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Posted on 06/11/2025 8:18:32 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
A new lidar survey of Michigan's Upper Peninsula revealed evidence of extensive farming by Native Americans that has stunned archaeologists, according to a statement released by Dartmouth College. The region's climate and short growing season has traditionally made it a difficult area for farming. However, researchers studying the Sixty Islands archaeological site near the Menominee River detected a huge network of raised garden beds spread across 330 acres, where the ancestors of the Menominee Tribe used to grow crops such as corn, beans, and squash. Radiocarbon dating of charcoal uncovered during preliminary excavations indicates that the agricultural system was used between a.d. 1000 and 1600. Archaeologists were particularly surprised by the results because it was previously thought that during this period the region was only home to small communities. But this type of project seemingly would have necessitated a larger, more organized settlement. "When you look at the scale of farming, this would require the kind of labor organization that is typically associated with a much larger, state-level hierarchical society," said Dartmouth archaeologist Madeleine McLeester. "Yet, everything we know about this area suggests smaller egalitarian societies lived in this region but in fact, this may have been a rather large settlement." The team believes that as much as 60 percent of the site still remains hidden.
(Excerpt) Read more at archaeology.org ...
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Lidar data showing (left to right): a dance ring; a historic building foundation; a 19th-century logging camp; looted burial mounds; remains of unknown burial mounds; and a burial moundLidar images by Carolin Ferwerda and Jesse Casana
Thanks for the link!
Farming? From stone aged peoples with no metal instruments or tools? They better take a closer look.
I can look at a cloud and see a dog... That doesn’t make it a dog.
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Yes. Absolutely. The practice of agriculture predates metallurgy by thousands of years. See: Start of Neolithic Age vs start of Bronze Age.
Locally, of course, the shift from hunter gatherer to farming could be swifter.
As an undergrad, I dug up the skeletons of dead Late Woodland Indians (hunter gatherers who ate lots of river mussels and deer) on weekends and worked in the university’s archaeology lab on the findings from a Mississippian (early maize farmers) dig on weekdays.
The Mississippians were the direct descendants of the Late Woodland folks, separated by only two centuries, but what a difference. The Late Woodland Indians had gorgeous strong bones and teeth (even the old ones) and were tall. The Mississippians were shorter and the older ones had not so gorgeous teeth and missing ones. That’s when I figured out vegans really are nuts.
And, no, the Mississipians did not have metal tools. They had stone axes and wooden digging sticks, and practiced classic slash and burn agriculture.
Lidar is so cool! Reveals the hidden past so well. They are mapping out the amazon and other places where imdian cultures were massive but the jungles oveftook the areas- the lidar helps to see it all again.
where the ancestors of the Menominee Tribe
Or were they some other people that were there before.
“Yes. Absolutely. The practice of agriculture predates metallurgy by thousands of years. See: Start of Neolithic Age vs start of Bronze Age.”
Evidence of agriculture in the Eastern United States dates to about 3000 BCE. Several plants were cultivated, later to be replaced by the Three Sisters cultivation of maize, squash, and beans.
I don’t know why you even went out of your way to even explain to such ignorance. And they DID have a metal culture, especially in the Great Lakes area because of the abundance of natural native copper. It went back to 6500 BC and was extensive throughout the area. In fact the Old World Bronze Age did not start until around 3500 BC so the Michigan Copper age started BEFORE the Old World Bronze age.
I am personally getting tired of the “They were stupid ignorant stone age savages because they didn’t have the wheel or metal”. Pure and simple, they absolutely knew and understood these concepts they just DIDN’T NEED THEM, they were impractical. To use the wheel you have to build roads, and most times through terrible terrain that would just wash them out every time it rains anyhow.
And to use metal extensively takes a huge infrastructure of mining, transporting, and smelting. And this is just impractical and a waste of calories when one could just reach down and pick up a stone from anywhere and knap out a tool in half an hour that works just as well or BETTER. In fact we still use stone cutting/scalpel instruments for surgeries where superior sharpness over metal is required. They are 100 times sharper than metal.
So who were the truly practical and intelligent ones?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_agriculture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Copper_complex
https://record.umich.edu/articles/surgeons-use-stone-age-technology-for-delicate-surgery/
Yet not too far away is one of the most pure copper sites [ 98% pure copper ] in the world, mined by someone at some time. Modern copper mines are considered rich if the copper is 4%.
Who mined it? Where did the copper go? Theories but no proof. Modern science can tell where a metal was mined using XRF tech.
where the ancestors of the Menominee Tribe Or were they some other people that were there before.
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Modern Indian tribes claim they were created here and that no one preceded them. This is a political stance held by tribal members living on reservations, which stance they use to stifle science, gain large payouts from the government to the tribal ruling families, and other special privileges not granted to “ordinary” citizens. Whenever this is brought up in a legal format, the Tribes invariably win, even in SCOTUS.
The copper culture you posit has never been found - there were some copper necklaces, brackets etc found, but nothing like the vast quantity of copper removed - the copper found there is 98% pure copper, and if loaded on boxcars, would have made up a train 2000 miles long.
Modern copper mines have 3-4% copper.
Now the missing copper is another whole topic but they did use it for points and practical tools. Thousands have been found along with the trinkets. But no where near the amount that is missing as you point out. I am leaning towards the theory that there was old world contact long before we claim and all the missing Copper went to the Old World... Just too much points to that possibility. :)
There was a plague that swept over North and South America shortly after the new world was discovered. It killed up to 90% of the native population and is the reason the New World was rather easy to colonize. Huge areas of the continent had already been cleared for farming when our farmers arrived to find them empty and ready to plant.
In April of 1614, Captain John Smith sailed near Ipswich and wrote, “Here are many rising hills, and on their tops and descents are many corne fields and delightful groves.” Native Americans in the North Shore area at that time are believed to have numbered in the thousands. Twenty years later when Ipswich was settled, the Agawam people, by some estimates, are believed to have been reduced to less than a hundred individuals.
Old Copper Complex artifacts:
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=Old+Copper+complex+artifacts&ia=images&iax=images
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