Why did ancient people build massive, mysterious mounds in Louisiana?
About 3,500 years ago, hunter-gatherer communities began shaping enormous earthen mounds along the Mississippi River at Poverty Point, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in northeast Louisiana. Tristram “T.R.” Kidder, the Edward S. and Tedi Macias Professor of anthropology, describes the scale of the undertaking this way: “Conservatively, they moved 140,000…
