to school it they taught us the old "noble savage" BS...
Sounds like Poverty Point was a library in a pre-literate world. For reference, look at Lynne Kelly's work on the use of memory palaces in such cultures.
You know what? I really like your content! I’m hooked.
Thank you! Your content looks pretty cool too. I love Hades and have probably sunk more time into that game than is healthy.
The simplest explanation is often the best...they needed a place to go when the frequent floods or invasions plagued the area
no way, there is no evidence of 'invasions' plaguing any communities in that era or the eras preceding or following it. Any cultures predating the Mississippians had very little conflict and no war. Invasions denote a competition for resources when resources are limited: a neighboring town invades your town because you had a good year for corn while the other town had a bad year and they take your resources. The evidence at Poverty Point shows that they gathered everything they needed, there weren't hoards of resources to raid and nor were there walls or fortifications to defend from invaders. The video says it quite well, this place is an apogee of hunter gatherer civilization. Its a 'would've could've' glimpse into the way North America could have been had things not changed environmentally and socially: a hunter gatherer city.
Holy shit, the awful colonial take */LIKED/* by the author of the video. Holy fuck...
Learn a little about the history of Turtle Island before making terrible assumptions like constant invasions. And not some "noble savage" bullshit. The real histories will show how few invasions there [ever] were all the while going through the shitty, sometimes gorey, nasty stuff of history. What a shit take
My theory: Poverty Point is in the Mississippi River Delta and is prone to flooding. These large mounds were built to have a safe place to go during a flood.
It’s very obvious and simple. The land in the Mississippi River Delta is extremely flat.
A very sound theory!
As a kid I lived about 10 miles from Poverty Point. I never realized it was such a unique spot!
So happy the algorithm finally dished me up something on N. American archeology! I first read about this site in the historical fiction book "People of the Owl", by the Gears. It's so great to have found your channel. Just subbed in.
Thank you!
More likely was how they delt with flooding verse's having to move out every spring.
The Dutch of the ancient Americas
An interesting video. Just a couple of minor points of clarification. Wetland environments offer excellent preservation (for example, anerobic Danish bogs and the so called "Bog People"). Cycylical wetting and drying in acidic soils is lethal to organic preservation. Perhaps a model for understanding Poverty Point stone exists in the Western US. Ocean shell, over 2,500 years old, from Bodega Bay ~40 miles north of Golden Gate has been found 300+ miles east in central Nevada caves and rock shelters. The raw material was typically manufactured close to the coast and then traded eastward from tribe to tribe. I haven’t read the site reports but unless chipping detritus has been found at or near Poverty Point it was likely traded westward as blades, cores, or point blanks. Finally, evidence for cremations typically survive in the archaeological record. Creamations and hearts/fire pits have different physical characteristics and chemistry and they are rather easily distinguishable. Cremations with funerary offerings are not unusual and if cremations occurred at Poverty Point they'd likely have been found. It would appear that how (and where the dead) were treated is unclear. Oh, the highest population density north of the Valley of Mexico wax achieved by semi-sedentary hunter-gatherers in central California...around its Delta and wetlands. Before Americans destroyed it natural hydrology, the interior of California from Bakersfield 400 miles north to Red Bluff was a wetland. Most of the archaeological sites occur on natural mounds and levees that have since been leveled. Poverty Point is defintely a location that requires more investigatikn and far more publicity because North American Archaic hunter-gatherers are generally treated as the poor step children of the purportedly more advanced agrarian cultures. This is harcly an accurate characterization but it remains the popular myth.
Can you suggest some densely populated California delta sites for me to read about?
I just graduated from LSU and during a Louisiana history course the first lecture we learned about Poverty Point and Native Americans in Louisiana!
Also, the "Indian Mounds" on campus sadly are only barely fenced off and children typically play on them during tailgates during football season.
Excellent informative well presented video. Thank you.
Thank you!
I do agree with you that building a mound, even a large mound, doesn’t take too much time, however, many of these mound remains are astronomically and mathematically precise, and this would take a massive amount of planning. I think that the evidence points to a conclusion that leans more to a civilization, rather than a hunter gatherer meeting location(s). Thoughts?
