|
In the center of the Kolomoki site is a conical mound rising to a height of 20 feet at its apex. (View QTVR) Known as Mound D, this mound
|
|
|
This computer reconstruction shows how Mound D & Mound A might have appeared in 600 AD. This artwork is available on t-shirts, stickers, mugs, and other items in our LostWorlds Gift Store.
|
|
contained 77 burials and a cache of exquisite ceremonial pottery. In fact, it is the unique nature of these mortuary pottery vessels that the Kolomoki site has become noted. This cache consisted of effigy pottery in the shapes of various animals including deer, quail and owls.
The burial mound itself was constructed over a long period of time and consists of several stages. The first stage was a rectangular platform mound about six feet high created from yellow clay. A cache of 60 pottery vessels, including the aforementioned effigy pottery, was placed against the eastern side of this mound. Many burials later, the mound evolved into a circular platform mound about 10 feet high, still covered in yellow clay. After the final burial activity, the mound was completely covered with red clay and took its present form. These final burials were all placed in the east side of the mound with the skulls facing eastward. Burial objects made from copper and iron as well as pearl beads were included with these burials.
Between the burial mound and Mound A lay a central plaza of red clay. The people of the village most likely lived in houses surrounding this plaza. Their houses were of wattle-and-daub construction with thatched roofs made from local grasses. One unique type of house was the
At the far western end of the site is located a circular, dome shaped burial mound known as Mound E. The mound is about 11 feet high and constructed from soil and rocks with a final capping layer of red clay and rocks. Within it was found the graves of several people along with their grave goods. Some of these grave goods included a copper-covered wooden ornament and a mass of fifty-four complete pottery vessels. One individual was interred with a mass of shell beads and copper ear ornaments with pearls at their centers.
Another mound, Mound B, located at the southeastern end of the central plaza near Mound A, has perplexed archaeologists since its discovery. It seems to have been created solely to hold up very large posts. Some have suggested that these posts were the goal posts of an Indian ball game while others suggested they were possibly totem poles. A more likely explanation, though, comes from written observations during the historic era of Hitchiti Indian practices in this same region. Hitchiti (or lower Creek) towns were divided into "White (peace) Towns" and "Red (war) Towns." At every public assembly, each town would erect either a white "Peace Post" or red "War Post" at the southeast corner of their central plaza to indicate their present political orientation. Thus, it is likely that Kolomoki's "mysterious" mound reflects an earlier Woodland version of this same ritual or is a later addition by the Lamar culture.
Astronomical alignments have been noted for several mounds at the Kolomoki site. Mounds A, D, and E which form the central axis of the site also form an alignment with the sun at the spring equinox. Mounds F and D form an alignment with the sun at the summer solstice. Other mounds were thought to have been aligned in order to predict the arrival of these solar events.
As was noted previously during the Fort Mountain discussion, pottery manufactured during this time period seems to reflect a detailed knowledge of astronomical events. This pottery, called Weeden Island sacred pottery, includes designs that have been interpreted as being:
- a solar calendar divided into twelve months including indicators for equinoxes and solstices
- a star map of the night sky including constellations
- representations of the paths of Mercury and Venus in the eastern predawn sky
  
|
|
|
Map showing the distribution of Swift Creek (purple) and Santa Rosa Swift Creek (orange) culture areas. (Courtesy Herb Roe.)
|
|
Thus clearly the people who built Kolomoki Mounds were a sophisticated people with knowledge of astronomy. So, who built Kolomoki?
The primary evidence comes from the two types of pottery that have been found at the site: Swift Creek pottery and Weeden Island pottery. The Swift Creek culture is the older and more wide-spread of the two and it is believed that the Weeden Island culture evolved directly from the Swift Creek. A map of the Swift Creek culture area shows that it was once spread across most of the state of Georgia. The distribution of this culture and its pottery seems to match the distribution of the Hitchiti Native American language family thus it is likely that Hitchiti was the language of the Swift Creek Culture.
