Gisela Ermel
Mysterious cultural leap
: Q'Phaze , No. 11, Kassel 2008
North America well before 4000 years ago and roamed over the continent, small groups of hunter-gatherers. There was a time of nomads, the simple, mobile homes, the stone tools, spear points and fish hooks. There was no Big Chief, but only clan groups with loose contact with each other, which if possible went out of their way. So perfectly ordinary stone age.
But then something unusual. On a cliff - in what is now Louisiana - overlooking a river valley gathered suddenly hundreds of these hunter-gatherers to carry out a laborious, complicated and planned large-scale project. Doing so, they can have it so easy. These Stone Age people have benefited in the food-rich area between the river now known as Mississippi and Arkansas rivers by long frost-free periods of sufficient rainfall and lush vegetation, forests, small and large rivers and lakes. The hunters found plenty of game animals, from the water, they took fish, shellfish and other aquatic animals in huge quantities. The enriched diet also pecans, hickory nuts, walnuts, acorns, persimmons, wild grapes and beans, wild plants and starchy seeds - in short, we feasted on all that was crawled, swam, dug and grew. These Stone Age nomads enjoyed BC to the year 1700. a constant environment with ecologically rich and diverse resources.
instead to continue as before - and a recipe for success is only changes in the highest disaster - they did something it should not even exist: a cultural leap. They evolved slowly and not good from culture to culture stage stage further, as it would have been expected. Instead, there was a cultural "big bang", a sudden onset of a highly developed society, which began an incredibly labor-intensive and complex construction project for which the necessary know how and the necessary organization and control apparently from day one fully developed were available.
The archaeological site of Poverty Point photographed from the air
remain Normally people hundreds or thousands of years are on the same level of culture change, and only something if they do not belong to one of encourages or forces coming pulse. Such a pulse can be a drastic change of climate, which one has to adapt henceforth, or it may be a contact with representatives of an advanced culture, of which one is inspired or their development assistance to a benefit. A sudden jump but culture system in which several stages omitted, as something more drastic a change of climate or the influence of a neighboring advanced culture have been released.
Who or what prompted the hunter-gatherers today, Bayou Macon, and to gather together for one of astronomy and basic geometric principles designed and pre-planned complex of earthworks and mounds - mounds - to build? In order to have better accommodation in the wild fish and plant paradise? Not applicable. That's impossible, because the boys were living still in their primitive tents and huts as ever.
The central structure of Poverty Point (named after the name that had been the first European landowner's property where the remains of the installation are located) was a semi-circular complex consisting of six time six-foot high ring walls. Even before work could begin the actual construction of the plant, previously had countless baskets of earth are brought in to fill the background and . To straighten Only then will the six ring walls were built, a shrinking in the other horizontally. A row of these walls would result in a length of twelve miles.
Artist's reconstruction of the installation of Poverty Point (Jon Gibson) These six walls were broken by five corridors or hallways that ran from the center out to the outside. Initially, the archaeologists wondered about the fact that these programs were not created symmetrically, they were not together at a common point and they did not share the system into equal sections. First, thought that ran through here the boundaries between different social or other areas or that have prevailed here just a coincidence. But today we know that puts a totally different reason behind this way and not carefully planned and measured system. The old sketches and maps from the time of the first researchers of the previous centuries had gemauschelt the symmetry exaggerated and with the masses, to simulate a non-existent symmetry or to complete a hypothetical regular plan of the plant.
old sketch of the installation of Poverty Point also repeatedly voiced suspicion the fact that the complex had once formed a perfect octagon or a perfect circle, which was destroyed when the river by a shift of its watercourse washed away the eastern part of the plant, could be refuted. One of the results of the latest excavations, surveys and documentation clearly shows that everything has been built, as it had required a sophisticated plan and how it faced the modern excavator.
