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78-488: The Orators Mound is a Native American mound in the western part of the U.S. state of Ohio . Although its cultural affiliation is disputed, it is an important archaeological site . In 1908, forty-one different earthworks were known in Greene County . One of these is located atop the cliffs near a large natural spring called the "Yellow Spring", close to the village of Yellow Springs . Because of its location near

156-507: A Jesuit priest, met the Natchez people , as did Le Page du Pratz (1758), a French explorer. Both observed them in the area that today is known as Mississippi. The Natchez were devout worshippers of the sun . Having a population of some 4,000, they occupied at least nine villages and were presided over by a paramount chief , known as the Great Sun, who wielded absolute power. Both observers noted

234-474: A lost race that had inhabited America even before the Native Americans. This idea is now referred to as the "mound builder myth" and still has supporters in society today. The book grew in popularity because of Priest's views on Native Americans. "It tapped into the widely accepted view of those times that Native Americans were merely bloodthirsty savages, bent on the destruction of all but their own race. It

312-458: A "sister culture" of the Mississippian horizon, or one of the "Mississippianised" cultures adjacent to the main area of the mound building cultures. This culture was also mostly extinct in the 17th century, but remnants may have survived into the first half of the 18th century. While this culture shows strong Mississippian influences, its bearers were most likely ethnolinguistically distinct from

390-499: A complex society with high population densities developed by 800 AD. Later periods in the Caloosahatchee culture are defined by the appearance of pottery from other traditions in the archaeological record. The coast in the Caloosahatchee culture region is a very rich estuarine environment. An extensive network of bays and sounds are protected behind barrier islands . The Caloosahatchee , Myakka and Peace rivers flow into

468-454: A conclusion on the archaeological culture that built the mound. Van Wort found five skeletons within the mound — two men and three infants — that he interpreted as being from the Adena culture , as well as Adena-style projectile points . Conversely, Marschall's team recovered detailed information about skeletons, grave goods , their relationships with each other, and the general stratigraphy of

546-520: A continuation of site usage. During the Terminal Coles Creek period (1150 to 1250 CE), contact increased with Mississippian cultures centered upriver near the future St. Louis, Missouri . This resulted in the adaption of new pottery techniques , as well as new ceremonial objects and possibly new social patterns during the Plaquemine period. As more Mississippian cultural influences were absorbed,

624-572: A first-hand description in his Historia de la Florida (published in 1605, Lisbon, as La Florida del Inca ) describing how the Indians had built mounds and how the Native American mound cultures practiced their traditional way of life. De la Vega's accounts also include vital details about the Native American tribes' systems of government present in the southeast, tribal territories, and the construction of mounds and temples. A few French expeditions in

702-410: A groove incised around one end) of limestone are thought to have been used as fishing net weights. Dippers, cups, spoons, beads, cutting-edge tools and hammers were made from shells. Awls , beads, pendants, pins, gorges, barbs , and points were made from bone. Ceremonial tablets were incised on non-native stone (presumably imported from other areas). Although outside the Caloosahatchee region proper,

780-481: A group ruled by a queen, Cofitachequi . She told him that the mounds within her territory served as burial places for nobles. The artist Jacques le Moyne , who had accompanied French settlers to northeastern Florida during the 1560s, likewise noted Native American groups using existing mounds and constructing others. He produced a series of watercolor paintings depicting scenes of native life. Although most of his paintings have been lost, some engravings were copied from

858-564: A representation of a man in flowing robes. When translated, once again by McCarty, the inscription was found to include the entire Ten Commandments , and the robed figure was identified as Moses . Naturally enough, it became known as the Decalogue Stone . Rather than being found beneath only a foot or two of soil, the Decalogue Stone was claimed to have been buried beneath a forty-foot-tall stone mound. Instead of modern Hebrew typography,

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936-473: A single moment. Never dried, never froze, never slept, never rested. The antiquarian author William Pidgeon in 1858 created fraudulent surveys of mound groups that did not exist. Beginning in the 1880s, the supposed origin of the earthworks with a race of giants was increasingly recognized as spurious. Pidgeon's fraudulent claims about the archaeological record were shown to be a hoax by Theodore Lewis in 1886. A major factor contributing to public acceptance of

