The campus of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge has two large mounds, called Mound A and Mound B. They were built thousands of years ago, just like hundreds of other mounds scattered across the US by people who left no written records. Many of these mounds were plundered, flattened, or hauled away to make room for various construction projects. The ones remaining are now the subject of intense scrutiny by archaeologists. LSU has some of those archaeologists, who have confidently ascertained that the construction of Mound B began 11,000 years ago! That makes it older than any other manmade mound found in the Western Hemisphere. While we don't know the exact purpose of the LSU mounds, Mound B contains the charred remains of animal bones and plants.
The ash layers within the mounds provide a record of their construction. Around 8,200 years ago—several thousand years into its construction—Mound B was abandoned, the researchers said. Tree roots found in the mound indicate it wasn’t used by humans for a millennium. Then, Mound A’s construction began, and shortly after, construction on Mound B resumed. The mounds were completed about 6,000 years ago—a time when woolly mammoths still walked Earth.
Read more about Mound B and what we've found out at Gizmodo. -via Damn Interesting
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