Leaving behind their mounds and earthworks in vast numbers from the Great Lakes to the Gulf and from the Atlantic to the Mississippi Valley, the Mound-builders, who have been called "the First Americans," vanished centuries ago.
The term of “Mound-Builders” is used to describe those ancient Native Americans who built large earthen mounds. They lived from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi River to the Appalachian Mountains. The earliest mounds date from 3000 B.C. in Louisiana. It is believed that these mounds were used for burial, religious ceremonies, and as governmental centers.
These included the Pre-Columbian cultures of the Archaic period; Woodland period (Adena and Hopewell cultures); and Mississippian period; dating from roughly 3500 BCE to the 16th century CE, and living in regions of the Great Lakes, the Ohio River Valley, and the Mississippi River valley and its tributary waters.
Beginning with the construction of Watson Brake about 3500 BCE in present-day Louisiana, nomadic indigenous peoples started building earthwork mounds in North America nearly 1,000 years before the pyramids were constructed in Egypt.
The Adena culture was marked by the strong development of agriculture and villages. Mounds such as Gravesville Mound in West Virginia, which is 292 feet high, making it the largest conical mound in North America, and the complex of twenty-two conical mounds known as the Wolf Plains in Ohio, are attributed to the Adena.
The Hopewell period was marked by an increase in agriculture and a strong trading network. The Hopewell culture included inter-village exchange, and residents acquiring and exchanging raw materials, such as mica, pipestone, and meteorite iron.
Mound-Builders in United States