1014-544: A then-current understanding of pre-Columbian civilizations, including the formative Mesoamerican civilizations such as the (Pre-Classic) Olmec , Maya , and Zapotec . Lafcadio Hearn in 1876 wrote about a theory that the mounds were built by people from the lost continent of Atlantis. The Reverend Landon West in 1901 claimed that the Serpent Mound in Ohio was built by God, or by man inspired by him. He believed that God built

1092-468: A variety of other forms. They were generally built as part of complex villages. The early earthworks built in Louisiana around 3500 BCE are the only ones known to have been built by a hunter-gatherer culture, rather than a more settled culture based on agricultural surpluses. The best-known flat-topped pyramidal structure is Monks Mound at Cahokia , near present-day Collinsville, Illinois . This community

1170-781: Is a Late Woodland culture (700–1200 CE) in the Lower Mississippi Valley in the Southern United States that marks a significant change in the cultural history of the area. Population and cultural and political complexity increased, especially by the end of the Coles Creek period. Although many of the classic traits of chiefdom societies had not yet developed, by 1000 CE, the formation of simple elite polities had begun. Coles Creek sites are found in Arkansas, Louisiana , Oklahoma , Mississippi , and Texas . The Coles Creek culture

1248-460: Is a striking complex of more than 1 square mile (2.6 km ), where six earthwork crescent ridges were built in concentric arrangement, interrupted by radial aisles. Three mounds are also part of the main complex, and evidence of residences extends for about 3 miles (4.8 km) along the bank of Bayou Macon . It is the major site among 100 associated with the Poverty Point culture and is one of

1326-645: Is considered ancestral to the Plaquemine culture. Around 900–1450 CE, the Mississippian culture developed and spread through the Eastern United States, primarily along the river valleys. The largest regional center where the Mississippian culture was first definitely developed is located in Illinois along a tributary of the Mississippi and is referred to as Cahokia . It had several regional variants including

1404-606: Is located in the floodplain of the Ouachita River near Monroe in northern Louisiana. Securely dated to about 5,400 years ago (around 3500 BCE), in the Middle Archaic period, it consists of a formation of 11 mounds from 3 feet (0.91 m) to 25 feet (7.6 m) tall, connected by ridges to form an oval nearly 900 feet (270 m) across. In the Americas, the building of complex earthwork mounds started at an early date, well before

1482-535: Is now the Eastern United States, stretching as far south as Crystal River in western Florida. During this time, in parts of present-day Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana, the Hopewellian Marksville culture degenerated and was succeeded by the Baytown culture . Reasons for degeneration include attacks from other tribes or the impact of severe climatic changes undermining agriculture. The Coles Creek culture

1560-645: Is one of 11 mound complexes from this period found in the Lower Mississippi Valley. These cultures generally had developed hierarchical societies that had an elite. These commanded hundreds or even thousands of workers to dig up tons of earth with the hand tools available, move the soil long distances, and finally, workers to create the shape with layers of soil as directed by the builders. However early mounds found in Louisiana preceded such cultures and were products of hunter-gatherer cultures. From about 800 CE,

1638-611: Is the name for a Native American culture that flourished from 1000 to 1650 CE among a people who predominantly inhabited land along the Ohio River in areas of modern-day southern Ohio, northern Kentucky , and western West Virginia . A continuation of the Coles Creek culture in the lower Mississippi River Valley in western Mississippi and eastern Louisiana. Examples include the Medora site in West Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana; and

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1716-570: Is unlikely. The spread of the Mississippian culture from the late 1st millennium CE most likely involved cultural assimilation, in archaeological terminology called "Mississippianised" cultures. 19th-century ethnography assumed that the Mound-builders were an ancient prehistoric race with no direct connection to the Southeastern Woodland peoples of the historical period who were encountered by Europeans. A reference to this idea appears in

1794-494: The Anna and Emerald Mound sites in Mississippi. Sites inhabited by Plaquemine peoples continued to be used as vacant ceremonial centers without large village areas much as their Coles Creek ancestors had done, although their layout began to show influences from Middle Mississippian peoples to the north. The Winterville and Holly Bluff (Lake George) sites in western Mississippi are good examples that exemplify this change of layout, but