The finished system also included several inside and outside the basic form of lying mounds, including the first two so-called hill images of North America. These two mounds presented a bird dar. Mound A rose west of the ring walls, mass about 210 meters on the ground and was over 21 meters high the tallest structure of the system. From a bird's eye view of the mound like a flying Mississippi Milan with a wingspan of about 200 meters and a aufgefiederten tail. The bird looks to the west and was built in a total of an exact east-west orientation. The second bird-Mound was slightly over two kilometers north of the plant, was about 20 meters high and also represents a flying bird, this time aligned exactly north-south. The tail is no longer intact.
began in the 1970s, two researchers with measurements and calculations to verify a hypothesis that said that the construction of Poverty Point on the basis of a precise astronomical and geometrical layout designed, planned and it was built. So far, only one had been surprised by the high age of Poverty Point - after all, about 4,000 years - but should so early people in North America have had knowledge of astronomy? Or were the ring walls but were only foundations of primitive dwellings?
After initial measurements were Prof. William Hague and Kenneth Brecher show that two transitions of the system directly - Viewed from the center - a summer and a winter solstice sunrise point on the horizon suppliers. That could be a coincidence. Further measurements showed that the two Images hill in bird form with each other exactly in line lay that also ran on a solstice point in the distance. Three more mounds of the plant were to each other on a north-south line that ran through the middle of the big bird Mound. Because of coincidence! Now it was realized why the course had been in the ring walls not very symmetrically, but so that they corresponded to the astronomical and geometric layout. This must have been pretty darn good measure, before the construction.
These research results - the unexpectedly high age and pre-planned layout - Poverty Point made it a great mystery. If this really primitive stone-age nomads from one day to the high had knowledge of astronomy, architecture, surveying, organization and control have? What was this extraordinary culture that had initiated this evolutionary milestone? This culture was based on economics and technology of high - and this without prior stages of development that would have guided to it. This was made very clearly a cultural leap that is inexplicable. Poverty Point does not fit the model of evolution that says that a culture is slow, stable and secure further developed, from simple to complex forms. But it was entirely up to not run. Who should have raised this cultural leap - and how? Even today it is not a single modern Hunter-gatherer society, which could be compared with that of Poverty Point. Poverty Point was unique and unique. A high civilization - out of nowhere emerged. One of the team excavating the site once said, "According to conventional doctrine, it is likely Poverty Point did not give!"
So how did it come to this culture can jump? The archaeologist Tristam Kidder, head of a modern surveying project, presented two theories concerning this question before:
The first was the conventional theory. It said that BC to 1700. a small group of hunters and gatherers had come to the region, here for a while still, I was a little built, and had then moved on. Then was another small group came back and stayed for a while, etc. This is happening again and again, and it should be 600 to 800 years after the Erdwerkanlage become increasingly larger and larger. This theory would fit the conventional image of hunters and gatherers of the stone age and does not require a rethink. Too bad that the results of the excavations that do not match! How would have in this way a complex astronomical geometrically sophisticated system should result?
The second theory was a rather unconventional and said the plant was within a short time by a very large Number of people have been built, which had been organized. But for this theory would have the picture of the hunter-gatherer change of the time completely.
Could there be another way? Was this an in situ cultural development without external influence? Or had this been a trigger from outside? But from where would this influence have come from? Far and wide there was no culture around this time, the representative was able to have sent here, to allow simple hunter-gatherers build such a sophisticated system. In Central America, the people were also still in the process simpler Stone Age farmers, while in South America at this time - again out of nowhere - where already built out of earth Erdwerkanlagen had, but in no way resembled the investment of Poverty Point, and any artifacts that might indicate a connection to South America, it was not. However, it is curious that about the same time both in the southeastern United States and Peru today suddenly monumental Erdwerkanlagen were built. A coincidence? Or should this have worked in both cases, the same cultural charm?
Who were the designers and the test protocol as master planner of Poverty Point? They had to have had excellent knowledge in geometry, surveying, astronomy, mathematics and Engineering. Who supervised the exact observance of the master plan? Those who gathered, organized and controlled all the workers? These masses of workers and supplies had to be delegated. Someone has this tremendous labor-intensive system intended and planned. It certainly was not easy to arrange such a lot of people to a work that went so far beyond the everyday needs of survival. A Stone Age culture that was based on economics and technology, while still primitive nomads wandered around, must have mastered a high level of administration. It is not enough to produce buildings of workers and letting them create other people, game, fish and plants, all of which must be well planned, organized and controlled so that the products come to where they are needed. A human work of such magnitude is absolutely inconceivable without an efficient organization and control, logistics, not without a high level.
