[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. Archaeologists have developed a significant record from artifacts. History is not static. The history of these Original Americans is just now being written.

The year is circa 4,000 BCE. Your family and friends are the only people within thousands of miles, perhaps on the continent.

What do you call your home-place with these characteristics?

  1. Nature provides all the organic fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds, herbs, and spices you could want or imagine.
  2. Nature provides all the organic, free-range, cloven-hoofed, cud-chewing meat, with fowl, fish, and seafood you could want or imagine.
  3. Nature provides all the material for clothing you could want or imagine.
  4. Nature provides the material to form into fish nets with weights.
  5. You do not have to grow a garden, till the soil, or plant your food. Agriculture was unnecessary.
  6. Nature provides phenomenal trees, which are immune to rot, for housing and boats.
  7. Nature provides another phenomenal, aromatic tree with rosin coming to the surface for pitch to seal, waterproof, and make long-burning torches.
  8. Nature provides much smaller trees which readily burn for fuel.
  9. Nature provides numerous other type trees for making tools, furniture, and other artisanry.
  10. Nature provides well-balanced weather, with average annual high temperature of 77oF and average low temperature of 54oF.
  11. Nature avoids weather extremes, with maximum temperature seldom exceeding 95oF and low seldom below 28oF.
  12. Nature provides annual precipitation of 54 inches and average annual snowfall of 1 inch.
  13. Nature provides a terrain so flat and copious trees to break-up flow that turbulent, high winds are seldom an issue.
  14. Location is far enough inland that hurricanes have dissipated and far enough south with Gulf moisture that tornadoes seldom develop. However, afternoon summer showers are common.
  15. Elevation about 75 feet.
  16. There is no government nor need for government. There are no taxes, rulers, or bureaucrats.
  17. There are no wars because there are no kings to propagate.
  18. Any unoccupied land is available for use, but that means little since there is no agriculture.
  19. The society is non-hierarchal and egalitarian. Discipline and order comes by long-lived patriarchs with matriarchs who span generations.
  20. Education comes from long-lived patriarchs and matriarchs who pass along to generations.
  21. Unlike future societies, knowledge is not lost with each generation, since long-lived matriarchs and patriarchs assure consistency.
  22. Advanced skills such as engineering, architecture, navigation, and astronomy are learned and passed across generations.
  23. Living in a community with patriarchs, matriarchs, and progeny allows these lifestyle benefits.
  24. Retirement was not a thing. The young learned. The parents did. The grand and great-grandparents educated.
  25. Craftsmanship, metalworking, and artistry abounds because time is available without surrendering to agriculture and government.
  26. They did have to “tend” the greenery to keep nature from re-encroaching where they settled.
  27. The negative is cotton-mouth moccasins, copperhead, rattlers, and coral snakes. Their bigger cousins, alligators, abound but are seldom an issue.

The place was real. Archaeology has given the evidence. It may have not been perfect, but it was close.

The most common name in Western culture is Eden. In virtually every cultural history such a place existed, whether Dilmun, Hesperides, or Paradise.

However, the enumeration are the attributes of Watson Break and later Poverty Point, the abode of the first Mound cultures in North America. This is about 5,000 years before the Aztecs. Now does that help appreciate why they settled where they did and why the settlements lasted for centuries?

This is not a Chamber of Commerce articulation for the home of “Duck Dynasty” around Monroe, Louisiana.

This is a good illustration to discuss how history gets written. The predominant method arises from feelings, philosophy, and a subtle arrogance. The assumption is that now is the epitome of human development. If the story does not comport with what we perceive is reality, then the old story is a myth.

The other end of the history spectrum is the scientific method. Gather data, analyze, develop hypotheses, test the hypotheses, delete most, only accept the final hypothesis that is consistent not with current perceptions but valid information. That is how new concepts get revealed, which have not been seen before.

One major precaution is the incorrect application of the scientific method. This common, erroneous approach accepts previous hypotheses as valid and uses them as the basis for new history.

Another part of the history must evaluate the events in congruence with Natural Law. Scientists in some fields recognize that there is a pattern to all natural events, and equations describe the process. If the history does not comport to the known Natural Law, then simply it is unscientific and likely in error.

Fortunately, the early archaeologists at Watson Break and Poverty Point were scientists who were willing to challenge long held assumptions about government hierarchy and agriculture. Consequently, the record of this great civilization of the world is disrupting virtually every long-held assumption about the arrival and progress of the Original People to the Americas.

Like this story, Watson Break and Poverty Point lend credence to many ancient somewhat contemporaneous stories, which too often become labelled as myths.

Think about the year is 4000 BCE: Were these first highly skilled Original Americans showing us how to live with family and community? We now know Watson Break and Poverty Point. From just a little earlier, was Eden real?