Maya - Georgia connection

[caughtinarut]

I was watching America Unearthed and they were talking about and showing many similarities/artifacts/structures that were found around Trackrock and kolomoki compared to the Mayan in Mexico. What are your thoughts? It is the first epidsode it you want to watch.

 

[NCHillbilly]

The whole Mississippian culture in eastern North America had a lot of similarities in some ways to the Central American cultures. The artwork was very similar, (winged serpents, birdmen, etc.) and most of the Mississippian mounds were flat-topped earth pyramids. Corn, the bow and arrow, and pottery worked their way here from there, so I assume a lot of other cultural ideas did, too.

Here is an example of a Mississippian shell gorget from the southeast:

 

[caughtinarut]

The maya blue clay had interesting connection to Georgia according to the show as well. They basically said they believed it came from georgia. There many not have been Mayans in Georgia but there are interesting connections. They even talked about the native names around lake okeechobee having similar names to Maya.

 

[GeorgiaBob]

An increasing body of evidence seems to connect many of the pre-15th century Caribbean, North, and Central American cultures. There have been several pieces of clay pots found in the desert Southwest that appear very similar to Mayan artifacts. A few of the "offerings" found at the bottom of Mayan "temple" sinkholes may have come from the coastal Pacific Northwest peoples.

We have long assumed that the remnant populations of native Americans encountered in the 18th century represented the peak of their technology and society. That assumption is collapsing. Clearly, after exposure to European diseases at the end of the 15th century, a vast plague killed a significant percentage (likely more the 60%) of the population of the Caribbean, North and Central America - in a very few years. The only way that spread could be so rapid is if regular trade and communication was long established.

My (totally unprofessional, and unqualified) opinion is that the many nation states and rural cultures present in the western hemisphere were in regular contact, had a somewhat sophisticated system of trade, and lived a generally peaceful coexistence (regular territorial or trade wars, notwithstanding) - AND - that trade, those interactions almost completely ended as shrinking populations faced apocalyptic collapses of their own societies in the 16th and 17th centuries. What colonists and settlers from Europe encountered in the 18th century were, in my opinion, remnant populations!

Though the evidence establishes (mostly) that the many city states of the Mayan culture were gone by about 1450, there is significant evidence supporting continued trade between Mayan people and the Carib peoples as well as the growing Aztec empire well into the 16th century. I would not be at all surprised if, at some future date, some dig in Georgia or Northern Florida, turns up evidence of something akin to a Mayan embassy or trade center.

 

[Bobby Linton]

Georgia Bob, didn't mound builder society collapse well before first contact? I took a motorcycle trip to Georgia's grand canyon and wasn't that impressed so I headed south to a state park with Indian mounds. I thought the presentation there said that the local Indian population refered to the mound builders as the people before, already long gone by 1492. Best guess is their society had collapsed by 1000ad.

 

[GeorgiaBob]

Bobby, several American "nations," societies, cultures are known to have collapsed over the two or three millennia preceding a European presence here. The Mayan city states were all gone by about 1450 - fifty years before Columbus. The Anasazi culture seems to have disappeared in the 13th century. And the "Mound builders" seem to have disappeared somewhere between the 10th and 15th centuries. There is a lot about the Mound culture that we simply cannot figure out, including why it ended or exactly when.

In most cases, before Europeans, a failed culture or nation, is replaced by a different society. Sometimes, like the Anasazi run off by drought, conditions simply prohibited continued occupation of the same sites by a sophisticated replacement culture. Or, like the Mayans who abandoned their city culture for unknown reasons but remained in strength in the same region, preventing a new "advanced" system to develop.

But in almost every other case, (droughts and Mayans excluded), as one nation or culture fades another develops and the international/intercultural system of trade and communication seems (to me) to have continued - even through the significant changes - right up until European diseases wipe out so many people, and perhaps just as important, destroyed the trust between distant groups, that the trade system collapses. Along with the missing trade, the pre-European Americans may have also lost the knowledge and exchange of ideas that was likely part of the package.

I am not citing some real pros work. This is just my opinion, my speculation, based upon my (admittedly) incomplete knowledge.