Another fact is absolutely baffling. No sooner had the laborious and complicated structure built, everything was available and left and people wandered again as primitive hunters and collectors around the country. Nothing had been built here for habitation. There was virtually no evidence in the excavations, which indicated that had been on the ring walls huts or dwellings. They had not as a basis for dwellings served. Traces of residential and workshop areas had the excavators instead along the cliff between the rings and a bird hill and between the rings and can identify a far outlying Mound, not inside the plant. It is also unknown how many people were staying there during construction.
First you had typed on the basis of the presumed amount of work on a large number of workers or on a long construction period. Here, millions of work hours had been invested - a generation plant? If one assumes that the workers wore brought the earth in baskets (pack animals and knew we had not) and that the baskets a capacity of just over 50 pounds of earth were so obvious that this is a gigantic company performance. James A. Ford, one of the activities of archaeologists has calculated that the amount of soil that has been built here, in volume was greater than that of the Egyptian pyramids. Another archaeologist, suggested that here a good 50 million 50-pound basket charges were needed to build the plant.
This enormous power was still respectable, as the excavators found that the plant was built in a relatively short period of time very quickly. The great example was Vogelmound apparently been raised in just a single year! Were the other structures the plant was under extremely tight organization built just as fast? Jon Gibson, one of the excavators of the system assumed that the complex had to be created in less than a decade, the result of the excavations. Here were not only numerous basket loads hauled and piled earth was, and in a record time, but here had high surveying and engineering stability and resilience of the design and accurate compliance guaranteed.
Why was ever such a complicated system been built? On the mounds and on the Plaza in the center of the complex had no activity took place (left, at least none that had traces), on the walls, no building had stood, it had been left not even waste. Had this been a military facility? There was no indication. Or this was just a giant calendar? But why would hunter-gatherers used a precise calendar? Here, not even farming took place.
If archaeologists think of anything more, they usually tend to reach for the good old religious hypothesis. Tony Ortmann brought this to the point when he wrote: "If you ask an archaeologist from a structure and he has no idea what it was, he usually says that this has served a ceremonial purpose." James Ford speculated in this direction when he proposed, the facility would have been built in honor of a god to be like the cathedrals in Europe.
All this makes but - still? - No sense because there is not even have a clue as to whether the people of Poverty Point ever had a religion. The purpose of the labor-intensive and impractical system remains still as mysterious as the identity of the unknown master planner and the fact, why everything was left just after completion.
It is still puzzling. The construction of the plant was not the only labor-intensive project that was started here from one day to another. The Stone Age - which is not were divided on the actual construction work or the food supply - cavorting in the open air workshops where they worked as an assembly line. During excavations have been found thousands of artifacts: jewelry-like objects, tools, weapons, whistle-like objects, figurines and mysterious objects made of fired clay, which became known as Poverty Point Objects. In addition, there were workshops in field offices kilometer long distances, in which these objects were also mass produced.
came the material for these items mostly from distant areas in up to 2,500 km away. We paddled over rivers and lakes hundreds of miles to pick up certain stone materials, and brought on country roads countless tons of material for here and in the outlying offices workshops. First, the archaeologists had thought that people would have operated an extensive trading network for which all things were made. But you had to rethink completely. Nowhere in the places from which material has been fetched, they found exchange objects, which would have been left there, and nowhere else.
It's unbelievable what was here in Poverty Point and the associated field offices workshops all produced in huge quantities. One would think that the silting up of the complicated system alone would be labor-intensive enough.
presented why and for whom the people to such a high jewelry? What has been made of beads is incredible. Usually beads are made of relatively soft material such as seashells, eggshells, bone, ivory, wood, teeth, nuts, fruits and seeds. A simple hole drilled through the center, lined up a number of beads on a string - and you're done! But what happened here in Poverty Point, is all in the shadow of what was thought previously to know about the production of jewelry of prehistoric peoples. This in unbelievable amounts of simple beads were made, as elsewhere, but very artful objects from tiny rock in visual forms, including many in animal form.
