A New Study Revealed the Secret Origin of One of America's Most Mysterious Monuments
Poverty Point, a 3,500-year-old earthen mound, is a well-researched UNESCO World Heritage Site, but a pair of studies re-examines its original purpose.
By Darren Orf
Published: Dec 02, 2025 9:30 AM EST
5 min
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Around 1,500 B.C.E., civilization was really starting to take off. Ancient Egypt was entering a golden age known as the New Kingdom, the Hittites took root in the Middle East, the Shang Dynasty came to power in China, and the Olmecs emerged in the tropical lowlands of what would one day be Mexico. At this same time, in the Lower Mississippi Valley—some 350 miles from the mouth of the North America’s largest river—the hunter-gatherers of a burgeoning egalitarian society were constructing one of the oldest and most impressive earthwork monuments in the western hemisphere.
Known today as Poverty Point—a name derived from a 19th-century plantation that was located near the archaeological site—this approximately 3,500-year-old structure (built sometime between 1700 B.C.E. to 1100 B.C.E.) is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. And while the size of the site is certainly impressive, stretching some 1.5 square miles, these ancient peoples also moved the equivalent of 140,000 dump trucks of dirt without the use of horses or even wheels.
It’s long been known that Poverty Point served as a kind of trading hub for ancient hunter-gatherers spread throughout southeastern and midwestern U.S. But in a new study—published in the journal Southeastern Archaeology—archaeologists from Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) re-examine the origin story of this impressive site, asking why ancient peoples built these mounds in the first place.
Typically, years-long intentional monument building is the work of hierarchies, like those of the pharaohs ruling Egyptians, kings governing Hittites, and Chinese rulers lording over their subjects. But Kidder and his co-author Seth Grooms (a former WashU PhD graduate and a member of the Lumbee tribe of North Carolina) believe that Poverty Point was the work of an egalitarian civilization coming to grips with increased severe weather and massive flooding in the region.
More:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/archaeology/a69535875/poverty-point/