One of the few modern-day speakers of this language is the Miccosukee Indian Tribe in south Florida. They were once part of a larger tribe known as the Chiaha who lived in Georgia and Tennessee. As was noted in our previous discussion on Fort Mountain there is mounting evidence that the Chiaha were Maya immigrants from Mexico. According to one Hitchiti migration legend they arrived by boat in the Lake Okeechobee area of Florida before migrating north into Georgia. Archaeologists have found the earliest evidence of corn agriculture in North America in the area around Lake Okeechobee dating to around 200 AD, the same time period that construction began at Kolomoki. Corn originated in Mexico thus its arrival in Florida suggests Mexican natives brought it there by boat.
Additionally, linguistic connections between Hitchiti and Mayan also exist. For instance, Chiaha is a Mayan word that means "edge water" or "water's edge." This is precisely where most Swift Creek villages were constructed and thus a fitting name for this tribe. The Hitchiti word for "house" is chiki, the same as it is for the Totonacs in Mexico.
|
|
|
Swift Creek design that appears to show Quetzalcoatl, the "plumed serpent." (Courtesy David Smith)
|
|
In both Mayan and Hitchiti chi means "mouth." These are just a few examples of the linguistic connections.
But further connections can be found in the Swift Creek pottery itself. It appears that Mesoamerican glyphs are represented in many of the design motifs carved and stamped into the surfaces of these pots. The most famous and widespread mythological symbol in Mexico is that of Quetzalcoatl, the plumed or feathered serpent. Images of this mythological being have been discovered on Swift Creek pottery.
|
|
|
Swift Creek design on left is similar to the "2 Cane" glyph from Mexico. (Courtesy David Smith, Atlanta Antiquity, 2009.)
|
|
Also, in pre-Hispanic Mexican mythology the year "2 Cane" is associated with the beginning of time. The glyph for "2 Cane" has been found on Swift Creek pottery. Further research will undoubtedly reveal even more such connections.
Is there any evidence for long-distance ocean travel during this time period? In fact, there is. An ocean-going dugout canoe was discovered at Weedon Island, Florida in 2008. Coincidentally, this is the island which gives the aforementioned Weeden Island pottery its name. The canoe was discovered buried on the shore below the high tide mark. Two features immediately suggested to archaeologists that this canoe was used for long distance travel across the open ocean.
First, it was designed with a high bow which enabled it to cut through the more choppy waters associated with open water ocean travel. Normal dugout canoes without this feature would soon take on too much water and sink.
Second, its length at over 45 feet is far longer than what is typical of canoes that traveled locally via rivers and streams. The size of this canoe enabled it to carry a large amount of cargo or trade goods across open water. Although this particular canoe dated to around 1000 A.D. this is still close enough in time to suggest that earlier people in the Gulf Coast area such as those that built Kolomoki Mounds could have had the same technology.
While the true identity of the builders of Kolomoki Mounds is not known for certain, what is know is that around 550A.D. something seems to have happened to the people who inhabited the Kolomoki site. The population decreased and there was also a decrease in mound construction. Interestingly, these changes were in line with what was happening around the world at the same time. A major disruption in the earth's climate seems to have occurred worldwide around the year 536 A.D. This was the most severe episode of cooling in the Northern Hemisphere in the last 2,000 years (since the 2400 BC event discussed in the Sapelo Shell Rings article.) An extensive atmospheric dust veil is thought to have caused this cooling event. In his book Catastrophe, author David Keys argues that this dust veil was caused by the eruption of the Indonesian super-volcano Krakatoa, one of the largest volcanic eruptions of the past 50,000 years.
Yet evidence is mounting that an impact event caused this climactic downturn. Greenland ice cores from this time contain spherules which originated from terrestrial debris ejected into the atmosphere by multiple impacts from a comet which broke up into several pieces upon entering Earth's atmosphere. Marine sediments have been found in the ice core suggesting that at least one fragment impacted the ocean somewhere near Norway. This impact would have caused a tsunami that would have sped across the Atlantic impacting the shores of eastern North America.
Written records from this time period in Europe and Asia noted how the sun only shown for four hours a day and even then was very dim like during an eclipse. Snow fell in the summer and crops failed causing mass starvation. Plagues also were widespread. This was the beginning of Europe's Dark Ages.
That a comet was involved seems clear from one account which noted "a star which certain call a comet, with a ray like a sword, appeared over that country through a whole year, and the sky seemed to be on fire and many other signs were seen." Another account noted, "And the earth with all that is upon it quaked; and the sun began to be darkened by day and the moon by night, while the ocean was tumultuous with spray from the 24th of March in this year [536 AD] till the 24th of June in the following year [537 AD]." Another account notes how these calamities and plagues lasted for 52 years.
