A Louisiana archaeologist has accumulated evidence of a mound building culture that thrived for almost 2,000 years in the Lower Mississippi River Basin before possibly spreading to Mexico.
NORTHEASTERN LOUISIANA -- If the name of archaeologist Joseph W. Saunders sounds familiar, his work was featured in an eight part Examiner series on the Troyville Mounds in Jonesville, LA during 2010. Much of his career has been devoted to the preservation and understanding of Troyville Mounds. The articles described the architecture and cultural practices of Troyville Mounds that were very similar to that of the Chontal Mayas in the coastal areas of Tamaulipas and Veracruz States in Mexico. The series stated that these similarities suggested contacts with Mexico. At the time of the articles’ publication, Saunders did not agree with that interpretation. It is not publically known if Saunders still maintains that position. Links to earlier, related Examiner articles are at the bottom of this one.
During the past two decades, Joe Saunders has assembled some fascinating evidence that an indigenous mound-building culture rose first in northern Louisiana then somehow spread to the Gulf Coast of Mexico around 1,600 BC. The theory may seem far-fetched to laymen, but there is evidence to support Saunders’ interpretations of artifacts and archaeological sites.
Saunders is one of a team of Louisiana archaeologists including Jon L. Gibson, who have radically changed the understanding of the pre-European history of North America. Saunders led the team the identified North America’s oldest know mound complex at Watson Brake, LA. It was constructed around 3,500 BC. Gibson led the archaeological work at Poverty Point, LA which confirmed that the massive semi-circular earthen platforms were the ruins of the oldest known permanent village in North America, and also contained one of its largest Native American mounds. Poverty Point was first constructed around 1,600 BC. Its most intensive occupation lasted till around 1,000 BC.
A little known fact is that the indigenous peoples of Mexico culturally lagged behind the Southeastern United States and the coastal areas of Peru until around 1500 BC. The oldest known pottery in the Western Hemisphere was found in the state of Georgia and dated to around 2,500 BC. Pottery of similar construction and almost as old has also been found near Lake Okeechobee, FL. By this time the native peoples of the eastern Southeast had already been domesticating some indigenous plants for perhaps 2,500 years. The knowledge of pottery-making slowly spread outward from central Georgia until around 1000 AD, when most indigenous peoples in North America knew how to make pottery.
Louisiana contains the oldest known public architecture in North America. The tradition of building large mounds arrived in Mexico around 2,000 years later - or around 1,600-1,500 BC. The first use of pottery did not arrive in Louisiana, however, until around 1,100 BC. Villages built either on or inside (opinions vary) massive rings of seashells appeared in Georgia about the same time as pottery appeared inland (2,500 BC.) That date is 1,000 years earlier than any platform villages in Louisiana, yet no examples of earthen platform villages or very early cone shaped mounds like those in Louisiana, have been found in Georgia. There is clearly much that is unknown about North America’s past.
Olmec Civilization
The label “Olmec” was applied to a newly discovered civilization in southern Veracruz State, Mexico by American archaeologist, Mathew Stirling, in the 1940s. More intensive research led by the famous Mexican archaeologist, Ignacio Bernal, in the 1960s determined that what Stirling discovered was Mexico’s oldest known civilization, and that it was NOT founded by the Olmecs. The Olmecs were an ethnic group that entered the region approximately two to three centuries before the arrival of Europeans. However, the label stuck because it was popular with American tourists, and tourism paid for the restoration of Mexican ruins.
Mexican anthropologists do not know the true name of this culture, but think that it was founded by the Mixtec and Zoque Peoples (pronounced Zhjō-kē) who still live in that part of Mexico. The Zoque strongly resemble the famous giant stone heads found at the La Venta site that are the “calling cards” of Olmec Civilization. They also resemble certain indigenous peoples living in southern Thailand and Myanmar. Both the Zoque and the Chontal Mayas claim to be the descendants of the Olmec Civilization.
"Moon Faces" in the North Carolina Mountains
A significant proportion of the Snowbird Cherokee Band in Graham County, NC (Smoky Mountains) also resemble the giant stone heads found in southern Veracruz. Called “moon faces” by ethnic Cherokees living in the main (Qualla) Reservation, these people are descended from what was once the most powerful and sophisticated Native province in South Carolina, most commonly called the Soque, which is pronounced the same as Zoque. Survinng Zoque place names suggest that in the 1500s they originally spoke a language that was different than either Creek or Cherokee. Europeans also called them such names as Sokee, Soco, Joki, Jokee and Jocassee. The Soque’s capital was said to have been somewhere near the confluence of two mountain rivers flowing through canyons, but is now covered by Lake Jocassee in South Carolina.
The traditional location of the Soque capital strongly resembles that of the city of Wara (spelled Joara in Spanish) that was described by Spanish explorer, Juan Pardo, in 1567. The Spanish version of Pardo’s Chronicles states that Wara was the only community that the Spanish had seen north of Mexico that truly qualified as a city. The chroniclers stated that it had broad streets, plus many blocks, plazas and temples.
Horrific plagues and European slave raids debilitated the Soque population. The survivors were forced to join either the Creek Indian Confederacy or the Cherokee Alliance in order to survive the threat of European colonialism. Only the minority who joined the Cherokees have retained a distinct physical and sub-tribal identity.