1872-625: The Grand Village close to present-day Natchez, Mississippi . In 1729 the Natchez revolted and massacred the French colony of Fort Rosalie. The French retaliated by destroying all the Natchez villages. The remaining Natchez fled in scattered bands to live among the Chickasaw , Creek , and Cherokee people . They traveled with them on the trail of tears when federal Indian removal policies after 1830 forced

1950-693: The Norse colonization of North America . In 1797, Barton reconsidered his position and correctly identified the mounds as part of indigenous prehistory. Notable for the association with the Ten Lost Tribes is the Book of Mormon (1830). This provides a related belief, as its narrative describes two major immigrations to the Americas from Mesopotamia : the Jaredites (ca. 3000 - 2000 BCE) and an Israelite group during 590 BCE (termed Nephites , Lamanites and Mulekites ). While

2028-671: The pyramids of Egypt were constructed. Watson Brake was being constructed nearly 2,000 years before the better-known Poverty Point , and the building continued for 500 years. Middle Archaic mound construction seems to have ceased about 2800 BCE. Scholars have not ascertained the reason, but it may have been because of changes in river patterns or other environmental factors. With the 1990s dating of Watson Brake and similar complexes, scholars established that pre-agricultural, pre-ceramic American societies could organize to accomplish complex construction during extended periods, invalidating scholars' traditional ideas of Archaic society. Watson Brake

2106-409: The 1560s reported staying with Indian societies who had built mounds. Later explorers to the same regions, only a few decades after mound-building settlements had been reported, found the regions largely depopulated with its residents vanished and the mounds untended. Conflicts with Europeans were dismissed by historians as the major cause of population reduction since few clashes had occurred between

2184-479: The 17th century ( Beaver Wars period). Carbon dating seems to indicate that they were wiped out by successive waves of disease. Because of the disappearance of the cultures by the end of the 17th century, the identification of the bearers of these cultures was an open question in 19th-century ethnography. Modern stratigraphic dating has established that the "Mound builders" have spanned an extended period of more than five millennia so that any ethnolinguistic continuity

2262-449: The Caloosahatchee culture region, including one site classified as early Archaic. There is evidence that Charlotte Harbor aquatic resources were being intensively exploited before 3500 BC. Undecorated pottery belonging to the early Glades culture appeared in the region around 500 BC. Pottery distinct from the Glades tradition developed in the Caloosahatchee region around 500 AD, and

2340-591: The Earth." Charles Whittlesey , who was one of the foremost archaeologists at that time, pronounced the stone to be authentic. The Newark Holy Stones, if genuine, would provide support for monogenesis , since they would establish that American Indians could be encompassed within Biblical history. After his first expedition, Wyrick uncovered a small stone box that was found to contain an intricately carved slab of black limestone covered with archaic-looking Hebrew letters along with

2418-468: The Indians had not built them." Priest's racism has also been discussed in detail by author Robert Silverberg , archaeologist Stephen Williams , and author Jason Colavito . Later authors placing the Book of Mormon in this context include Silverberg (1969), Brodie (1971), Kennedy (1994), and Garlinghouse (2001). Some nineteenth-century archaeological finds (e.g., earth and timber fortifications and towns,

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2496-691: The Middle Mississippian culture of Cahokia, the South Appalachian Mississippian variant at Moundville and Etowah , the Plaquemine Mississippian variant in south Louisiana and Mississippi, and the Caddoan Mississippian culture of northwestern Louisiana, eastern Texas, and southwestern Arkansas. Like the mound builders of the Ohio, these peoples built gigantic mounds as burial and ceremonial places. Fort Ancient

2574-725: The Mississippians, possibly belonging to the Siouan phylum. The only tribal name associated with the Fort Ancient culture in the historical record is the Mosopelea , recorded by Jean-Baptiste-Louis Franquelin in 1684 as inhabiting eight villages north of the Ohio River. The Mosopelea is most likely identical to the Ofo ( Oufé , Offogoula ) recorded in the same area in the 18th century. The Ofo language

2652-697: The Mound Builders were not identical to the Southeast Woodland Native Americans of the 18th century. It is now thought that the most likely bearers of the Plaquemine culture , a late variant of the Mississippian culture, were ancestral to the related Natchez and Taensa peoples. The Natchez language is a language isolate. The Natchez are known to have historically occupied the Lower Mississippi Valley . They are first mentioned in French sources of around 1700, when they were centered around

