[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. Nevertheless, archaeologists have developed a significant record from artifacts. History is not static.
When we were taking Louisiana History, no one had heard of Poverty Point or Watson Brake. In a few short years, these have become recognized as some of the greatest civilizations in the history of the world. What a difference a day makes.
Watson Brake is still largely unexplored, but retains the impressive moniker of the oldest and best-preserved earthwork mound systems in North America. First occupied about 4000 BCE, the mounds architecture and continued occupation came about 3600 BCE ñ 2800 BCE. Mound structures were widespread by 3000 BC in the Mississippi Basin of Louisiana, with a dozen related sites.
Dr. William F. Romain, PhD, contends Watson Brake is the oldest solstice-aligned earthwork complex in the Americas. Using Lidar, Dr. Romain discovered Watson Brake was “an important archaeo-astronomical site that our ancestors used for sky watching.” Since the Watson Brake architecture are the earliest known remnants of construction in the Americas, they challenge tradition.
What does this bring to mind? The dispersion of Ba’Bel occurred in 4000 BCE. According to an English translation of the Jewish Tanakh tradition, recorded about 1500 BCE by Egyptian scholar Mosheí (English Moses), the people of Ba’bel said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city with a tower that has its top reaching up into heaven, so that we can make a name for ourselves and not be scattered all over the earth.” Nevertheless, the history continues to tell that they were scattered “all over the earth.”
The construction of Watson Brake as an astronomical site to study the heavens, within a few years of the BaíBel dispersion fosters a communication and correspondence between the locations, even with a similar purpose.
When looking backward through the telescope of time, events seem to become pressed together into one page of history and happen at the same instant. As we are deciphering the puzzle of Original Americans, their history, contributions, and relationships, we must step into that time warp.
Watson Brake first inhabitants are now generally accepted as 4000 BCE, contemporary of Ba’Bel and pre-Egyptian. This civilization, yes they were very much civilized as evidenced by their artifacts, lifestyle, and non-hierarchal polity, built the first permanent settlement mounds circa 3600 BCE.
We almost flippantly call those architects the same people as the first sea-farers. That is equivalent to saying the first settlers at Jamestown in 1600s are the same people who build monuments today. Yes, we are the heritage, but so far separated that we do not even know them.
In our pursuit of historical relationships, I have traced back to my 6-great grandfather Thomas Durham, the first of the family to settle in the Virginia frontier in 1721, from the family fortune in merry old England. If things were so great in England, why did they leave? It was not so great. They were religious dissenters.
I also have Thomas’ father-in-law, my 7-great grandfather William Lindsey. But do I know them or anything about them, other than they were young men on the edge of the frontier, trying to live life. Yes, we have recovered some of our other 6-greats from the era, including the Quakers and their children who were not.
Similarly, we have pursued other lines, particularly my and my-coauthor’s Native American heritage. We get further back to 1680s in that line. As it turns out, my 7-great grandfather was also her great-grandfather. Yes, we really have the documented evidence that far back, 350-years ago.
Past those few individuals, the pursuit becomes overwhelming. How many 6-great grandparents do you have? Each one of us has 256 6-great grandparents, add in 128, 5-great, etcetera to find we have 510 ancestors back to the 6-great, which is about 275 years.
Remember we are just tracking the equivalent of the first settlers at Watson Brake until they built architectural edifices that exists to this day.
Clearly the architects did not know the Original Settlers, but they kept the same heritage as evidenced by archaeology artifacts from a thousand years later. As the present-day Americans have the heritage of the Magna Carta from a thousand years ago, the Original American society proliferated.
Notice an obvious fact. Everyone was related. In our limited example, we see the phenomenal interrelationship of families in a short interval of time.
After Watson Brake, we lose a continuous thread to the next major interval in world history at Poverty Point, just down the Mississippi River delta a few miles. Observe that the time-frame from Watson Brake to Poverty Point was as far back as King Arthur and the knights. Time loses relevance.
A caution is in order. Any dating done by archaeologist prior to 1990s tends to be less accurate. Radiocarbon, chromatography, and other techniques have refined dates to a reasonably precise science. Consequently, we may find events which occurred after Watson Brake to have a date of thousands of years before. These are the validated times.
- 4000 BCE – Ba’Bel dispersion & first settlers at Watson Brake
- 3600 BCE – begin construction of oldest permanent settlement mounds at Watson Brake, an astronomical site for monitoring the heavens.
- 2800 BCE – end of Watson Brake.
- 2500 BCE – Stallings Island Pottery, Savannah River, GA
- 2000 BCE – Largest mound complex Poverty Point, World Heritage Site
- 1750 BCE – Nebo Hill, MO pottery
- 1100 BCE – End of Poverty Point
- 800 CE – Spiro Mounds, capital of Mississippi Trading Culture
- 1450 CE – End of Spiro Mounds
Think about: Even without a paper trail, can we trace heritage of people? Who were the descendants of Watson Brake and Poverty Point?
We find similar artifacts from Ba’Bel to Watson Brake to Poverty Point. Does that suggest a relationship?
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Excerpts from our books:
Where Indians, Outlaws & Oilmen Were Real, ISBN: 9781658834643.