The name Poverty Point doesn’t give us any clue as to why the site is so noteworthy that it was selected to be a World Heritage Site. For background, there are only 23 World Heritage Sites in the entire U.S. (Everglades, Grand Canyon, Great Smoky Mountains, etc.), and only three others are archaeological sites.
Poverty Point, in the Northeast corner of Louisiana, dates to more than 3,000 years ago. It is a uniquely-designed, large-scale series of earthen mounds with six enormous sections C-shaped earthen ridges and a large 43 acre interior plaza situated on the western edge of the Mississippi River. The enormous C-shaped ridges are five feet high and occupy a space three-fourths of a mile wide. The ridges were a residential center where 500 – 1,000 people lived. The earthware couplex was the largest to date in North America, and was not surpassed for another 2,000 years after its abandonment.
We have seen several of the Indian Mounds that are dotted all over the Southeast. In fact, we saw Emerald Mound this week. It is the second largest of its type in the U.S. How does Poverty Point differ from the the rounded or flat top mounds we are more familiar with? First, Poverty Point is from a much earlier period. About 2,000 years earlier than the typical mounds like Emerald Mound. Poverty Point was constructed over a 600 year period around 1500 BC (approximately during King Tut’s era) and 3,000 years before Columbus came to North America. Second, Poverty Point is more of a “city” than a single mound or group of mounds.
The pre-historic indigenous hunter-gatherers who conceived and executed this marvel had to move an estimated 100 million 50 pound baskets of soil and import more than 70 tons of rocks and minerals over distances of up to 800 miles.
It is tough to convey the scale of the site with pictures. Here are a few depictions. Note the road through the plaza, the C-shaped earthen ridges, and the mounds.
Mound A, the largest mound, is 70 feet tall and shaped like a bird effigy.
Other mounds
The visitor’s center, ridges, and driving tour area
Poverty Point provided an interesting morning in a remote corner of Louisiana. Oh, the name Poverty Point comes from a 1800s era plantation on the land. Times were pretty hard scrabble in the area back then.