Hunter gatherers would have to rely on the stars & solstices for seasons to hunt & gather. Current Stone Age living people use the stars & sun for their hunting & gathering now.
I never knew there were proto-civilizations that old in North America, can't wait for more of this kind of stuff!
the teaching company has a series of talks all about proto-civilization in North America, very interesting and one of them is about poverty point.
There’s increasing evidence that we’re underestimating the age of some of these civilisations/or their remains.
@@dalelane1948 Graham Hancock agrees ..😁
@Matt DeMouy It is just great to learn that the American Indians didnt just live in teepees and hunt bison
@@TheWareek It appears many in the South and Ohio Valley went through various golden ages followed by dark ages etc much like Europe and the Near East
Appreciate you insightful content
Thank you!
I felt like the reveal about fishing abundance was burying the lede there! Every other example I knew of of "socially complex hunter gatherers" were dependent on stupidly good fishing too
The mounds at LSU were excavated by Archeologist at the university two years ago. No burials were found there either, likely due to the poor soil quality, or they were not used for burials at all. Radiocarbon dating put them as the oldest man made features in the United States, approximately 6000 years old. This makes them older than the pyramids in Egypt.The last time I stopped by Poverty Point was the mid 1990s. They were just starting to unravel what was going on up there and were excavating a fire pit on the semi-circular feature. Such a cool site.
I think the site might have originally been circular. using google earth you can see a distinct curved structure in a field across the creek and if you use the circle measure tool it matches up with the other side fairly well. also there is an oxbow lake to the east suggesting the creek flowed further to the east at some point and the current shape looks like it has been eroded to the west I would be curious to know if anyone has done any digging to the east side of the creek.
I think that they have. I might be remembering this incorrectly, but I think that there was a large cache of soapstone objects found on the other side of the river. Don't quote me on that though.
I agree, there is some anomalies across the river. They may be old riverbeds or dried up oxbow lakes though. They should use LIDAR and scan that forest to the north east. May be interesting what they find.
@@CryptidWalks LiDAR is the greatest modern tool invented in the evolution of archeology. Its value is incalculable in expediting the discovery of important finds worldwide.
@@Aswaguespack ...the laser was considered to be an invention with no practical purpose..
I just went to poverty point and it was wonderful! I sat beside mound a and there were so many wildflowers it was all you could smell. There were dragonflies everywhere! And the birds were so loud. I think spring is the perfect time to visit. I used all my senses lol.
Love this video!
It would be very interesting to see a comparison of North American mound culture with European monolith builders
monolith what now?
there is nothing to compare the build quality in europe is like ancient aliens
Just an idea when it comes to what those clay owls could be. If you go and do some research maybe it could be a representation of the modern owl in Native American folklore/culture. It ranges from wisdom to death. Could it perhaps be something that has to do with warding off the evil spirits? Just a thought
Red jasper 🦉
The amount of detail he was able to provide about the mound is kind of amazing to me when you take in to consideration how we look back on these people as being less educated just because they didnt have public schooling the way we do today. Id love to see people try and describe this same mound in their own words today. I wager we would hear the words um and like several times.
Hello again! I am really enjoying your content. I simply don't know much about this topic and its really interesting. In regard to many of the comments below, I appreciate your patience! COVID isolation has many folks a bit bugged out! LOL! Thanks for the information! When I was a kid, my family visited Stonehenge and some of the French pre historic caves (before they were shut to the public). Carnac in Brittany (France) was also insanely cool! Cave of Forgotten Dreams is also a favorite! Not exactly relevant to your area of expertise, but, I generally avoid delineation. One of the fringe benefits of being an amateur! LOL! Thanks!
I live in Portland OR and know almost nothing about the folks who lived in the area before Euro's. I wish that wasn't the case! Do you have any TH-cam recommendations for this area in particular? Thanks again!
The Ouachita river is pronounced Wash-itaw
And the Bayou Macon is May-son
I'd get lost pretty quick in Louisiana.
@@AncientAmericas If your non native it can be something trying to pronounce the many names