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Not trying to compare Greece with North Texas(or Louisiana) in 13000BCE here. There are ancient sites with "sophisticated" cultures/societies that spanned large
by 1659447091 10mo ago
Not trying to compare Greece with North Texas(or Louisiana) in 13000BCE here. There are ancient sites with "sophisticated" cultures/societies that spanned large parts of the current mid to east US -- and were also unlikely to be nomadic tribes passing through.
There is evidence of major construction projects, large trade centers/complex societies along the Mississippi Valley covering large areas with a trade network across the mid/eastern/southeast US. Watson Brake is currently the oldest* at ~3500BCE[0], but less studied and smaller. Poverty Point ~1700BCE[1] is more like a city or major trading hub. The effort to build the mounds and ridges is far more impressive than is likely from a roaming tribe. The construction is not haphazard, there is evidence of housing and many astronomical markers/alignments throughout the mound builder cultures of North America.
Cahokia Mounds[2] (far more recent) is considered an urban settlement, occupied from around 800CE and at its peak 1050-1150CE, thought to be larger than London or Paris at that time.
* Watson Break was discovered in the 1980's and the 6th mound at Poverty Point discovered in 2013. There could be many more that have been overlooked/undiscovered or razed -- being that we still don't fully understand them and they hardy look like what we are use to.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_Brake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_Brake
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_Point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_Point
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahokia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahokia
- vel0city 10mo agoI'm well aware of these. And yes, lots of areas around North America had quite complicated and developed societies with large trade networks and even "highways" connecting ancient cities. But, these things are practically entirely disconnected to the societies of people living in the US today. And that's the point I'm making, this area is very young in terms of what is here now. That some other group developed something like a city several hundred miles away thousands of years before this town existed has effectively zero impact on the development of this place and the lives of the people who live here. This isn't necessarily the same for cities that have existed for hundreds or thousands of years which still even has some of the same streets and buildings of history. You'd be hard pressed to find a single structure still used here today that was older than 1940 in this town outside of a few notable rare examples dating back to the 1920s, that's a closer example to my point. What's the age of the oldest building in Paris? How about London? Athens? Trier? These are places that have had a practically uninterrupted flow of people living in dense urban places for many hundreds to thousands of years. This is just not true for massive parts of the US. Few cities draw their roots back to even the 1500s, with many having their roots go to the 1800s or even newer.