2730-543: The Native Americans out of the Southeast and west of the Mississippi River to Indian Territory (admitted in the early 20th century as the state of Oklahoma . The Natchez language became extinct in the 20th century, with the death in 1957 of the last known native speaker, Nancy Raven . Based on the idea that the origins of the mound builders lay with a mysterious ancient people, various other suggestions were belonging to

2808-575: The Nephites, Lamanites, and Mulekites were all of Jewish origin coming from Israel around 590 BCE, the Jaradites were a non-Abrahamic people separate in all aspects, except in a belief in Jehovah, from the Nephites. The Book of Mormon depicts these settlers building magnificent cities, which were destroyed by warfare about CE 385. The Book of Mormon can be placed in the tradition of the "Mound-Builder literature" of

2886-626: The Plaquemine area as a distinct culture began to shrink after CE 1350. Eventually, the last enclave of purely Plaquemine culture was the Natchez Bluffs area, while the Yazoo Basin and adjacent areas of Louisiana became a hybrid Plaquemine-Mississippi culture. This division was recorded by Europeans when they first arrived in the area. In the Natchez Bluffs area, the Taensa and Natchez people had held out against Mississippian influence and continued to use

2964-489: The Plaquemine culture were presumably speakers of the Natchez language isolate. The first written description of these cultures were made by members of Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto 's expedition, between 1540 and 1542. The namesake cultural trait of the Mound Builders was the building of mounds and other earthworks. These burial and ceremonial structures were typically flat-topped pyramids or platform mounds , flat-topped or rounded cones, elongated ridges, and sometimes

3042-475: The Spanish conquistador , traversed what became the southeastern United States. There he encountered many different mound-builder peoples who were perhaps descendants of the great Mississippian culture . De Soto observed people living in fortified towns with lofty mounds and plazas and surmised that many of the mounds served as foundations for priestly temples. Near present-day Augusta, Georgia , de Soto encountered

3120-467: The age of the earliest Archaic mound complex in southeastern Louisiana. One of the two Monte Sano Site mounds, excavated in 1967 before being destroyed for new construction at Baton Rouge, was dated at 6220 BP (plus or minus 140 years). Researchers at the time thought that such hunter-gatherer societies were not organizationally capable of this type of construction. It has since been dated as about 6500 BP or 4500 BCE, although not all agree. Watson Brake

3198-466: The age of the earthworks. In his book, Antiquities Discovered in the Western States (1820), Atwater claimed that "Indian remains" were always found right beneath the surface of the earth, while artifacts associated with the Mound Builders were found fairly deep in the ground. Atwater argued that they must be from a different group of people. The discovery of metal artifacts further convinced people that

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3276-413: The best-known early examples of earthwork monumental architecture. Unlike the localized societies during the Middle Archaic, this culture showed evidence of a wide trading network outside its area, which is one of its distinguishing characteristics. Horr's Island , Florida, now a gated community next to Marco Island , was excavated by Michael Russo in 1980. He found an Archaic Indian village site. Mound A

3354-522: The characters on the stone were blocky and appeared to be an ancient form of the Hebrew alphabet. Finally, the stone bore no resemblance to any modern Masonic artifact. In 1870, Whittlesey declared finally that the Holy Stones and other similar artifacts were "Archaeological Frauds." In 19th-century America, many popular mythologies surrounding the origin of the mounds were in circulation, typically involving

3432-735: The cultures were present in the region of the Great Lakes , the Ohio River Valley, Florida, and the Mississippi River Valley and its tributary waters. The first mound building was an early marker of political and social complexity among the cultures in the Eastern United States. Watson Brake in Louisiana, constructed about 3500 BCE during the Middle Archaic period , is the oldest known and dated mound complex in North America. It

3510-424: The early 2000s. In a January 2023 episode of Tucker Carlson 's Fox Nation show Tucker Carlson Today had a guest who stated that: "They didn't build 'em. Someone before them built 'em". Carlson replied: "That's right" and said there was "skeletal evidence of people who bear no genetic resemblance to the current Indians". On June 29, 1860, David Wyrick, the surveyor of Licking County near Newark , discovered