 

[Nicodemus]

Bobby, several American "nations," societies, cultures are known to have collapsed over the two or three millennia preceding a European presence here. The Mayan city states were all gone by about 1450 - fifty years before Columbus. The Anasazi culture seems to have disappeared in the 13th century. And the "Mound builders" seem to have disappeared somewhere between the 10th and 15th centuries. There is a lot about the Mound culture that we simply cannot figure out, including why it ended or exactly when.

In most cases, before Europeans, a failed culture or nation, is replaced by a different society. Sometimes, like the Anasazi run off by drought, conditions simply prohibited continued occupation of the same sites by a sophisticated replacement culture. Or, like the Mayans who abandoned their city culture for unknown reasons but remained in strength in the same region, preventing a new "advanced" system to develop.

But in almost every other case, (droughts and Mayans excluded), as one nation or culture fades another develops and the international/intercultural system of trade and communication seems (to me) to have continued - even through the significant changes - right up until European diseases wipe out so many people, and perhaps just as important, destroyed the trust between distant groups, that the trade system collapses. Along with the missing trade, the pre-European Americans may have also lost the knowledge and exchange of ideas that was likely part of the package.

I am not citing some real pros work. This is just my opinion, my speculation, based upon my (admittedly) incomplete knowledge.

This falls in line partly with the arrival of the Vikings on this continent, but even more so with the theory that the Welch arrived in the Southeast through the Gulf of Mexico in 1170 AD. If this did happen, they would have introduced Old World diseases that the Mound Builders including the Kolomoki people would have had no defense against. That could possibly be why these civilizations were wiped out.

 

[NCHillbilly]

This falls in line partly with the arrival of the Vikings on this continent, but even more so with the theory that the Welch arrived in the Southeast through the Gulf of Mexico in 1170 AD. If this did happen, they would have introduced Old World diseases that the Mound Builders including the Kolomoki people would have had no defense against. That could possibly be why these civilizations were wiped out.

I agree. I think half the native people died off from disease before they ever set eyes on a white man. I have read a lot about the Madoc/Mandan theory, and there is some pretty good evidence supporting it.

There are vast ruins of a great civilization in the Amazon Basin, too. These people just disappeared for some reason, and it reverted back to thinly inhabited jungle.

I also think the the Mississippian and other cultures were somewhat victims of their own success. When you start building cities on the scale of Cahokia and Chichen Itza, it's hard to maintain and support them with the resources they need without the things that we take for granted today like trucks, roads, and production facilities.

There was obviously a lot of long-distance trade in goods and ideas before European contact. Here in western NC, excavations of mounds have found Hopewellian pottery and copper from the Great Lakes region, and excavations at Hopewellian sites find sheet mica and other things from here. I think there was possibly a good bit of intercontinental contact between the Americas, Asia, and Africa long before Columbus. Ruins of Chinese junks in North America, statues with black features in South America, traces of cocaine in Egyptian mummies, the list goes on and on.

 

[Bobby Linton]

Very interesting theory about the Welsh. Just would seem like there would be dna evidence in the Americans if Europeans were here for 300 years before Columbus. You could also check for markers for European diseases in the pre Columbian corpses. I could be convinced, I'm just skeptical. England pushed the Welsh first contact theroy to bolster their claim to the new world. That sounds like a reasonable motive to fabricate the story.

 

[NCHillbilly]

Very interesting theory about the Welsh. Just would seem like there would be dna evidence in the Americans if Europeans were here for 300 years before Columbus. You could also check for markers for European diseases in the pre Columbian corpses.

The Mandan Indians were the likely candidates for being the descendants of Madoc and the Welsh. When Louis and Clark visited them, they commented on the preponderance of red hair, blue eyes, and cultural differences of the tribe compared to the other tribes around them. They became extinct not long after contact, wiped out by smallpox.

I also believe that the Clovis people living here 15,000 years ago were descendants of the French Solutreans. Pretty good evidence to support that one.

 

[MIG]

I also believe that the Clovis people living here 15,000 years ago were descendants of the French Solutreans. Pretty good evidence to support that one.

You've read "Across Atlantic Ice". If not, you'd find it interesting. I'm not totally sold on the theory but the author makes a compelling argument for sure.

 

[ron moore]

Check out POOF (People of One Fire by Richard Thornton)