A few examples of the stone beads from Poverty Point Just as one day to another here is a pre-planned facility was built, it was here suddenly without prior development well out of the blue quality stylized miniature beads as the assembly-line produced, and even from the hard, difficult material to be processed. The excavators were astonished again and again with each new source of pearl or any trailer on the remarkably good editing.
is now jewelry is not essential. Nevertheless, the time of Poverty Point Vort not only in this place beads mass-manufactured, but there were also produced in several other workshop outposts in the Mississippi Delta and other places so many pearls that one of real stone beads workshops must speak. There were simple gems of stone material, cylindrical and disc-shaped red and green stones, copper, clay, and exotic stones, there were simple tubular beads that were produced in incredible amounts, but also elaborate zoomorphic shapes like birds' heads, frogs, crickets, bears and much more. This made it doubly hard for the producers by the hole durchborhrt was not at the narrowest point, but long ago by the long side of the Form, which must have been extremely burdensome.
One of the jewels - known as "The Little Bear" - of Poverty Point
The excavator of Poverty Point are wondering now whether all the thousands upon thousands of these objects served really as beads have liked. It was not so traded, nor can the people of Point Povery be laden with hundreds of beads running around (and even in their busy lives). Moreover, there were as many pendants.
to produce the beads and pendants had previously made numerous drills have been. And indeed they found micro drills en masse, especially many in the field offices workshop Jaketown, north of Poverty Point. Here the excavators had found so many micro-drill, that they thought that this place had served no other purpose than to provide the Poverty Point people with plenty of drills for their mass production.
addition made to the people of Poverty Point hundreds of cones, cylinders, spheres, cubes, trapezoids and other geometric figures made of rock, and this in such quantities that a Alltagszeck of objects is difficult to imagine. Was this just another decoration? Or had the goods, a symbolic or religious significance? And had been the huge amounts of objects made of rock that looked like pipe, really meant as a pipe? And why the workers had made here also masse tiny miniature tools, quadi tiny models of the ordinary? And why the spearhead had been used, which were of such high quality and too big or too elaborate to have been actually used to be?
And then there was the strange objects that look like sinkers. These were excavated in real quantities, here and in a number of field offices workshops. They consisted of iron ore or rock, were handled extremely carefully polished consuming and have a hole was. Many of the unidentifiable Objects were also still decorated with dots, geometric patterns, rings in the well, or engraved stylized people and animals. The significance of these artifacts is still unclear. Had been only weights for fishing nets or bolas? Or they belonged to throw spears? Or it would fetishes or talismans, or - if one can think of nothing else comes of this proposal so inevitably lead us into the conversation - Ceremonial?
Equally mysterious are the former importance of the Poverty Point Objects, also known as "clay balls" or Lehmbälle. Even in the few areas of Poverty Point, where excavations have been carried out - in a tiny Fraction of the whole complex - which archaeologists over four million of these have Lehmobjekte transported to the surface. There they were - and the masses as well - again in the field offices workshops. But what were they?
A few of the enigmatic Poverty Point Objects Prof. Haag, one of the excavators called it aptly in the 1950s "problematic Poverty Point Objects" - and since then it has hardly become smarter. It's not just balls, and they are strictly speaking not only of clay, but rather of silt and sand. The shapes are cylindrical, conical, ball-shaped and irregular, some, most, but not a hole. The spherical are usually the size of a grapefruit. Here again one does not know what the objects could have served. Had they been in the food supply is used instead of heated stones? a new kind of cooking was invented? There had been archaeological experiments intended to prove or disprove this, but a conclusive result, we did not come. Above all, there were too many of these clay balls - no matter what purpose you use also thought up. Whatever: it was like the beads, pendants, stone objects and alleged sinkers: everything here was just "too much"!