3588-499: The earthworks as a regular part of North American prehistory was the 1894 report by Cyrus Thomas of the Bureau of American Ethnology . Earlier authors making a similar case include Thomas Jefferson , who excavated a mound and from the artifacts and burial practices, noted similarities between mound-builder funeral practices and those of Native Americans in his time. Caloosahatchee culture Some Archaic artifacts have been found in

3666-512: The estuary. There are extensive areas of mangrove and seagrass in the estuary, resulting in high biological production. The people of the Caloosahatchee culture built mounds. Some of the mounds in Caloosahatchee settlements were undisturbed shell middens , but other were constructed from midden and earth materials. The hundreds of sites identified range from simple small middens to complex sites with earthwork platform mounds , plazas , "water courts", causeways , and canals . Mound Key , in

3744-529: The great flood disappeared, Noah and his ark landed in America. While surveying the land, Noah also discovered mounds that had been constructed before the waters rose. Upon seeing this, Noah questioned where these agricultural phenomena came from. "Surveying the various themes of mound builder origins, he could not decide whether the mounds were the work of Polynesians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Israelites, Scandinavians, Welsh, Scotts, or Chinese, although he felt certain

3822-469: The height of their owners estimated at 14 feet (4.3 m). President Abraham Lincoln referred to the giants whose bones fill the mounds of America. But still there is more. It calls up the indefinite past. When Columbus first sought this continent – when Christ suffered on the cross – when Moses led Israel through the Red-Sea – nay, even, when Adam first came from the hand of his Maker – then as now, Niagara

3900-510: The high temple mounds that the Natchez had built so that the Great Sun could commune with God, the sun. His large residence was built atop the highest mound, from "which, every morning, he greeted the rising sun, invoking thanks and blowing tobacco smoke to the four cardinal directions". The most complete reference for these earthworks is Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley , written by Ephraim G. Squier and Edwin H. Davis. It

3978-833: The middle of Estero Bay, covers 70–80 acres (28–32 ha), and includes mounds up to 31 feet (9.4 m) tall. A canal penetrates more than halfway into Mound Key, passing between two mounds and ending in a roughly rectangular pool. The Caloosahatchee people derived 80% to 90% of their animal food from fish . Shellfish , including crabs were also important. Minor components of their diet included white-tailed deer , other mammals , waterfowl such as ducks , American alligators , turtles , West Indian manatees and sea urchins . Plants collected as food included various wild roots, mastic fruit, prickly pear cactus fruit, palm fruits, sea grapes , hogplum , and cocoplum . Tools and ornaments made of wood, bone, stone and shell have been found. Perforated stones and plummets (oblong stones with

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4056-437: The middle of the mound but missed slightly to the northern side. A more systematic excavation was conducted in 1971 by Antioch College students under the supervision of archaeologist Wolfgang Marschall; under his work, Van Wort's work was exposed, and approximately one-third of the entire mound was excavated. Their work revealed the presence of a burial chamber at the heart of the mound. Archaeologists have failed to come to

4134-520: The more general genre of Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact theories , specifically involving Vikings , Atlantis , and the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel , summarised by Feder (2006) under the heading of "The Myth of a Vanished Race". Benjamin Smith Barton in his Observations on Some Parts of Natural History (1787) proposed the theory that the Mound Builders were associated with "Danes", i.e. with

4212-742: The mound and placed it as a symbol of the story of the Garden of Eden . More recently, Black nationalist websites claiming association with the Moorish Science Temple of America , have taken up the Atlantean (" Mu ") association of the Mound Builders. Similarly, the " Washitaw Nation ", a group associated with the Moorish Science Temple of America established in the 1990s, has been associated with mound-building in Black nationalist online articles of

4290-536: The mound, and their work concluded that the mound was produced by later Hopewellian peoples. Seven skeletons from this excavation, along with various artifacts and records of the excavation, were placed in the Dayton Museum of Natural History . The mound's location within Glen Helen puts it in the bounds of a nature reserve and a National Natural Landmark. It was given further protection in 1974, at which time it

4368-483: The mound-building cultures were dominated by the Mississippian culture , a large archaeological horizon, whose youngest descendants, the Plaquemine culture and the Fort Ancient culture , were still active at the time of European contact in the 16th century. One tribe of the Fort Ancient culture has been identified as the Mosopelea , presumably of southeast Ohio, who spoke an Ohio Valley Siouan language . The bearers of

