WEBVTT - Poverty Point 0:00:01.040 --> 0:00:04.000 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how 0:00:04.080 --> 0:00:13.360 Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:13.600 --> 0:00:17.959 Hi'm Tracy Wilson and I'm Holly fry So. We mentioned 0:00:17.960 --> 0:00:20.200 in our recent episode on Marie and tal Teeth that 0:00:20.360 --> 0:00:23.520 I had been looking for some Native American history to 0:00:23.840 --> 0:00:26.239 do for the podcast. It had been a while since 0:00:26.480 --> 0:00:29.639 we had talked about any Native American history, and in 0:00:29.760 --> 0:00:32.920 that looking around process, I stumbled across an article on 0:00:33.000 --> 0:00:36.360 ka Hokio, which is the Mississippian city that was, in 0:00:36.400 --> 0:00:40.560 the words of Unesco, the largest and earliest pre Columbian 0:00:40.640 --> 0:00:44.880 city north of Mexico. So naturally I got really excited. 0:00:45.600 --> 0:00:49.480 I found almost instantly two problems with doing an episode 0:00:50.000 --> 0:00:53.360 on coki At. One is that Sarah and Bablina did 0:00:53.400 --> 0:00:57.680 one already in and the other is that there is 0:00:57.720 --> 0:01:01.400 some debate about whether we should really call Cohokia America's 0:01:01.480 --> 0:01:04.240 first city. And one of the reasons for that debate 0:01:04.319 --> 0:01:08.400 is the subject of today's episode, um which is Poverty Point. 0:01:08.560 --> 0:01:10.320 And so to get this out of the way right 0:01:10.319 --> 0:01:14.000 at the beginning, Poverty Point is named for a nineteenth 0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:16.959 century plantation in the area. The name has nothing to 0:01:17.080 --> 0:01:19.759 do at all with the Native people who live there, 0:01:19.880 --> 0:01:22.880 or their culture or the site itself. Um, it's just 0:01:22.920 --> 0:01:25.200 sort of wound up with that name over the years, 0:01:25.240 --> 0:01:28.040 and occasionally they talk about changing the name to something 0:01:28.080 --> 0:01:33.160 that's more appropriate for what is actually being studied there. Uh, 0:01:33.440 --> 0:01:36.600 but that's where we are. So Poverty Point has a 0:01:36.640 --> 0:01:40.080 few things in common with Cohokia. They're both situated in 0:01:40.120 --> 0:01:43.800 the Mississippi River Valley. Cahokia is a lot farther north 0:01:43.880 --> 0:01:47.600 and also much closer to the river. So Cahokia is 0:01:47.600 --> 0:01:52.040 in what's now Illinois, across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, Missouri, 0:01:52.600 --> 0:01:56.240 and Poverty Point is in the northeast corner of Louisiana, 0:01:56.320 --> 0:02:00.360 adjacent to Bayou Mason, and both of them are known 0:02:00.440 --> 0:02:04.160 for their earthworks. Those are large mounds that were created 0:02:04.160 --> 0:02:07.320 by moving baskets of soil from one place to another. 0:02:08.200 --> 0:02:12.840 But Poverty Point is much much older than Kahokia, and 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:17.320 it's also less clear exactly how people used the site 0:02:17.320 --> 0:02:20.239 at Poverty Point, but some things about it are really 0:02:20.360 --> 0:02:22.880 unique among Native American sites. So that is what we 0:02:22.880 --> 0:02:27.480 are going to talk about today. So Poverty Point, as 0:02:27.639 --> 0:02:32.040 Tracy just mentioned, is a collection of earthwork mounds and 0:02:32.200 --> 0:02:36.520 ridges situated next to Baioux Masson. These were built between 0:02:36.919 --> 0:02:40.320 three thousand, six hundred and three thousand, one hundred years 0:02:40.320 --> 0:02:44.000 ago during North America's Archaic period, and some of the 0:02:44.040 --> 0:02:48.080 site's earthworks were built over generations, whereas others were built 0:02:48.080 --> 0:02:50.760 by a large group of laborers over a short period 0:02:50.760 --> 0:02:54.160 of time. They also incorporate some of the mound structures 0:02:54.160 --> 0:02:58.040 and measurement techniques of older civilizations that actually lived in 0:02:58.040 --> 0:03:01.040 the area before the arrival of the Poverty Point culture. 