The rise of civilization in Mexico
By 2,500 BC agricultural peoples were establishing small villages along the coast of southern Veracruz. However, around 1,600 to 1,500 BC, both pottery and mound building appear in that region. Their earliest mounds were cone shaped. Through the following ten centuries, ceremonial centers with large earthen mounds evolved into true towns with sometimes massive truncated pyramid earthen mounds like those later built in the eastern United States. It is in southern Veracruz that the western hemisphere’s earliest known writing system was developed. The arts also flourished in this civilization. Many cultural traditions associated with the later Maya Civilization began first with the Mixtec-Zoque. The Mixtec-Zoque urban centers were all abandoned by 500 BC, but by then advanced cultures had appeared in several areas of southern Mexico.
In addition to introducing mound-building to Mexico, the Zoque had an unusual tradition of preferring white pottery made from either kaolin or ball clay, both of which are relatively rare in Mexico, but abundant in the State of Georgia. Even today, both the Creek Indian potters in the Southeastern United States and Zoque potters in southern Mexico reserve blue pipe clay (impure alluvial kaolin) for their most precious ceramic objects, such as vases that celebrate weddings. Although the clay is grayish-blue in the ground, it fires to a beautiful ivory color and can produce ceramics as durable as porcelain.
The Zoque have a tradition that they established civilization in Mexico after crossing the Gulf of Mexico in twelve flotillas composed of giant dug out canoes. There is varying acceptance of this tradition among Caucasian anthropologists. No information survives in their tradition concerning the place of origin. It may be under water. The coast line of the Gulf of Mexico, 4,000 years ago, was as much as 20 miles (32 km) away from today’s rising sea level in some places.
Of all the peoples in the Americas, only the Zoque and the Yuchi Indians in the Southeastern United States have a tradition of arriving in the Americas from the east by crossing a large expanse of water. Trans-oceanic travel in 1,600 BC was certainly plausible, because the ancestors of the Aborigines reached Australia by crossing ocean waters somewhere between 40-60,000 years ago.
Ancient cone-shaped mounds
The Lower Mississippi River Basin is dotted with cone shaped mounds that archeologists long assumed were no more than 1000 years old. In the 1990s Saunders examined a six mound complex in northeastern Louisiana called Hedgepeth. One of the Hedgepeth mounds was approximately 25 feet (8 m) high and 100 feet (33 m) in diameter. It was found to date before 3000 BC. Saunders has interpreted archaeological evidence to identify a vibrant indigenous culture that built many mounds in the region between 3,700 and 2,700 BC. Archaeologists have found little evidence of long distance trade near these mounds. They seemed to be based on localized cultural traditions. However, the mound builders enjoyed bountiful food resources and constructed other forms of public architecture, such as baked earth altar-like structures.
Platform villages
Platform villages appeared in northeastern Louisiana around 1,600-1,500 BC. This is the same time period when the early stages of the “Olmec” Civilization appeared in southern Veracruz State, Mexico. The Poverty Point platform village site also contains several mounds. The largest mound appears to be an effigy of a bird. Despite its early construction date, it was one of the largest mounds built north of Mexico. The most recent research on this mound suggests that the mound was built in a continuous construction process, lasting perhaps one year.
The lifestyle of the people of Poverty Point and its sister platform villages do not match traditional concepts of anthropology. Their culture continues to be somewhat of a mystery. There is no evidence that they ever farmed, or even raised gardens. The surviving artifacts suggest a heavy reliance on fishing, hunting and gathering of wild berries and nuts. Unlike the builders of Watson Brake, the people of Poverty Point were heavily involved with regional trade. Archaeologists have discovered many artifacts carved from stones imported from other regions of North America.
Perhaps the most peculiar cultural trait of the people of Poverty Point is their mass-production of ceramic cooking balls. Pottery was only utilized at a limited scale during the last century of the village’s occupation. However, from the very beginning of the town’s occupation, ornate ceramic artifacts about the size of billiard balls were manufactured in a dizzying variety of ornate forms for cooking food in baskets. These early Louisianans understood the process of vitrifying clay with red hot heat, but did not make pottery!
What is even more mysterious about these ceramic balls is that their designs are almost identical to carved stone balls found in northwestern Europe at such sites as Skara Brae in the Orkney Islands of Scotland and the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry, Ireland. The ornate European balls date from about 3600 BC to 2,500 BC. This was the exact time period that indigenous Louisianans were building many conical mounds. The stone fishing sinkers and net weights found at Poverty Point are very similar to those at Skara Brae.
Future research
With so much complex and seemingly contradictory evidence before them, archaeologists in Louisiana realize that more research is needed before the ancient past can be fully understood. Unfortunately, there are very few funding sources available for archaeological research in Louisiana today. The state was done apocalyptic damage by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Since 2007 much of the Southeast has been ravaged by a mega-recession. Currently, Louisiana is applying the bulk of its archeological funding to obtain a World Heritage Site designation from UNESCO, an agency of the United Nations. There is little doubt that the designation will eventually be obtained.
In the meantime, scholars struggle to assemble an explanation that accurately describes the relationships between four centers of advanced Native American culture, the Lower Mississippi River Basin, Georgia, South Carolina and Mexico. One built mounds and earthen platform villages first. One crafted pottery first, then constructed shell rings first. One has the name of a Mexican civilization. The fourth eventually became the cradle of many advanced civilizations.
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