America Before

by Graham Hancock

  THE SOUTHERNMOST OF THE POVERTY Point mounds is Mound E, also known as “Ballcourt Mound.” Just 2.6 kilometers farther south, however, is another mound, once thought to have been part of the Poverty Point complex. Known as Lower Jackson Mound, excavations by archaeologists Joe Saunders and Thurman Allen have established that it is in fact extremely ancient—not from the Poverty Point era around 1700 BC at all, but from fully 3,000 years earlier, specifically between 3955 and 3655 BC.57

  “That Poverty Point builders were aware of ancient mounds is beyond doubt,” comments John Clark, professor of anthropology at Brigham Young University:

  The entire layout of Greater Poverty Point is calibrated to the position of Lower Jackson, a Middle Archaic mound. All principal measuring grids pass through Lower Jackson, and calculated space appears to have commenced from there.58

  What Jon L. Gibson of the University of Louisiana makes of the same evidence is that there must have been “an enduring traditional, if not direct ancestral, connection between the Old People and later groups.”59 This connection, he argues, is “demonstrated by the incorporation of the Middle Archaic Lower Jackson Mound into the principal earthwork axis at Poverty Point. Actually, Lower Jackson Mound was not merely incorporated—it furnished the alpha datum, the anchor, a vivid case of material or implicit memory.”60

  William Romain’s Lidar work confirms that Mound E (“Ballcourt Mound”), Mound A, and Mound B are all aligned to true north.

  Lower Jackson Mound, 3,000 years older, is on the same azimuth.

  The suggestions, made by Clark in 2004 and Gibson in 2006, were followed up in 2011 by William Romain. The results of his Lidar survey greatly strengthen the case that “Poverty Point was intentionally oriented to true north” along “the sightline between Mounds E-A-B and the Lower Jackson Mound.”61

  The implications of a connection between the Lower Jackson mound-builders and their successors at Poverty Point are intriguing for many reasons.

  The “intrusive” Mound D, built by the Coles Creek culture at least 1,800 years after Poverty Point was abandoned, and more than 2,000 years after works peaked there, appears to have been deliberately located to create an alignment to the winter solstice sunrise. In William Romain’s view, as we’ve seen, this suggests that the people of the Coles Creek culture “understood, incorporated, and further expanded upon the Poverty Point design.”

  The suggestion, therefore, is that below the radar of archaeology more than 2 millennia of continuously transmitted knowledge connected the Coles Creek culture to the Poverty Point culture.

  Now, going much further back in time, Gibson proposes continuity across the earlier 2,000-year gap between the builders of Lower Jackson Mound and Poverty Point.

  These are long periods of time to maintain any kind of connection, but such a feat is by no means impossible. The Judaic faith, for example, carries down a body of traditions and beliefs that are at least 3,000 years old.62 Hinduism has roots going back to the Indus Valley civilization more than 5,000 years ago.63 Both religions also create architecture, the design of which is directly influenced by their beliefs and traditions.

  There’s no reason in principle why the same sort of thing should not have happened in North America. The notion that Lower Jackson Mound and Poverty Point are each manifestations in different eras of a single system of ideas is the only way, other than coincidence, to account for the obviously deliberate axial relationship between the two sites. If the earlier mound had not been significant for the later builders, then they surely would not have used it to “anchor” the great enterprise on which they were about to embark.

  But there’s a problem. In the cases of Hinduism and Judaism we have unimpeachable evidence of continuity. Through sacred texts, through teachings passed from one generation to the next, and through cherished and vibrant traditions, there are no broken links in the chain of transmission. Neither Hinduism nor Judaism have ever abruptly vanished from the face of the earth, left zero traces of their presence for millennia, and then equally abruptly reappeared in full flower.

  As we’ll see, however, this appears to be exactly what happened in North America.