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:06.640 It's estimated that it took about five million hours of 0:03:06.840 --> 0:03:11.560 labor to build all of Poverty Points earthworks. This required 0:03:11.600 --> 0:03:15.639 people to move fifty three million cubic feet of soil, 0:03:15.800 --> 0:03:18.160 which would have been carried from one place to another 0:03:18.200 --> 0:03:21.880 in baskets that would have weighed about fifty pounds apiece winfull. 0:03:22.960 --> 0:03:26.360 The site has six ridges, which are divided by five 0:03:26.480 --> 0:03:30.280 roads into six sections, as well as six mounds. The 0:03:30.400 --> 0:03:33.800 ridges form a pattern of concentric seas which are only 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:37.120 visible from the air. They're taller than a grown adult, 0:03:37.240 --> 0:03:40.440 and their peaks are between fifty and ninety paces apart. 0:03:41.320 --> 0:03:43.520 The longest of the ridges is three quarters of a 0:03:43.560 --> 0:03:47.160 mile long between the ridges are troughs where at least 0:03:47.240 --> 0:03:50.200 some of the dirt came from that built them. These 0:03:50.360 --> 0:03:53.640 ridges curve away from a bend in the Buyou and 0:03:53.680 --> 0:03:56.920 they end at the bluff that drops down to the bayou. 0:03:57.040 --> 0:04:00.840 It's a pretty steep drop. The aisles that divide the 0:04:00.880 --> 0:04:04.200 ridges into sections were made either by digging trenches through 0:04:04.280 --> 0:04:07.280 some of the spots or by leaving gaps during their 0:04:07.320 --> 0:04:10.880 construction and others and these uh these sort of paths 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:14.520 lead out from a central plaza like spokes from a hub. 0:04:15.400 --> 0:04:18.640 The central plaza is circular, and it's flat, and it's 0:04:18.680 --> 0:04:21.480 marked with a lot of post holes of varying sizes, 0:04:21.839 --> 0:04:24.360 although nobody has really worked out if there's a pattern 0:04:24.400 --> 0:04:26.800 to them or not. It was probably used as a 0:04:26.800 --> 0:04:31.480 gathering place as well as for ceremonial purposes. In addition 0:04:31.520 --> 0:04:34.360 to the ridges and the plaza, there are six mounds 0:04:34.440 --> 0:04:37.160 at the site, and it's not completely clear what they 0:04:37.160 --> 0:04:40.600 were all used for, but unlike many of the other 0:04:40.720 --> 0:04:44.640 mounds in North America, they were not used for burials. 0:04:44.800 --> 0:04:47.680 Based on the artifacts left behind, some of them probably 0:04:47.760 --> 0:04:53.400 did have more religious or our spiritual ceremonial purposes. Though 0:04:54.080 --> 0:04:57.039 the area's first occupants at least during the period that 0:04:57.080 --> 0:05:00.360 we're going to discuss, Uh probably lived at Owned B. 0:05:01.240 --> 0:05:04.279 This is a mound that was created, used for a while, 0:05:04.360 --> 0:05:06.440 and then covered over with a new top, and this 0:05:06.560 --> 0:05:10.120 happened repeatedly. A final cap of earth was placed over 0:05:10.160 --> 0:05:13.359 the mound about three thousand, four hundred years ago, after 0:05:13.360 --> 0:05:15.880 which point the mound appears not to have been used anymore. 0:05:16.920 --> 0:05:20.080 Poverty points ridges were started at about the same time 0:05:20.160 --> 0:05:25.000 as Mound B was capped off. The largest of the mounds, 0:05:25.080 --> 0:05:28.520 known as Mound A, was built last, and it was 0:05:28.560 --> 0:05:31.400 built in what was at the time basically a swamp. 0:05:31.520 --> 0:05:35.160 But about three thousand, three hundred years ago people started 0:05:35.240 --> 0:05:39.200 burning off all the vegetation and burying what was left 0:05:39.279 --> 0:05:41.479 under a layer of silt, and then the mound is 0:05:41.480 --> 0:05:44.720 built on top of that silt layer. And Mound A 0:05:45.080 --> 0:05:48.160 is twenty two high at its highest point, so that's 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:52.960 about seventy two ft or roughly seven stories. At its longest, 0:05:53.080 --> 0:05:57.240 it's about two long or six d and eighty nine ft. 0:05:57.920 --> 0:06:00.760 Mound A is shaped roughly like a he and some 0:06:00.880 --> 0:06:04.240 archaeologists believe it was meant