[Why our area has its unique political and religious attitudes.]

We are continuing to pursue the first people in our area from pre-historic time. Pre-history simply means before a written history. Nevertheless, archaeologists have developed a significant record from artifacts. History is not static.

The last articles were pressing the question of what happened to the Evans Culture people after the oldest known mound in North America, Watson Brake? They lived in the community about 3500 ñ 2800 BCE, a date with substantial significance. I am not a fan of dates, but they are a way of defining time and people actions.

First the traditional historic epochs have a range of dates defined by noted Middle East archaeologist, Dr. Steven Collins. The key events are his observation. The Bronze Age in the Cradle of Civilization is closely equivalent to the Archaic Age in North America.

Pre 3900 BCE was Chalcolithic (Copper) then Neolithic eras, otherwise known as “Stone Age.’ About 3900 came the transition to city-states like Ba’Bel and Watson Brake following the global dispersion of people. Note the Stone Age name comes for the principal artifacts. In no way does it imply the people did not know of carpentry and wood-working, but these materials deteriorate when exposed to oxygen. Stone tools formed wood for roofs and boats. The Original Indian people were still using the tools until the 1600s. The people used animal skins for storage and apparently as cooking pots. They put food items in the skin, then added hot rocks to cook. Adding to earlier discussion, the Watson Brake people were jewelers, stone masons, carpenters, and leather craftsmen. Civilization and culture exist from the first people.

Next is “Early Bronze Age” to 2500 BCE, the era of glyphs, marks or pictures which represent a concept or story. The period was the Middle Archaic in North America. In the Cradle of Civilization, the scribes scratched the marks in clay. Called cuneiform in Babylon, and hieroglyphics in Egypt, similar marks are on cave walls in the Archaic region. Although not portable, these cave glyphs were the written language of the earliest Indian inhabitants. The people were recording an account or history, which we have not fully interpreted. Their language is just as foreign as Chinese to Euro-Asians.

“Intermediate Bronze Era” was to 2100 BC and the invention of the potter’s wheel in the Cradle. This moves us back to the descendants of Watson Brake. The Stalling Culture inhabited Stalling Island, in the Savannah River, near Augusta, GA. By 2500 BCE they were making fired pottery tempered with Spanish moss or palm leaf. This was handmade pottery hundreds of years before the invention of the potter’s wheel in the Cradle of Civilization.

Now we know some of these people. What contemporary Native American tribes lived in that area? That is the ancestral lands of the Creek and a couple of hundred miles from the Cherokee capital at the removal. Numerous other tribes moved and lived in the region including Euchee and Seminole. The forced removal was from lands they occupied for 4500 years.

“Middle Bronze Era” continued to 1550 BCE and the arrival of the Sea People on the eastern end of the Mediterranean. During this era the patriarch Abraham began the Jewish culture, destruction came on Sodom, and Abraham’s descendants moved to Egypt.

Who were the Sea People? Traditionally, they are presumed to be the islanders from the Mediterranean or outside the Strait of Gibraltar. No consensus exists but “their identity and origins remain mysterious to this day,” or a similar observation according to numerous accounts. The difficulty with history is we must gather data from various sources to piece together a viable hypothesis. We know there were international sea-farers as far back as Ba’Bel (Babylon) and Gilgamesh. The evidence, based on timing and correlating events, indicates there was communication between the Cradle of Civilization and trans-oceanic people, such as North America.

“Late Bronze Era’ ended circa 1200 BCE with the coming of the “Iron Age.” About 1400 BCE, the Hebrew-native, Egyptian-educated, and heir apparent to the Egypt throne, Moses, recorded the history of his culture, in the context of world records from the great Egyptian libraries.

But let’s back-up to what is happening in our neighborhood?

The American people establish the largest mound culture back in the Mississippi Delta. For 2,200 years it would be the largest earthen monument site.

Poverty Point culture occupied over 100 miles across the Delta, during the Late Archaic Era, from about 2000 to 1100 BCE. Correlating to the Cradle, the time was well before Abraham to near the transition to the tribe’s first central government. Poverty Point was about a millennia after the neighboring Watson Brake. Later we will discuss the advanced Poverty Point culture, but for now follow the correlation between the Cradle and the North America people.

Think about: these are not random stories and events. There were not huge numbers of people in any culture.

Development of technology was contemporary between North America and the Cradle of Civilization. The American Indian culture was as advanced as the Cradle of Civilization, with events occurring near the same time. Did they communicate?

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Excerpts from our books:

Where Indians, Outlaws & Oilmen Were Real, ISBN: 9781658834643.