  GLIMPSES BEHIND THE VEIL

  THE REMOTE EPOCH BETWEEN 6,000 AND 5,000 years ago out of which Lower Jackson Mound emerges is an important one in the story of civilization. It was toward the end of this same millennium that the civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt took their first confident steps on the stage of history. They, too, built mounds—for example, Egypt’s predynastic mastabas or the tells of Uruk-period Mesopotamia. They, too, deployed geometry and astronomical alignments in the project of sacralizing architectural spaces. And they, too, participated in an extraordinary and seemingly coordinated burst of early construction—for just like the mounds of ancient Egypt and ancient Mesopotamia, Lower Jackson Mound is not an isolated case but part of what may once have been a very numerous and widespread group of monuments.

  Just how numerous and widespread we may never hope to know because of the wholesale destruction of thousands of mounds and earthworks across North America in recent centuries. No doubt most of those ancient monuments, sacrificed to the modern gods of agriculture and industry, were from the more recent periods—Mississippian, Hopewell, and so on—but chances are that some, and perhaps many, were from the much earlier episode of mound-building dating back to 5,000 years ago and more.

  From what remains we can begin to gauge the extent of the loss and by 2012, despite the destruction of ancient sites, archaeologists had identified as many as 97 surviving mounds and earthworks in the Lower Mississippi Valley, with several others found as far afield as Florida, thought to be in the range of 5,000 years old.1 Very few of these sites have yet been subject to radiometric dating, but of the 16 that have, with a combined total of 53 mounds and 13 causeways, all are more than 4,700 years old2—and many are much older than that.

  As a result, says Joe Saunders, a leading specialist in this field, “the existence of Middle Archaic mound-building is no longer questioned.”3

  Why there should be such a concentration of these archaic sites in the Lower Mississippi Valley is unclear. It could be an accident of history—that is, purely by chance more old sites survived destruction in this area than elsewhere. Or it could be that many more sites were built here in antiquity than elsewhere and this is why more have survived. Who knows? Perhaps future research will reveal very ancient mounds much farther afield in North America. For the present, however, the Lower Mississippi Valley is where the action is.

  It’s unnecessary to describe every site. Indeed only one, Watson Brake, need concern us in any detail. For the rest, the map and the minimal listing below, substantiated by references for readers who wish to dig deeper, will serve the purpose.

  The Banana Bayou Mounds and the so-called LSU Mounds (because they are on the grounds of Louisiana State University) date to around 2700 BC,4 which, in a global context, makes them about 200 years older than the Great Pyramid of Giza.

  After that, the mounds of the Lower Mississippi Valley just keep on getting older. We’ve already spoken of Lower Jackson Mound (3955 to 3655 BC). Here are some of the others:

  Ancient Mound Sites of the Lower Mississippi Valley.

  WATSON BRAKE

  One C-14 date suggests that mound-building may have begun as early as 3590 BC; others suggest a range of 3400 to 3300 BC.5

  CANEY MOUNDS

  C-14 dates range from 3600 to 3000 BC.6

  FRENCHMAN’S BEND

  C-14 supports a date of 3570 BC.7 A significantly older date of 4610 BC—almost 7,000 years ago—was derived from an excavated hearth.8

  HEDGEPETH MOUNDS

  The earliest mound date is 4930 BC—again, very close to 7,000 years ago.9

  MONTE SANO

  A charcoal sample from a cremation platform within one of the mounds yielded a date of 4240 BC.10 Two other charcoal samples from a small platform mound produced dates of 5030 to 5500 BC11—moving past 7,
000 years ago and toward 7,500 years ago.

  CONLY

  Eight radiocarbon dates securely locate the site between 7,500 and 8,000 years ago.12

  THE SITE THAT CHANGED THE GAME

  BOTH IN TERMS OF QUANTITY and of quality, Watson Brake has been the subject of more thorough, sustained, and wide-ranging scientific scrutiny than any of the other sites that are 5,000 years old or older. Moreover, it is only at Watson Brake that the excavations and archaeological research have been accompanied by detailed archaeoastronomical assessments, allowing comparison with the later Adena, Hopewellian, and Missippian sites reviewed in previous chapters.

  So it is Watson Brake we’ll focus on here.