to be representative of a bird. 0:06:04.520 --> 0:06:06.919 It would have taken more than ten million baskets of 0:06:07.000 --> 0:06:09.080 earth to make that mound, and you have to be 0:06:09.160 --> 0:06:11.680 more than one thousand feet in the air to actually 0:06:11.800 --> 0:06:16.120 see it all. All of these numbers sound just huge, 0:06:16.320 --> 0:06:20.360 and they really are. Mound Tea alone contains almost two 0:06:20.440 --> 0:06:24.000 hundred and forty thousand cubic meters of earth, and the 0:06:24.080 --> 0:06:27.560 only earthworks in the Eastern United States that that's larger 0:06:27.600 --> 0:06:30.760 than Mound A is Monks Mound and Khokia, which you 0:06:30.800 --> 0:06:34.320 can hear about in Sarah and Deeblina's Old episode. Mound 0:06:34.400 --> 0:06:37.559 A is more than twice as big as the next 0:06:37.680 --> 0:06:40.640 biggest mound that was built at about the same time, 0:06:41.120 --> 0:06:45.039 and it's fifty times bigger than the average earthworks from 0:06:45.040 --> 0:06:48.599 the period. What makes this even more stunning is that, 0:06:48.760 --> 0:06:51.200 based on how the bottom layers of earth and Mound 0:06:51.200 --> 0:06:54.880 A settled, it's likely that it was built really quickly, 0:06:55.080 --> 0:06:59.320 especially compared to the others which took generations. Based on 0:06:59.360 --> 0:07:02.039 an estimate of ninety days to build it, the labor 0:07:02.080 --> 0:07:04.479 force needed to build Mound A was more than one 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:08.839 thousand people. Logically, the laborers would have had children and 0:07:08.920 --> 0:07:11.280 people on the site who were doing other work besides 0:07:11.320 --> 0:07:14.640 the building, so the overall population there for that estimated 0:07:14.720 --> 0:07:20.040 ninety days was maybe roughly four thousand. There's no sign 0:07:20.240 --> 0:07:23.520 of homes on mound, a people didn't live on it, 0:07:23.880 --> 0:07:27.120 and it's generally thought to have been more ceremonial. It's 0:07:27.240 --> 0:07:32.480 definitely possible that the entire complex had religious or magical significance, 0:07:32.960 --> 0:07:35.360 given the way different parts of it line up with 0:07:35.360 --> 0:07:39.120 one another, and the repetitions of the number six, and 0:07:39.200 --> 0:07:43.560 a lot of the various artifacts um that uh that 0:07:43.720 --> 0:07:46.720 people have found around the site, and those are what 0:07:46.720 --> 0:07:48.680 we were going to talk about. After a brief word 0:07:48.760 --> 0:07:51.560 from a sponsor. That sounds like a capital idea, So 0:07:51.680 --> 0:07:55.200 to get back to poverty Point. People have found all 0:07:55.360 --> 0:07:59.320 kinds of artifacts at Poverty Point. The first mention of 0:07:59.360 --> 0:08:02.000 the place in writing is from the eighteen thirties, and 0:08:02.120 --> 0:08:04.240 this is when a settler had heard that there was 0:08:04.400 --> 0:08:06.720 lead in the area and he went looking for a 0:08:06.800 --> 0:08:09.520 lead mine. He was thinking he was going to open 0:08:09.600 --> 0:08:11.840 up the mind mine a bunch of lead, that was 0:08:11.880 --> 0:08:14.120 how he was going to make his fortune. What he 0:08:14.200 --> 0:08:17.680 actually found was, in his words, an Indian village, and 0:08:17.760 --> 0:08:21.240 there were artifacts that scattered all over the ground. And 0:08:21.360 --> 0:08:23.880 this lead was really galeno, which is a type of 0:08:24.000 --> 0:08:27.440 lead ore and that had been shaped into adornments, so 0:08:27.520 --> 0:08:31.400 there was no mind there. He was extremely disappointed. When 0:08:31.400 --> 0:08:34.640 the first real archaeological study of Poverty Points started in 0:08:34.760 --> 0:08:39.640 nineteen twelve, people found an abundance of artifacts. The overwhelming 0:08:39.679 --> 0:08:42.080 majority of them were on the ground, with many more 0:08:42.160 --> 0:08:45.720 just under the surface. Local people had also been finding 0:08:45.720 --> 0:08:48.160 and collecting these artifacts, some of which have now been 0:08:48.200 --> 0:08:52.080 turned over for study. The most common object found at 0:08:52.120 --> 0:08:55.240 Poverty Point has been named the Poverty Point object, and 0:08:55.320 --> 0:08:58.959 these are baked earthenware balls that were used as cooking stones. 