Ancient site gives rich glimpse of indigenous genius
A millennia before the founding of Rome, Native Americans built an amazing series of earthen monuments that are still preserved in Louisiana.
The Poverty Point World Heritage Site covers 470 acres on Bayou Macon just northeast of Epps. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2014, but its history goes back thousands of years.
“Starting about 3,700 years ago, native peoples gathered where the site is,” explained Mark Brink, the Poverty Point World Heritage Site manager. “What makes Poverty Point so important is that it was the largest community of people living in North America at the time. Some archaeologists call it America’s first city. Over 600 years, they created the largest mounds and earthworks in North America. The site was also host to the largest and most complicated exchange network in North America that existed at the time.”
The history of Poverty Point
In the 1840s, Philip Guier established a plantation here and named it Poverty Point. Consequently, archaeologists dubbed the people who built it the “Poverty Point Culture.” They lived there from about 1700 BCE to 1100 BCE.
“The Poverty Point site and the people who lived there were the center of a wider culture that stretched out for at least 700 square miles up and down the Mississippi River Valley all the way to the Gulf Coast,” Brink said. “The entire site is a constructed artificial landscape built more than 3,000 years ago. As far as we know, Poverty Point is the single largest community with the largest monuments ever built by hunters and gatherers in the world.”
Visitors to the site today can see six mounds and six earthen ridges constructed by those native people. Mound A, the largest on the site, stands 72 feet tall and covers eight acres. It took about 390,000 tons of dirt to construct, all deposited one basket at a time. Incredibly, construction might have taken just one to three months.
“Mound A required 15.5 million basket loads, or about 30,000 standard dump truck loads for 390,000 tons of soil,” Brink said. “The mounds were not burial sites. These people didn’t bury their dead. Without any evidence of what the mounds were used for, we assume they were for ceremonial purposes, maybe platforms for religious ceremonies. The people also constructed a central plaza covered by 175,000 cubic yards of dirt.”
Archaeologists don’t find many artifacts on the mounds, but they still estimate millions of artifacts are still left buried inside the six man-made ridges. These ridges served as elevated housing areas. The people likely lived on the ridges in “wattle and daub” huts, mud huts built over reinforced wooden frames.
Visiting the site
Around 1100 BCE the people abandoned the site for unknown reasons. Around that time, the climate became cooler and wetter. Perhaps this forced them to move. A non-agricultural people, they hunted, fished and gathered food. Maybe, the climate change forced them to look elsewhere to find food.
Today, people can visit the property seven days a week, every day except Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years. Ride a tram to see the mounds. At the visitor’s center and museum, people can watch videos about the place and see ancient artifacts. Large groups can arrange to visit the site.
“Mound A, the second largest earthen structure constructed in North America, was built more than 3,200 years ago,” Brink said. “It acts as a very physical and monumental testament to the ancient people who created this landscape. The site exists today as a testament to all the native tribes and nations of eastern North America.”
For more information, call 318-926-5492 or 888-926-5492. Online, see www.lastateparks.com/historic-sites/poverty-point-world-heritage-site.
