Rock effigy formations in Putnam Co. GA.

trad bow · Mar 28, 2017

Do you have a book or website with this information?

The book I read a lot is "Oconee River- Tales to Tell" by Katherine Walters.
My take on books is to read several on the subject as writers tend to interpret things differently at times. I also walk the Oconee NF a lot looking for old home sites, grist mills and cemeteries that have long ago been forgotten or lost to modern culture. Finding these old homesteads and communities of days gone by lets me have a better connection to the material I am reading.

3ringer · Mar 30, 2017

Visited this past Sunday with my niece. I asked her what she thought. She said just a pile of rocks . I said yes , but how and who placed them there. Can you imagine the work and time involved. The mound is nearly 10 feet deep. Amazing

Bill Yox · May 1, 2017

My opinion is that native americans always gave great thanks and offerings to gods they believed in, for their blessing. Many seemed to generate from above. Examples include the sun, the stars, weather, etc. So many of their stone tools and grave burial goods were in effigy form. As for the lack of local white quartz, that confuses me. Walk any field in the area and youll find an abundance of it. Almost every point I find while walking fields is made of it. My guess would be that they mined it very near to this site, and if it wasnt worked into quarry blanks to be carried elsewhere to be knapped further, it was set aside and eventually stacked into such effigies or decorated gravesites.

fishfryer · Feb 21, 2021

Milkman said:
I would love to read more on this. Do you have a book or website with this information?

Katherine Walters was my aunt,she was the wife of my father's brother Clarence Walters.

redneck_billcollector · May 26, 2021

Bill Yox said:
My opinion is that native americans always gave great thanks and offerings to gods they believed in, for their blessing. Many seemed to generate from above. Examples include the sun, the stars, weather, etc. So many of their stone tools and grave burial goods were in effigy form. As for the lack of local white quartz, that confuses me. Walk any field in the area and youll find an abundance of it. Almost every point I find while walking fields is made of it. My guess would be that they mined it very near to this site, and if it wasnt worked into quarry blanks to be carried elsewhere to be knapped further, it was set aside and eventually stacked into such effigies or decorated gravesites.

If you look at the date of those studies, a lot is explained. I have seen old archeology articles on the lithography from Southwest Georgia with pictures of archaic points and the article talking about it being an arrowhead from the Creeks. 90 to 100 years ago or more, archeology was still new and in many cases very naive and made some rather, what we would think now, humorous assumptions. I have seen old writings about the mounds in parts of GA being of Creek origin, which we now know is ....well, not true, the Creek did not even exist as a nation until after DeSoto came through and the last of the Mississippian Cultures died due to European sicknesses introduced by the early explorers. Those cultures were already in decline due to a cooling climate that started in the 15th Century, this climate change is what also killed off the Scandinavian settlements in Greenland. Many people do not stop to think that within years of DeSoto huge swaths of the native population in the southeast, and much of N. America died due to the Common Cold, Small Pox, Measles etc...etc... due to the fact that large scale animal husbandry was not practiced in America and there were few domesticated animals aside from dogs (I can only think of Llamas and Guinea Pigs in South America and Turkeys in some regions of the southwest) so they never developed immunity to the diseases that Europeans became exposed to with the domestication of animals on a large scale.

NCHillbilly · May 28, 2021

redneck_billcollector said:
If you look at the date of those studies, a lot is explained. I have seen old archeology articles on the lithography from Southwest Georgia with pictures of archaic points and the article talking about it being an arrowhead from the Creeks. 90 to 100 years ago or more, archeology was still new and in many cases very naive and made some rather, what we would think now, humorous assumptions. I have seen old writings about the mounds in parts of GA being of Creek origin, which we now know is ....well, not true, the Creek did not even exist as a nation until after DeSoto came through and the last of the Mississippian Cultures died due to European sicknesses introduced by the early explorers. Those cultures were already in decline due to a cooling climate that started in the 15th Century, this climate change is what also killed off the Scandinavian settlements in Greenland. Many people do not stop to think that within years of DeSoto huge swaths of the native population in the southeast, and much of N. America died due to the Common Cold, Small Pox, Measles etc...etc... due to the fact that large scale animal husbandry was not practiced in America and there were few domesticated animals aside from dogs (I can only think of Llamas and Guinea Pigs in South America and Turkeys in some regions of the southwest) so they never developed immunity to the diseases that Europeans became exposed to with the domestication of animals on a large scale.

Yep. The book "1491" should be required reading.

Gary Mercer · May 30, 2021

Redneck, I agree. That book really tells the tale of the early America..or "Pre-America."

Milkman · May 30, 2021

NCHillbilly said:
Yep. The book "1491" should be required reading.

Thanks
Ordered a copy from EBay just now. Used $5

Gary Mercer · Jun 1, 2021

Great read

Rock effigy formations in Putnam Co. GA.

trad bow

wooden stick slinging driveler

3ringer

Senior Member

Attachments

Bill Yox

Member

fishfryer

frying fish driveler

redneck_billcollector

Purveyor Of Fine Spirits

NCHillbilly

Administrator

Gary Mercer

Senior Member

Milkman

Deer Farmer Moderator

Gary Mercer

Senior Member

Similar threads

Latest posts

Share this page