0:08:59.240 --> 0:09:03.360 And there's all kinds of variety and exactly how Poverty 0:09:03.360 --> 0:09:06.680 Point objects are shaped and in what kind of designs 0:09:06.720 --> 0:09:09.600 were etched onto them before they were baked and hardened. 0:09:09.640 --> 0:09:13.520 But they fall into three main categories, which are balls, ropes, 0:09:13.559 --> 0:09:17.840 and bicones. So to use them, people would heat these 0:09:17.840 --> 0:09:20.120 objects in a fire and then they would transfer them 0:09:20.160 --> 0:09:23.960 into earthen ovens for cooking. Different shapes and sizes of 0:09:23.960 --> 0:09:27.480 the balls definitely hold heat at different temperatures and for 0:09:27.559 --> 0:09:30.800 different lengths of time, so this was most likely used 0:09:30.800 --> 0:09:35.240 deliberately to control the time and temperature of cooking. Also, 0:09:35.440 --> 0:09:38.040 in the realm of cooking. There is some pottery at 0:09:38.040 --> 0:09:43.120 Poverty Point, but overwhelmingly the vessels there are made from stone. 0:09:43.600 --> 0:09:46.880 One cache of broken vessels at the site contained almost 0:09:46.960 --> 0:09:50.920 three thousand pieces, which probably came from between two hundred 0:09:51.000 --> 0:09:55.200 and three hundred stone vessels. So shifting away from the 0:09:55.600 --> 0:09:58.160 cooking and edables arena, next up, we're going to talk 0:09:58.200 --> 0:10:02.520 about weapons and their parts. There are lots of projectile 0:10:02.600 --> 0:10:06.160 points and darts made from stone. Darts and spears were 0:10:06.200 --> 0:10:09.360 thrown using a tool called an addle addle. There are 0:10:09.400 --> 0:10:11.880 also lots of stone weights to give the addle addle 0:10:11.920 --> 0:10:16.680 more heft so the projectiles would go farther. Also in 0:10:16.720 --> 0:10:20.880 the category of weights, Poverty Point is full of plummets, 0:10:20.920 --> 0:10:23.440 and these are stones that were carved into drop like 0:10:23.640 --> 0:10:27.480 shapes which were used as weights on fishing nets. There 0:10:27.480 --> 0:10:30.800 are also tools all over Poverty Points, so we're talking 0:10:30.800 --> 0:10:34.040 about axes, ads, as, drills and the like, and a 0:10:34.120 --> 0:10:36.920 lot of these are stone tools made for working with stone, 0:10:37.360 --> 0:10:39.880 both to make more tools and a shape stone into 0:10:39.960 --> 0:10:45.800 more ceremonial and ornamental objects. These objects include beads, a 0:10:45.880 --> 0:10:49.199 lot of little potbellied owl figurines, which are my favorite. 0:10:49.400 --> 0:10:54.439 They're they're very charming. They're super charming. Um. There are 0:10:54.520 --> 0:10:58.200 human figurines which are mostly kind of androgynous. There are 0:10:58.240 --> 0:11:01.960 also tubes that are made of a substance called less 0:11:02.080 --> 0:11:04.760 as well as one's made from stone. It's not completely 0:11:04.840 --> 0:11:08.120 clear whether these were used as pipes for smoking things 0:11:08.240 --> 0:11:10.920 or whether they were used in ceremonies in some way, 0:11:11.520 --> 0:11:13.959 but there are a number of them from around the site. 0:11:15.080 --> 0:11:19.480 We have talked about stone so much already in this podcast. Uh. 0:11:19.520 --> 0:11:22.720 And in addition to all these tools, weapons, vessels, and ornaments, 0:11:23.080 --> 0:11:26.680 there's also stone along the tops of the ridges, more 0:11:26.720 --> 0:11:30.360 than seventy metric tons of it. But here's the thing, 0:11:31.200 --> 0:11:35.319 there's literally no natural stone existing at Poverty Point. To 0:11:35.440 --> 0:11:38.520 find stone locally, people at Poverty Point would have had 0:11:38.520 --> 0:11:41.120 to travel at least fifty kilometers and that would have 0:11:41.120 --> 0:11:43.200 been a two day trip. Even if people had been 0:11:43.200 --> 0:11:47.080 traveling along the water at that point. Between half and 0:11:47.240 --> 0:11:50.880 three quarters of the stone at Poverty Point actually isn't local. 