4446-537: The mounds being built by a race of giants . A New York Times article from 1897 described a mound in Wisconsin in which a giant human skeleton measuring over 9 feet (2.7 m) in length was found. In 1886, another New York Times article described water receding from a mound in Cartersville, Georgia , which uncovered acres of skulls and bones, some of which were said to be gigantic. Two thigh bones were measured with

4524-511: The natives and the Europeans in the area during the same period. The most widely accepted explanation today is that new infectious diseases brought from the Old World, such as smallpox and influenza , had decimated most of the Native Americans from the last mound-builder civilization, as they had no immunity to such diseases. The Fort Ancient culture of the Ohio River valley is considered

4602-451: The next century. However, there were also other European accounts, earlier than 1560, that give a first-hand description of the enormous earth-built mounds being constructed by Native Americans. One of them was Garcilaso de la Vega (c.1539–1616), a Spanish chronicler also known as " El Inca " because of his Incan mother. He was the record-keeper of the noted De Soto expedition that landed in present-day Florida on May 31, 1538. Garcilaso gave

4680-474: The originals and published in 1591 by a Flemish company. Among these is a depiction of the burial of an aboriginal Floridian tribal chief, an occasion of great mourning and ceremony. The original caption reads: Sometimes the deceased king of this province is buried with great solemnity, and his great cup from which he was accustomed to drink is placed on a tumulus with many arrows set about it. Maturin Le Petit ,

4758-456: The period and has been called "the most famous and certainly the most influential of all Mound-Builder literature". Josiah Priest 's 1833 400-page publication American Antiquities centered around his study of the Bible and antiquarian journals, supplemented by information from his travels. After visiting earthworks in Ohio and New York, Priest concluded that these mounds could be traced back to

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4836-455: The poem "The Prairies" (1832) by William Cullen Bryant . The cultural stage of the Southeastern Woodland natives encountered in the 18th and 19th centuries by British colonists was deemed incompatible with the comparatively advanced stone, metal , and clay artifacts of the archaeological record. The age of the earthworks was also partly over-estimated. Caleb Atwater 's misunderstanding of stratigraphy caused him to significantly overestimate

4914-490: The region, since locals are known to have added earth to the mound to resist erosion. Today, the mound is located within the Glen Helen Nature Preserve , a National Natural Landmark . The earliest known excavation of the mound took place in 1953 and 1954, under the supervision of a man known as Frank Van Wort; little of this excavation is known, because Van Wort published no reports of his work nor wrote any surviving unpublished reports. It appeared that he tried to dig through

4992-432: The same sites as their ancestors. The Plaquemine culture is considered directly ancestral to these historic period groups encountered by Europeans. Groups who appear to have absorbed more Mississippian influence were identified as those tribes speaking the Tunican , Chitimachan , and Muskogean languages . Following the description by Jacques le Moyne in 1560, the mound-building cultures seem to have disappeared within

5070-439: The so-called "Keystone" in a shallow excavation at the monumental Newark Earthworks , which is an extraordinary set of ancient geometric enclosures created by Indigenous people. There he dug up a four-sided, plumb-bob -shaped stone with Hebrew letters engraved on each of its faces. The local Episcopal minister John W. McCarty translated the four inscriptions as "Law of the Lord," “Word of the Lord," “Holy of Holies," and "King of

5148-459: The spring, it was plainly known throughout much of prehistory. During the 1840 election campaign , the mound served as an orator's platform for Daniel Webster and Henry Clay , who spoke before a great audience on the same summer afternoon. Until it was excavated in 1953, the mound was built of stone and measured 15 metres (49 ft) in diameter and 1.6 metres (5 ft 3 in) high, although its size may have grown since white settlement of

5226-522: The term has no formal meaning. It does not refer to specific people or archaeological culture but refers to the characteristic mound earthworks that indigenous peoples erected for an extended period of more than 5,000 years. The "Mound Builder" cultures span the period of roughly 3500 BCE (the construction of Watson Brake ) to the 16th century CE, including the Archaic period ( Horr's Island ), Woodland period ( Caloosahatchee , Adena and Hopewell cultures ), and Mississippian period . Geographically,