  First, and it is good the reader should harbor no illusions in this regard, not a single item has been excavated at Watson Brake that in any way suggests the presence of an advanced material culture. The people who built the mounds and lived at the site intermittently—or perhaps more permanently—over a period of many hundreds of years used stone tools and points that are typical of the Middle Archaic period. They were hunter-gatherers, not agriculturalists, and although they did gather plants that would later be domesticated, they did not domesticate these plants themselves. In other words, they lived simply, close to the earth, and were in every way a normal and representative population for this part of North America 5,000 or 6,000 years ago.13

  In every way, that is, except one.

  They built mounds.

  Referring to the sites listed above (and a handful of others I didn’t list), Joe Saunders writes:

  The earliest … earthworks in the Lower Mississippi Valley appear to have been made by autonomous societies. Practically speaking, it is difficult for 16 Middle Archaic mound sites spanning 1,000 years of prehistory in three subregions of Louisiana … not to look autonomous.

  But there must have been some communion among the autonomous societies because there are too many shared traits that cross the vast expanses of the Lower Mississippi Valley, and there is no evidence of other monuments being made elsewhere. If all Middle Archaic mound sites were spontaneous creations, would they not occur spontaneously elsewhere as well?14

  Sadly, Saunders passed away on September 4, 2017. Formerly regional archaeologist and professor of geosciences at the University of Louisiana, he was the acknowledged expert on Watson Brake and its lead excavator. It was his paper, “A Mound Complex in Louisiana at 5400–5000 Years Before the Present,” published in Science on September 19, 1997,15 that effectively put Watson Brake on the map, preempting arguments that might otherwise have arisen around the dates of the site with a meticulous, comprehensive, and wide-ranging body of evidence.

  “There’s just no question about it,” said Jon Gibson at the time. “Saunders has come at it from too many different angles.”16

  And Vincas Steponaitis of the University of North Carolina commented: “It’s rare that archaeologists ever find something that so totally changes our picture of what happened in the past, as is true for this case.”17

  Certainly Watson Brake did change the picture archaeologists had of the past, delivering the death blow to the tired old prejudice, already mortally wounded by Poverty Point, that hunter-gatherer societies were somehow constitutionally incapable of complex large-scale constructions.

  And as it turns out, despite its low-maintenance material culture, the site itself is sophisticated and precociously clever.

  SACRED OVAL

  LIKE SERPENT MOUND, WATSON BRAKE was built on a natural elevation, in this case a terrace dating back to the depths of the Ice Age overlooking the 12,000-year-old floodplain of the Ouachita River with its tributary stream the Watson Bayou.18 And in just the way that Serpent Mound stands above Brush Creek, Watson Brake stands above Watson Bayou,19 creating the illusion that the mounds are 5 or 10 meters higher than they actually are.20

  In the case of Serpent Mound, in front of the effigy’s gaping jaws, the reader will recall the presence of an earthwork enclosure in the form of a great oval. Although complicated by the integration of mounds into the figure, and on a much larger scale, Watson Brake is also an earthwork enclosure forming a distinct and unmistakable oval, with a long axis of 370 meters and a short axis of 280 meters.21

  LEFT: Watson Brake site plan. RIGHT: 3D model of Watson Brake.

  There is some disagreement as to whether the total number of mounds at Watson Brake should be counted as eleven or twelve because one, designated Mound L, requires further archaeological verification. It also lies outside the border of the oval formation so firmly demarcated by the other eleven mounds and their interconnecting embankments—these latter being in the range of 20 meters wide and about 1 meter high.22 The plaza contained within the embankments covers an area of 9 hectares (about 22 acres)23 and appears to have been artificially leveled.24 The excavators found it to be almost completely sterile of artifacts or debris, “suggesting its use as ritual space.”25

  “Apparently daily activities did not occur in the enclosure,” comments Saunders.26 By contrast, however, “daily activities,” suggestive of resident populations, certainly did occur on the wide embankments surrounding the enclosure, particularly on the northeastern side.27

  In a major study published in American Antiquity in 2005 Saunders reports that the initial occupation of the site took place as early as 4000 BC28 and that:

  The first occupants came to Watson Brake to fish, hunt deer and gather plants in every season of the year. Prolonged visits probably occurred. … The construction of the first minor earthworks began around 3500 BC, with Mounds K and B (and possibly A) followed by midden accumulations where Mounds D and C, and to the south I and J, and E were subsequently built. This suggests that the shape of the complex was deliberately laid out by 3500 BC. Major building projects then commenced ca. 3350 BC and existing earthworks may have been heightened and extended along the north mound row. Mound J was erected on the south side at around 3000 BC. Site occupation was concentrated along the terrace escarpment before construction began and continued after the earthworks were completed.29

  The relative “residential stability and autonomy” evidenced at Watson Brake, Saunders concludes, were made possible by “the diversity and abundance of resources” in the local area.30

  It seems almost superfluous to state, however, that those resources and the stability they promoted could have been exploited efficiently without the mounds. Indeed they were exploited for the 500 years when humans were present at the site who built no mounds at all between 4000 BC and 3500 BC.

  And then, suddenly … mounds.

  Why? What could have prompted this colossal architectural enterprise? What was its purpose?

  “I know it sounds pretty Zenlike,” Saunders speculated when he was asked this question in 1997, “but maybe the answer is that building them was the purpose.”31

  TRIANGULATION

  MAYBE. BUT I’M TRYING TO envisage how the community leaders or influencers would have sold that to the population. Somehow, “We want you to build these mounds because building them will be a good thing for you to do” doesn’t sound like a winning line to me. And when we remember that in the same period mounds and earthworks were also being built at other scattered sites belonging to separate, autonomous communities across the Lower Mississipi Valley, it becomes increasingly obvious that a powerful and far-reaching social phenomenon must have been at work.

  After years of field research, excavations, and on-site measurements, Kenneth Sassman of the Laboratory of Southeastern Archaeology, and Michael Heckenberger of the University of Florida are convinced that at least three of these sites—Watson Brake, Caney Mounds, and Frenchman’s Bend—share the same basic design:32

  The plan we infer from the spatial arrangement of Archaic mounds consists of a series of proportional and geometric regularities, including (1) a “terrace” line of three or more earthen mounds oriented along an alluvial terrace escarpment; (2) placement of the largest mound of each complex in the terrace-edge gro
up, typically in a central position; (3) placement of the second-largest mound at a distance roughly 1.4 times that between members of the terrace-edge group; (4) a line connecting the largest and second-largest … mound (herein referred to as the “baseline”) set at an angle that deviates roughly 10 degrees from a line orthogonal to [i.e., at right angles to] the terrace line; and (5) an equilateral triangle oriented to the baseline that intercepts other mounds of the complex and appears to have formed a basic unit of proportionality.33

  I won’t attempt to describe Frenchman’s Bend or the several other sites that Sassman and Heckenberger believe may also fit this pattern.34 Watson Brake and Caney can stand for them all. Again a long story must be cut short since these two sites tick all the boxes listed above, but perhaps the most striking outcome of Sassman and Heckenberger’s study is the clear evidence they’ve produced for a shared geometrical plan involving the mounds designated A, E, I, and J at Watson Brake and mounds B, F, E, and D at Caney.

  In both cases the line that Sassman and Heckenberger call the “baseline” between the largest and second-largest mounds (A and E at Watson Brake; B and F at Caney) forms one side of an equilateral triangle. In both cases the lines that form the other two sides of the triangle extend through a second pair of mounds (I and J at Watson Brake; E and D at Caney) before intersecting. And in both cases a line emanating from the “baseline” evenly bisects the gap between a second pair of mounds (B and K at Watson Brake; A and C at Caney).35

  Evidence for a shared geometrical system at Watson Brake (left) and Caney Mounds (right).

  All equilateral triangles have internal angles of 60 degrees, but why, asks Norman Davis in a review of Sassman and Heckenberger’s findings, “did Middle Archaic Builders use a 60o triangle? Why not a 45o, or a 65 or a 75o triangle?”36