0:11:51.360 --> 0:11:54.560 It's from way more than fifty kilometers away. A big 0:11:54.600 --> 0:11:58.160 portion of it is from more than a thousand kilometers away. 0:11:58.880 --> 0:12:01.560 And that's might have you scratching your head if this 0:12:01.640 --> 0:12:03.040 is the first you've heard of it. It is one 0:12:03.080 --> 0:12:06.120 of those revelations that will give pause. And we're going 0:12:06.160 --> 0:12:09.920 to talk about how that all uh came to be 0:12:10.080 --> 0:12:12.880 after our own pause for a quick word from a sponsor, 0:12:13.800 --> 0:12:16.640 so to return to all the stone at Poverty Point, 0:12:17.080 --> 0:12:20.280 all these axes and adornments and at Lattlewits, and all 0:12:20.320 --> 0:12:22.640 of all of the stuff they were made from stone 0:12:22.679 --> 0:12:25.960 and other materials that was not native to the Poverty 0:12:26.000 --> 0:12:29.040 Point site. All these various types of stone and flint 0:12:29.080 --> 0:12:32.200 and ore that were used to craft things that Poverty 0:12:32.240 --> 0:12:35.880 Point came from all over the Mississippi River Valley all 0:12:35.920 --> 0:12:38.440 the way up to the Great Lakes, and some of 0:12:38.480 --> 0:12:41.800 the sources for stone and or were from much farther 0:12:41.920 --> 0:12:45.439 east and west. The cash of vessel fragments we mentioned 0:12:45.480 --> 0:12:49.720 earlier came mostly from the Appalachian Mountains. They also got 0:12:49.760 --> 0:12:52.880 soap stone from what's now Georgia and quart site from 0:12:52.880 --> 0:12:55.760 what's now Alabama. At the same time, the goods that 0:12:55.800 --> 0:12:58.320 were made at Poverty Point made their way out into 0:12:58.360 --> 0:13:00.880 the rest of the Mississippi River vaal y and the 0:13:00.880 --> 0:13:05.520 southeast as well. Poverty Point objects are found in archaeological 0:13:05.559 --> 0:13:09.480 sites all over this region. There are also six different 0:13:09.559 --> 0:13:12.920 styles of weapon points and knives found at Poverty Point. 0:13:13.480 --> 0:13:16.800 These are also distributed around the surrounding area at various 0:13:16.880 --> 0:13:21.000 archaeological sites, but unlike at Poverty Point, these sites tend 0:13:21.040 --> 0:13:24.959 to have just one or two styles, not the vast array. 0:13:25.400 --> 0:13:28.680 All of this collected together points to the idea that 0:13:28.760 --> 0:13:31.960 Poverty Point was a gathering place for lots of people 0:13:32.480 --> 0:13:36.800 and a vibrantly active trading ground. People brought stone and 0:13:36.960 --> 0:13:39.880 lots of it from very far away and then returns 0:13:39.960 --> 0:13:42.319 to where they had came from with with items from 0:13:42.360 --> 0:13:46.720 Poverty Point. It's entirely possible that food was also part 0:13:46.760 --> 0:13:49.880 of Poverty Points trade, but that's a little bit more 0:13:49.920 --> 0:13:53.839 difficult to document. They definitely had an abundance of fish, deer, 0:13:53.960 --> 0:13:56.520 and nuts to hunt and gather, and we do know 0:13:56.559 --> 0:13:59.160 that these foods were staples in the diet at Poverty 0:13:59.160 --> 0:14:03.240 Point itself. It's a lot harder to track whether somebody 0:14:03.520 --> 0:14:05.800 got some fish and took it back with them and 0:14:05.800 --> 0:14:11.040 then ate it. Yeah, not not as easy to maintain 0:14:11.080 --> 0:14:14.400 those historical records. So here's where things really move into 0:14:14.400 --> 0:14:18.000 the weird not sure territory. At Poverty Point, we know 0:14:18.240 --> 0:14:20.840 lots of people came to the site to trade that 0:14:20.880 --> 0:14:25.840 there's this clear documentation in the archaeological record of massive 0:14:25.840 --> 0:14:29.160 amounts of trading from very far away, but we're really 0:14:29.200 --> 0:14:32.480 not sure how many people, if any, lived there permanently. 0:14:34.640 --> 0:14:38.640 For example, archaeologists suspect that people lived along the ridges, 0:14:39.320 --> 0:14:43.040 but no archaeological evidence has turned up yet for homes there. 