5304-403: The use of a plaster-like cement, ancient roads, metal points and implements, copper breastplates, head-plates, textiles, pearls, native North American inscriptions, North American elephant remains etc.) were well-publicized at the time of the publication of the Book of Mormon and there is the incorporation of some of these ideas into the narrative. References are made in the Book of Mormon to

5382-416: Was a burial mound that dated to 3400 BCE, making it the oldest known burial mound in North America. The oldest mound associated with the Woodland period was the mortuary mound and pond complex at the Fort Center site in Glade County, Florida. Excavations and dating in 2012 by Thompson and Pluckhahn show that work began around 2600 BCE, seven centuries before the mound-builders in Ohio. The Archaic period

5460-529: Was an urban settlement with 20,000–30,000 people. This population was not exceeded by North American European settlements until after 1800. Some effigy mounds were constructed in the shapes or outlines of culturally significant animals. The most famous effigy mound, Serpent Mound in southern Ohio, ranges from 1 foot (0.30 m) to just over 3 feet (0.91 m) tall, 20 feet (6.1 m) wide, more than 1,330 feet (410 m) long, and shaped as an undulating serpent . Between 1540 and 1542, Hernando de Soto ,

5538-419: Was built by a hunter-gatherer society, the people of which occupied this area only on a seasonal basis. Successive generations organized to build the complex mounds over 500 years. Their food consisted mostly of fish and deer, as well as available plants. Poverty Point, built about 1500 BCE in what is now Louisiana, is a prominent example of Late Archaic mound-builder construction (around 2500 BCE – 1000 BCE). It

5616-496: Was followed by the Woodland period ( circa 1000 BCE). Some well-understood examples are the Adena culture of Ohio , West Virginia , and parts of nearby states. The subsequent Hopewell culture built monuments from present-day Illinois to Ohio; it is renowned for its geometric earthworks. The Adena and Hopewell were not the only mound-building peoples during this period. Contemporaneous mound-building cultures existed throughout what

5694-592: Was formerly classified as Muskogean but is now recognized as an eccentric member of the Western Siouan phylum. The late survival of the Fort Ancient culture is suggested by the remarkable amount of European-made goods in the archaeological record. Such artifacts would have been acquired by trade even before direct European contact. These artifacts include brass and steel items, glassware, and melted down or broken goods reforged into new items. The Fort Ancient peoples are known to have been severely affected by disease in

5772-426: Was inconceivable to Priest and like-minded men that a race so lazy and inept could conceive and build such huge, elaborate structures." Priest speculated that the original dwellers could be the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel . The reasoning Priest gives for his conclusion that there was an even earlier settler than the Native Americans relies upon his interpretation of the Biblical flood story. According to Priest, after

5850-694: Was listed on the National Register of Historic Places ; it is currently one of six archaeological sites on the Register in Greene County. The mound's continued preservation was threatened in 2008, as maintenance funding and labor was ended when Antioch College closed for lack of funds, but multiple grants obtained in 2010 included money for upgrading the trail by which the mound is accessed. Mound builder (people) Many pre-Columbian cultures in North America were collectively termed " Mound Builders ", but

5928-571: Was published in 1848 by the Smithsonian Institution, which had commissioned the survey. Since many of the features that the authors documented have been destroyed or diminished by farming and development, their surveys, sketches, and descriptions are still used by modern archaeologists . All of the sites that they identified as located in Kentucky came from the manuscripts of Constantine Samuel Rafinesque . Radiocarbon dating has established

6006-464: Was roaring here. The eyes of that species of extinct giants, whose bones fill the mounds of America, have gazed on Niagara, as ours do now. Co[n]temporary with the whole race of men, and older than the first man, Niagara is strong, and fresh to-day as ten thousand years ago. The Mammoth and Mastodon – now so long dead, that fragments of their monstrous bones, alone testify, that they ever lived, have gazed on Niagara. In that long – long time, never still for

6084-445: Was the center of the Mississippian culture. This mound appears to have been the main ceremonial and residential mound for the religious and political leaders; it is more than 100 feet (30 m) tall and is the largest pre-Columbian earthwork north of Mexico. This site had numerous mounds, some with conical or ridge tops, as well as palisaded stockades protecting the large settlement and elite quarter. At its maximum about 1150 CE, Cahokia

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