May 12, 2003

Rel/St 302I

Poverty point is estimated to be about 3500 years old. It is a group of carefully crafted earthen mounds in the state of Louisiana, in the Mississippi river valley. Named Poverty Point by the plantation owners in the 19^th century, it seems to have been the center of an ancient Native American society, used as a meeting place, religious center, and possibly trade center. It would have taken an unbelievable amount of dirt to build the mounds and ridges, and amazing communication and travel to collect such a varied group of artifacts. The mounds were built at about the same time Stonehenge was just being finished, when Hammurabi reigned in Babylon and Tutankhamen, Nefertiti, and Amenhotep IV ruled Egypt.

Perhaps the most intriguing discovery about Poverty Point society is that the people who built the mounds were probably stationary, but did not farm. Rather, they were very definitely still hunter-gatherers. Their diet relied heavily on nuts in the area, as well as wild fruits and beans. They also fished and hunted deer and smaller animals extensively. The fertility of the Mississippi valley made it possible for the society to live in this matter.

So why is it that the people of Poverty Point seem to have failed? The area was occupied and used for at most 400 years, then abandoned. Motley Mound, a smaller bird-shaped mound in the far northern area of Poverty Point, appears to have been neglected when it was not even completed. When Europeans arrived in the Americas almost 3000 years after Poverty Point flourished, there was no real sign of improvement or progress. Indeed, the people capable of building such amazing huge geometrical earth formations and transporting via river thousands of foreign rocks had vanished. While in Europe, people had progressed from Stonehenge and the Pyramids to sea-going ships, metalworking, armor, elementary rifles, and a large, organized social structure. The natives of Louisiana remained hunter-gatherers and abandoned their centralized society for a tribal existence.

Jared Diamond has written a book titled Guns Germs and Steel, an investigation into the reasons for the different developments of early world peoples. He seeks to answer that unanswerable question, "Why didn’t the Native Americans conquer Europe, instead of the other way around?" I say it is unanswerable because we will never really understand fully because we cannot visit these societies at their crucial transition or decision points. However, we can be quite confident that it was not due to extra-terrestrial beings by looking at modern shifts in lifestyles and by careful speculation and investigation.

Diamond breaks down the reasons for certain cultures flourishing into a few central factors. One of these factors is the availability of large land mammals. Large mammals were important until the advent of the train for transporting large numbers of people and goods. With large land mammals, it was possible for a party of warriors to conquer surrounding people and assimilate their technologies, as well as to expand their area of influence. By expanding the area they controlled, societies broadened the availability of more domesticable animals and plants, giving them the option of selecting those things that were easiest to produce and that gave more yield for the time and effort spent tending them. Europe managed to develop or acquire, by conquering or being conquered, many useful species of land mammals and food crops. In those 3000 years, they had learned to harvest wheat and other grains, and how to utilize horses, cows, pigs, and chickens, to name a few important resourses. The natives of Louisiana, however, did not have large mammals available. The only American mammals that were large and could be domesticated lived in South America, mostly in the Andes. This made them extremely dependent on the rivers in the Mississippi valley for transpiration. If the routes or currents of these rivers and streams changed noticeably, as they have, the entire society was affected. Additionally, their range of movement and control was restricted by the necessity for a navigable waterway. Especially because of the horse, Europeans did not face this restriction.

Second, Europeans were able to acquire or develop a number of good crops. Wheats, for example, were easily grown and harvested on a regular seasonal basis, and it was easy to control how they developed, how and where they grew, and what mutations survived. Native Americans had fewer and less easily controlled domestic plants. The chief plant cultivated by the American peoples was corn, but this was again a Southern crop, and the Louisiana population apparently never came into contact with this crop, or else abandoned it very quickly, since no evidence of it has been found at any Poverty Point site. It would not be too surprising if Poverty Point never did see corn; Poverty Point is in the northeast corner of Louisiana, far from Mexico and not connected to the Mexican civilization by any water channels. With a lack of efficient ground transportation, it would have been difficult for a hunter-gatherer society to sponsor an expedition south to acquire new technology and crops.

Finally, the natives never developed metallurgy. Europe had large deposits of metal ores that could be refined and used to make tools and weapons, while North America did not have these, and certainly not in Louisiana or her neighboring areas. Even if the Poverty Point people had acquired domestic plants and animals, they would have had difficulty planting and harvesting without the advantage of metal tools. Instead, they would need to use bone or stone tools. Making a plow of stone or bone would require the work of one individual crafting a large piece of bone to stone, which would take much time and would not be profitable for the maker. He would live richer being a simple hunter-gatherer than by toiling for hours on a piece of equipment his peers might want to buy. But then, if he did manage to sell enough, how would he store the profits he reaped?

Plainly, the Natives of Poverty had some major disadvantages; they had no domesticable crops or animals, so they remained hunter-gatherers. This in turn restricted their range of movement, influence, and knowledge, since they lacked non-river transportation. Really, it is incredible that they were able to create massive geometrical figures considering their lack of animals of burden and advanced technology (like the Egyptians apparently had).