0:14:43.840 --> 0:14:46.640 It's entirely possible that homes were made from materials that 0:14:46.680 --> 0:14:49.760 decayed over time, and the site was repeatedly plowed and 0:14:49.840 --> 0:14:52.560 used for farming for at least a century, so that 0:14:52.600 --> 0:14:56.600 could have easily destroyed some evidence. Even so, the presence 0:14:56.640 --> 0:14:59.920 the presence of zero evidence of houses is a bit 0:15:00.080 --> 0:15:03.120 the head scratcher. Uh. The idea that people lived along 0:15:03.120 --> 0:15:06.960 the ridges comes from the presence of middens basically trash 0:15:07.000 --> 0:15:10.480 deposits along the slopes of the ridges, along with the 0:15:10.520 --> 0:15:13.000 type and number of artifacts that are found along the 0:15:13.080 --> 0:15:17.480 ridges themselves. There's also no evidence of any burials at 0:15:17.520 --> 0:15:20.360 Poverty Point, which is something you would expect if people 0:15:20.400 --> 0:15:24.600 were living there full time. The only exception is that 0:15:24.720 --> 0:15:27.560 Mound B was built over the remains of a fire, 0:15:27.680 --> 0:15:30.200 and at least one body had been burned in that fire, 0:15:30.280 --> 0:15:33.120 but it's not entirely clear who that person was, or 0:15:33.120 --> 0:15:36.000 when it happened, or how that was related to other 0:15:36.040 --> 0:15:39.880 events at Poverty Point. Basically, there is too much trash 0:15:39.920 --> 0:15:42.120 on the site for it to have just been a 0:15:42.160 --> 0:15:44.800 seasonal trading ground that would have been left vacant for 0:15:44.840 --> 0:15:47.760 long stretches of the year, and the lack of burial 0:15:47.800 --> 0:15:49.960 sites makes it unlikely that it was a year round 0:15:50.000 --> 0:15:52.280 home for as many people as the size of the 0:15:52.280 --> 0:15:54.920 site would be able to support, So it remains a 0:15:54.920 --> 0:15:58.480 bit of a mystery. These two things kind of leave 0:15:58.520 --> 0:16:00.440 a lot of question mark. It seems like maybe there 0:16:00.480 --> 0:16:03.280 are some people who were there all the time and 0:16:03.720 --> 0:16:08.240 uh many many others who came to trade, But that's 0:16:08.520 --> 0:16:11.320 there's a lot of theory and not a lot of 0:16:11.320 --> 0:16:14.600 clear evidence for which might be the right one. It's 0:16:14.640 --> 0:16:17.920 also a bit of a mystery exactly who these people were. 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:21.960 There's not a specific known Native American tribe that's been 0:16:22.000 --> 0:16:24.800 tied to the construction of the mounds at Poverty Point 0:16:25.680 --> 0:16:28.880 or to all of the things that went on there. Instead, 0:16:29.000 --> 0:16:32.000 archaeologists have come up with a set of hallmarks that 0:16:32.080 --> 0:16:35.200 they used to define what's called Poverty Point culture, and 0:16:35.240 --> 0:16:39.960 this includes Poverty Point objects, projectile points and knives, lots 0:16:40.000 --> 0:16:43.800 of raw materials being used from really far away uh, 0:16:44.040 --> 0:16:48.320 creating of beads and plummets, and an overall hunter gatherer 0:16:48.360 --> 0:16:52.760 type of existence, especially relying on fish, deer, and nuts. 0:16:52.800 --> 0:16:57.200 And so this culture stretched roughly from Memphis to the 0:16:57.200 --> 0:17:01.960 Gulf of Mexico along the Mississippi River valley. However, some 0:17:02.040 --> 0:17:06.080 of these hallmarks, such as the Poverty Point objects, travel 0:17:06.160 --> 0:17:08.760 well and the last a very long time, So it's 0:17:08.760 --> 0:17:12.520 important not to just suppose that every hunter gatherer society 0:17:12.560 --> 0:17:16.960 that hunted with projectiles and used Poverty Point objects was 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:20.680 necessarily part of Poverty Point culture. On the last kind 0:17:20.680 --> 0:17:23.399 of mind blowing thing that I feel like there are 0:17:23.400 --> 0:17:25.400 many mind blowing things, or at least things that blew 0:17:25.480 --> 0:17:29.800 my mind in this episode. Um archaeologists used to think 0:17:29.840 --> 0:17:33.680 that because of the huge complexity and engineering scale of 0:17:33.720 --> 0:17:36.200 the mounds and ridges, and because of all that non 0:17:36.280 --> 0:17:38.960 local sourcing of the stone that they needed, but the 0:17:39.000 --> 0:17:42.360 Poverty Point