Coincidentally, Mesoamerican calendars operated on a 52 year cycle at the end of which a great destruction was expected. The famous Aztec Sun Stone or Calendar Stone was used to track this very cycle. These calendars were based on the annual cycle of the Pleiades star cluster located in the constellation Taurus, the bull. Could this 52 year calendar cycle have originated because of the 52 years of calamities caused by the comet impact of 536 AD?
|
|
|
This jade ox/bull shows fireballs, possibly fragments of a comet, emanating from the Pleiades star group, represented by the concentric circles, in the constellation Taurus, represented by the ox itself.
|
|
Coincidentally, a Chinese jade from this time period (Tang Dynasty) was sculpted in the form of an ox or bull and has multiple fireballs emanating from the the shoulder and body of the bull. The bull has concentric circles on its shoulder in precisely the location where the Pleiades star cluster sits in the Taurus constellation. The Pleiades star cluster is located on the shoulder of the constellation Taurus thus this jade ox very likely represents the constellation Taurus and the concentric circles on its shoulder represents the Pleiades star cluster. If the fireballs that caused this 52 year period of droughts and plagues originated from the Pleiades star cluster, as this jade sculpture indicates, this would help to explain the great fear Mesoamerican cultures associated with this star group.
|
|
|
Hopewell shell mask showing concentric circles as eyes and "fireballs" or "weeping eye motif" surrounding the eyes.
|
|
Interestingly, Native Americans in Ohio's Hopewell culture, which had trade contacts with the Kolomoki culture, created shell masks which featured a design element known as the "weeping eye" or "forked eye" motif that is very similar in design to the fireballs on the Chinese jade ox. Could these Hopewell artifacts have been documenting the same cosmic catastrophe? This design motif would disappear for centuries only to reappear at the next site in our story, Ocmulgee Mounds, one year after Chinese records recorded one of the brightest and largest comets in history. Was this a coincidence or did the appearance of such a bright comet revive the ancient memories of a previous comet that split into fireballs that devastated Earth's climate?
The event of 536 AD caused both droughts and severe floods worldwide and was accompanied by a global decrease in temperature. These natural disasters and climactic changes led to increased competition for dwindling food supplies which in turn led to increased warfare. In the southeast around this time a new weapon was either developed or introduced: the bow and arrow.
Where did the people of Kolomoki go? An intriguing clue lies in the architecture of a house-type first identificed at Kolomoki. Known as a keyhole house, the structure had a rectangular floor recessed three feet below the surface of the ground. Steps led down into the house through a tunnel-like entrance. Coincidentally, about fifty years after Kolomoki was abandoned this same unique house-type appeared in Arkansas at a site known today as Toltec Mounds. Approximately
|
|
|
This computer reconstruction shows how Mound D & Mound A might have appeared in 600 AD. This artwork is available on t-shirts, stickers, mugs, and other items in our LostWorlds Gift Store.
|
|
100 years later this house-type appeared at the very important archaeological site known as Cahokia near modern-day St. Louis, Missouri. Did the elite families of Kolomoki migrate into Arkansas and Missouri after they left southwest Georgia?
Sometime around A.D. 675 the volcano Popocatepetl in central Mexico had one of its largest eruptions ever. The great Mexican city of Teotihuacan also went into decline around the same time. Teotihuacan was the most populous city in the New World and the sixth most populous in the entire world but by A.D. 750 both Teotihuacan and Kolomoki would be abandoned and their inhabitants would migrate to other areas. The great Teotihuacan would be burned by its own rioting inhabitants. They would also smash statues of their rain god perhaps for failing to deliver the much needed rain. Around the world a similar pattern occurred: established empires crumbled and new powers emerged. It is also interesting to note that the large mound at Kolomoki, Mound A, was at one point covered in white clay and then eventually capped with a final red clay layer. Had Kolomoki changed from a "white" peace town into a "red" war town before its decline?
The stage was now set for the arrival of a new people in Georgia who came from the west and brought with them new ideas. These people were the Mississippians.
|
