It is believed that the ancestors of living Native Americans arrived in what is now the United States
at least 15,000 years ago and possibly much earlier.
How and when this occurred is not certain.
When Europeans first came into contact with the indigenous cultures they were very different from
those of the proto-industrial and mostly Christian immigrants. Some of these native
cultures operated on a more collective basis than that with which Europeans were familiar.
The majority of Indigenous American tribes maintained their hunting grounds and agricultural
lands to use for their entire tribe. At that time, European culture had developed
concepts of individual property rights with respect to land that were extremely different.
The general picture that is portrayed of the original native Americans
is that of a primitive hunter-gather culture. New archaeological findings uncovered in Poverty Point
in northern Louisiana are painting a drastically different picture of America’s first civilisation.
Connected to this is the remarkable structures built by the ancestral Hopi Indians,
their creation legend and the potential coverup of underground catacombs and cities.
Let’s dive in and find out more….
Poverty Point State Historic Site is a prehistoric earthwork
constructed by the Poverty Point Culture. It is located in present-day northeastern Louisiana.
The culture extended 100 miles across the Mississippi Delta and south to the Gulf Coast.
The site contains earthen ridges and mounds, and a central plaza. The earthworks include
six concentric, C-shaped ridges that extend to the edge of the Macon Ridge. These concentric
ridges are unique to Poverty Point. Each ridge is separated from the next by a gulley.
The ridges are divided by four aisles forming earthwork sectors. Three additional
linear ridges or causeways connect earthen features in the southern half of the ridges.
These are thought to have been built by indigenous people between 1700 and 1100 BC.
The scale of the ridges is so massive that it wasn’t until researchers examined aerial
photographs that they were able to recognise the geometric design
Archaeologists have proposed a variety of different functions for the site
which include a settlement, a trade centre and potentially a ceremonial religious complex.
Far from the simplicity of life sometimes portrayed in anthropology books, these early
Indigenous people were highly skilled engineers capable of building massive earthen structures in
a matter of months or even weeks. More remarkable is that these massive structures were designed to
withstand the test of time surviving a remarkable 3000 years with no failure or major erosion.
By comparison modern-day bridges, highways and dams fail with amazing regularity because
construction out of dirt is more complicated than you would at first imagine. Analysis of the solid
provides conclusive evidence that the earthworks were built rapidly. Building such a vast structure
would have required a large labour force that was well organised and had exceptional leadership.
A hunter-gatherer people would simply not have been capable of doing this.
Due to its proximity to the Gulf of Mexico, it would have been exposed
to vast amounts of rainfall making the construction even more tricky.
Microscopic analysis of the soils shows that they used a specific blend of different soil types,
including clay, silts and sand in order to make the structure stronger. This knowledge of mixing
soil types is something modern engineers have not been able to figure out yet.
On the western side of the plaza, archaeologists have found some unusually deep pits.
One explanation is that these holes once held huge wooden posts, which served as calendar markers.
The best known of the ancient astronomical calendars in the
world is Stonehenge in England. By comparison, the Poverty Point site is some
13 times larger. It is lower but more massive than the great pyramids of Egypt.
The three lanes left point westward. At the summer solstice, the longest day of the year,
the sun sets directly in the centre of one of the aisles. At the winter solstice,
the sun sets in the other aisle. A third aisle points at the North star. Many scholars have
cast doubt on the idea that this was used as an astronomical tool,
thinking instead it was just a coincidental alignment but there are other examples in
North America that point to a long-standing understanding of the motions of the heavens...
Exactly who built these structures is unknown. No bones or other human remains have ever been found.
Only stone and clay artefacts have ever been discovered. These stones have been analysed and
some originate as far away as the Appalachians and present-day Iowa. Both are linked through rivers.
It was mysteriously abandoned suddenly around 1100BC
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The true origins of the first Native American’s are unknown and there are other examples that help
to solidify this idea that the ancient Native American’s had a sophisticated society. None
more so than the Ancestral Pueblo people. They are also considered as part of the original groups to
inhabit the Americas. Later groups such as the Hopi are descendants of this group. Originally
they were a nomadic group, who later on settled into small villages built out of Adobe bricks.
No part of the vast arid plateau which covers part of Mexico, Arizona, Colorado,
and Utah is more inhospitable than the Hopi Reservation of nearly four thousand square miles.
And yet they constructed large apartment-house complexes and had an advanced culture
that spanned the present-day four corners regions of the united states, comprising Utah,
northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southwestern Colorado.
They were competent builders and had a very in-depth understanding of the motion of the
heavens. Many of their structures had important alignments which helped them keep track of the
time of the year. Marking both the solstice and the equinox. More staggering is that
these structures were also used to track the motion of the moon and in particular could
track what is called the lunar standstill, a phenomenon that occurs every 18.61 years.
At the Wupatki site, there is also a remarkable feature that most would simply overlook if they
ever visited the site. A small square hole in the ground surrounded by square sandstone hides what
is called a blowhole. It is a crevice in the earth’s crust that creates the impression that
it is capable of breathing. It is connected to an underground passage. The hole reacts to barometric
pressure above ground. When the air is warm and light above, the cold air from below blows out
with considerable force. When the air becomes moister, it reverses itself and sucks air down.
To date, no one knows why the ancient ancestors created the blowhole nor what it was used for.
Part of the Hopi origin story is that the earth has faced a number of cataclysms
and only a few have survived it. Those chosen few in one instance were lead underground and
lived alongside a people who were called the ant people. These people taught them many new skills
and when the time came they were lead out of the underground cities to recolonise the earth.
Is this where they learnt the engineering skills to mix different soils and work collectively
to move huge quantities of dirt and built multi-storey apartments on the edges of cliffs?
Is the blowhole another skill they acquired to keep the air fresh in enclosed environments?
There are accounts of underground cities and tunnels below Death Valley and also the Grand
Canyon. Both were discovered in the early 20th Century. It is fair to say that the origins of
the story for both cannot be corroborated. In the latter case, there was an article published
in the Arizona Gazette which had the headline “Explorations in Grand Canyon: Mysteries of
Immense Rich Cavern Being Brought to Light. The articles include the testimony of one G.E. Kincaid
who said that he had travelled solo down the Green and Colorado Rivers and discovered
proof of an ancient civilisation - possibly of Egyptian origin. The story also asserts that
a Smithsonian archaeologist named S.A. Jordan returned with Kincaid to investigate the site.
The story was never published in any other newspaper and no records can confirm the existence
of either Kincaid or Jordan. At least that is what the Smithsonian would like you to think.
Professor David Starr Jordan was affiliated with the Smithsonian for over 30 years from the 1880s
until about 1910. He also made an expedition down the Grand Canyon in 1898 and it is now also known
that he accompanied T. Kincaid on an expedition to Alaska. In 1906 Jordan was offered the top job
at the Smithsonian. He is also prominently found in many Smithsonian publications.
More recently a series of catacombs have been discovered beneath Arizona but once
more it is not open to the public and no further information is available on it
The idea that an unknown people carved vast tunnel networks and cities beneath America
is also a story that seems to be echoed across other parts of the world.
It would seem that in the more distant past there was an urgent need and desire to live
underground. This is certainly something worth exploring further
as well as the ancient stories of repeated cataclysms and a closer look at the Hopi
legend and how it relates to many topics we have previously discussed in the Precession series.