people must have been an agricultural society sort of. 0:17:42.920 --> 0:17:45.560 The society would have had to develop to the point 0:17:45.640 --> 0:17:48.679 of being able to sustain agriculture before being able to 0:17:48.720 --> 0:17:52.640 do all of these other things. But more recent research 0:17:52.680 --> 0:17:56.840 really undoes that idea. We just don't have the archaeological 0:17:56.920 --> 0:17:59.560 evidence of agriculture going on at the site, and the 0:17:59.600 --> 0:18:02.080 amount of labor and time that it would have taken 0:18:02.119 --> 0:18:05.520 to raise all of these mounds couldn't really have happened 0:18:05.680 --> 0:18:08.560 if the you know, the same or more amount of 0:18:08.640 --> 0:18:11.640 labor was also required to raise crops and take care 0:18:11.680 --> 0:18:16.480 of domestic animals. So, basically, based on the evidence we have, 0:18:16.960 --> 0:18:20.960 and contrary to what people supposed about what hunter gatherer 0:18:21.040 --> 0:18:24.680 societies were capable of doing, the people at Poverty Point 0:18:25.000 --> 0:18:29.760 or hunter gatherers who built these massively large and complex 0:18:30.040 --> 0:18:33.920 engineering feats, which are actually unique in the Native American world. 0:18:33.960 --> 0:18:37.000 There's no other ridge structure like the one at Poverty 0:18:37.000 --> 0:18:40.720 Point that's been found anywhere else. They also appear to 0:18:40.840 --> 0:18:44.320 have been a really egalitarian culture, so they shared their 0:18:44.400 --> 0:18:47.439 labor and their resources, even though the site where they 0:18:47.520 --> 0:18:50.200 lived was the biggest in the region. They don't seem 0:18:50.240 --> 0:18:54.119 to have been wealthier than the surrounding communities. There doesn't 0:18:54.119 --> 0:18:57.320 even appear to have been any kind of wealth disparity 0:18:57.400 --> 0:19:00.440 among the people who lived in or visited Poverty Point. 0:19:00.600 --> 0:19:03.800 There has to have been some kind of leadership or 0:19:03.840 --> 0:19:07.520 at least management, because that would have been necessary to 0:19:07.680 --> 0:19:10.399 plan and manage all of the building of these ridges 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:13.520 and mounds, especially the ones that went The construction went 0:19:13.560 --> 0:19:16.199 on for years and years um. But we have no 0:19:16.400 --> 0:19:20.720 textiles surviving from the site and definitely no written records. 0:19:20.800 --> 0:19:24.080 So all of that goes back into the realm of 0:19:24.240 --> 0:19:28.399 theory and conclusions drawn from the archaeological evidence that we have. 0:19:28.840 --> 0:19:31.520 In addition to all these other question marks about some 0:19:31.560 --> 0:19:34.520 of the specifics of the people's in the life at 0:19:34.560 --> 0:19:38.639 Poverty Point, we also don't know why people eventually left 0:19:38.720 --> 0:19:43.080 Poverty Point. One possible explanation is that when Poverty Point 0:19:43.119 --> 0:19:45.440 was in use, there may have been a lake adjacent 0:19:45.480 --> 0:19:48.080 to the site which was used for fishing. Uh. We 0:19:48.160 --> 0:19:50.280 know that fish are definitely abundant in those parts of 0:19:50.280 --> 0:19:53.320 the waterways, and that they were a dietary staple, so 0:19:53.359 --> 0:19:55.240 if the lake had dried up, there would not have 0:19:55.320 --> 0:19:58.919 been enough to feed anybody anymore, and that could have 0:19:58.960 --> 0:20:03.040 caused them to exit. The State of Louisiana bought four 0:20:03.119 --> 0:20:07.520 hundred acres of the site in two I'm sure when 0:20:07.520 --> 0:20:11.160 we put this on our Facebook page, someone will put 0:20:11.160 --> 0:20:16.919 the Aliens guy from the History Channel ship on there. Um. Yes, indeed, 0:20:17.040 --> 0:20:19.040 because there's just a whole lot of This was a 0:20:19.080 --> 0:20:23.719 massively impressive archaeological feat, and we are not sure exactly 0:20:24.280 --> 0:20:30.600 who built it or why Aliens. I don't actually think 0:20:30.600 --> 0:20:32.800 it was Aliens. I always think it's really cool when 0:20:33.840 --> 0:20:36.640 researchers have an idea in their minds about how society 