The biggest mystery of all the mass-produced objects by Poverty Point is the fact that they appear, instead of being used or used in commerce, were systematically buried under the ground. Archaeologists speak of "victims" or depots and are completely clueless.
Why vergäbt something? I can think of only the following reasons: they want something safe location for a later time - or you want to hide something. That this object to have been sacrificed in any gods, I think far-fetched. We do not even know whether the people of Poverty Point knew any gods at all.
Whether by the excavators so-called "fox god", an award-occurring motif iconography, any reference to a God (or a master planner?) Represents, is completely unknown. We only know that several times in Poverty Point a humanoid creature was shown that with something on his head or has.
As in enormous quantities produced and then systematically buried artifacts, one must wonder whether people who have had such a complicated geometric-astronomical facility built, not for what they did reasonable grounds. In a future article I will show that the mysterious burial of countless Artifacts and the planned creation of underground material deposit is a typical feature of the cultures just that began with an inexplicable cultural leap - and just as abruptly ended, and not just in North America.
What was Poverty Point? A center of worship? A vast laboratory? A factory for the mass production of goods? A material depot for some time, or anyone? A huge calendar with buried artifacts?
The end of Poverty Point is inexplicable, since it came suddenly. Where have all the people? The plant was, as well as the outlying offices, workshops, simply given up and abandoned, as they have their - unknown to us-purpose met, as if the Master Plan project was completed. A sudden start - and an equally abrupt end! Poverty Point - a still unsolved archaeological mystery!
Literature:
Literature:
Anonymous: Louisiana's 4000-foot-Calendar. In: Science Digest, July 1982
Blum, Jordan: Poverty Point Indian team digs through Moud.
Brecher, Kenneth William G. Haag: Astronomical Alignments at Poverty Point. In: American Antiquity, No. 48, 1983
Crain, David A.: Texas Gulf Coast Poverty Point Culture.
Ford, James: Archaeological Suvey in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley, 1940-1947.
Havard, Peabody Museum
Ford, James / Clarence Webb: Poverty Point, a Late Archaic Site in Louisiana. Hrsg.: American Museum of Natural History
Ford, James / Philip Philips / W.G. Haag: The Jaketown Site in West-Central Mississippi. Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, Vol. 45, 1955
Gibson, Jon: Poverty Point. Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism. 1966 www.crt.state.la.us/archaeology/povertypoi/culture
Gibson, Jon: The Ancient Mounds of Poverty Point. Gainesville 2001
Goldsmith, Sarah Sue: Poverty Point: Where History Lies Sleeping. In. Advocate Magazine, 26. Mai 1996, Baton Rouge
Jackson, H. Edwin: Trade and Exchange in Prehistoric Mississippi. 2000 www.mdah.state.ms.us/hpress/Trade_and_Exchange_in_Prehistoric_MS.pdf
Kidder, Tristam R.: The 1999 Poverty Point Mapping Project. New Orleans 1999
Lehmann, Geoffrey: The Jaketown Site, Surface Collections from a Poverty Point Regional Center in the Yazoo Basin, Mississippi. Hrsg.: Mississippi Department of Archives and History
Lynn, Andrea: Non-invasive tools key to first mapping of early Louisiana Culture. 2002 www.news.uiuc.edu/scitips/02/1201povertypt.html
Purrington, Robert D.: Supposed Solar Alignments at Poverty Point. In: American Antiquity, Nr. 48, 1983
Saunders, Joe W.: Speeding Ahead the Plow. 1996 www.cr.nps.gov/archaeology/cg/vol1_num1/speeding.htm
Schoenherr, Neil: Could Hunter-Gatherers habe been more sophisticated then we once thought? In: Record, Vol, 30, Nr. 10, 14. Oktober 2005, Washington University, St. Louis 2005
Toye, David L.: The Emergence of Complex Societies: A Comparative Approach. www.historycooperative.org/journals/whc1.2/toye.html
more:
Gisela Ermel: The Moundbuilder phenomenon.
Ancient mail Verlag, Gross-Gerau 2008
ISBN 978-3-935919-57-5
350 pages, numerous illustrations
0 comments:
Post a Comment