0:20:36.680 --> 0:20:40.920 functioned and then they find something that undoes that whole idea. Like, 0:20:41.920 --> 0:20:45.560 you know, societies must have progressed to being able to 0:20:45.600 --> 0:20:48.720 farm things agriculturally before they are sophisticated enough to do 0:20:48.800 --> 0:20:53.879 these other things. Oh, actually, no, that seems not to 0:20:53.920 --> 0:20:58.360 be the case. This brings back um such fond memories 0:20:58.400 --> 0:21:00.159 of when I was a kid in school and I 0:21:00.200 --> 0:21:04.080 grew up part of the time in northwest Florida, and 0:21:04.119 --> 0:21:07.199 we visited uh An Indian Mound as one of our 0:21:07.240 --> 0:21:10.959 field trip. Yes, we had, but it was nothing comparable. 0:21:11.320 --> 0:21:15.080 We had. We had a mound where we visited near 0:21:15.119 --> 0:21:18.560 where I grew up that was called Town Creek Indian Mound, 0:21:18.640 --> 0:21:21.120 and that is still what it is called today because 0:21:21.119 --> 0:21:23.359 I looked it up. Uh And that is a place 0:21:23.400 --> 0:21:25.720 that some of the mounds were used as burial sites. 0:21:25.840 --> 0:21:31.800 And then nearer ish to Atlanta is Ottawa Mounds, which 0:21:31.840 --> 0:21:34.200 I think also some of them were used as burial sites. 0:21:34.320 --> 0:21:37.679 So having had these normally enormous mounds that were not 0:21:37.840 --> 0:21:41.399 burial sites was another thing. Um, it was sort of 0:21:41.440 --> 0:21:44.080 foreign to me. And this whole idea, along with the 0:21:44.119 --> 0:21:47.040 idea of living somewhere where there's no stone everywhere I 0:21:47.040 --> 0:21:50.240 have ever lived as very rocky, and so I was like, 0:21:50.280 --> 0:21:52.399 what do you mean there is no stone in the 0:21:52.640 --> 0:21:58.560 Stone Age Society's home. It does, uh sort of cause 0:21:58.640 --> 0:22:00.720 you to have to shift your thinking of out how 0:22:01.000 --> 0:22:04.160 that could exist and be a thing, because I, like you, 0:22:04.200 --> 0:22:07.760 I'm like, what what? What? No stone at all? Are 0:22:07.800 --> 0:22:11.240 you sure that? I've been wondering if it was hyperbole? 0:22:11.480 --> 0:22:16.439 But you know, all of these respectable archaeologists were saying 0:22:16.440 --> 0:22:18.560 over and over that there was no stone. They would 0:22:18.600 --> 0:22:22.359 have had to go fifty kilometers to get stone. Really okay? 0:22:23.160 --> 0:22:27.600 So Uh, I also have some listener mail. We got 0:22:27.640 --> 0:22:33.160 several listener mail slash tweet slash Facebook messages after our 0:22:33.440 --> 0:22:39.400 series on China under Chairman Mao Um of people asking uh, 0:22:39.760 --> 0:22:42.840 how people in China now think about these events or 0:22:43.800 --> 0:22:48.280 more personal stories about UM, what people experienced who were 0:22:48.320 --> 0:22:50.400 living in China at the time, and we have gotten 0:22:50.440 --> 0:22:52.960 the other listener mail that answers some of those questions. 0:22:53.359 --> 0:22:56.200 So I'm going to read from one of them today, 0:22:56.200 --> 0:22:59.520 and this is from Coco Um and Coco says, most 0:22:59.560 --> 0:23:01.800 of my not ledge of the Cultural Revolution comes from 0:23:01.800 --> 0:23:03.920 my parents, who were born in the fifties. I grew 0:23:03.960 --> 0:23:06.800 up in China during the nineties, and while the Cultural 0:23:06.840 --> 0:23:10.560 Revolution was in the textbooks, all the blame were placed 0:23:10.600 --> 0:23:14.400 on the Gang of Four. My dad's father was imprisoned 0:23:14.520 --> 0:23:16.919 during that time. I don't know the details because it's 0:23:16.960 --> 0:23:19.560 still a very sensitive topic with my dad. He was 0:23:19.640 --> 0:23:22.359 horribly bullied as a child because his father was a 0:23:22.440 --> 0:23:25.879 counter revolutionary. From what I've been able to gather, my 0:23:25.920 --> 0:23:29.920 grandfather worked as a professor. Together with some of his colleagues, 0:23:29.920 --> 0:23:33.159 he participated in the one hundred Flowers campaign and was 0:23:33.200 --> 0:23:37.560 subsequently labeled a rightist and counter revolutionary. According to my grandmother, 0:23:37.600 --> 0:23:40.080