Today was an absolutely beautiful day to be at Moundville. If any of ya'll are near there I suggest ya'll roll in to hang out at the place for a while. It will do you some good to think about how things were in Alabama around AD 1200.
I took a load of students there for the day and we had a great time, the weather was perfect and the kids learned a lot.

I love going there and do like you say and imagine what it was like for them but my mind just keeps asking how many Indians did it take to keep the grass cut like it is in 1200AD?

What modern city can we hold comparable to Moundville in the year 1200?

Not the size of it, a comparison to significance.

HAH! They didnt have grass to cut. The mounds were kept in exposed colored clays. Some of the mounds were red clay, some were white clay, and they didnt let things grow on them.

Not sure there is a way to compare with the mobilization of people in our times. Can you think of a modern city that is the cultural, entertainment, religious, political, and economic center of an entire region? That is the significance of Moundville, and then some, to the people of those times.

Love to camp there...

At that time Moundville was comparable in size to London, England population wise. The big difference was Moundville was built with wood and earth, not stone. All that wood is gone now so it makes it difficult for us to fully imagine the place.

Let’s say the river was 10-12’ deep in the channels at that time. It had to have been somewhat secluded from large masses, but easily accessed by groups with knowledge of the area.

I could go down a rabbit hole.

Overland travel was much more common, faster, and safer, than river travel. They had maps between towns just like we do, but they did not have roads they just had large trails. Many of our modern roads today are built on those same trails.

Guess several states have a "Moundville".

Was hwy43 between Eutaw and Demopolis one of those trails? Seems like it would be.

I learned a little just now. I always thought river travel would have been much quicker, especially if they had a load to move. Now I gotta learn more by asking why was traveling trails quicker than waterways?

Nevermind, I guess it has more to do with the locations of the other cities. If they're not on the same waterway it could take forever to float 100 miles downstream and fight the current back upstream along another river if the other village was only 40 miles away along the trail system. Am I close?

The white man messed it up. They didn't have to clock in and out of work, they didn't have to pay taxes, and those that didn't work didn't eat. They fished and hunted and had it made...

Next time your down this way holler at me. I live right across the road from the archeological park.

I went to a summer camp there about 55 years ago, wish I was still 11 sometimes.

I live about 2 miles across the river from there.

You left out the part about attacking, killing and enslaving each other. Plus, in reality, they probably had to work a lot harder than we do now for much less of a lifestyle than we live.

I'll keep my king size bed, air conditioner, nice hot shower and ice cold beer.

Until I read the history of the Creek Indians I never realized that once the market for deer hides ran out, that the Creek tribes enslaved other tribes, traded the slaves to the English for guns and then were able to take even more slaves.

I also didn't realize that the Creeks were a matriarchal society and the women owned everything and if a man and a woman got divorced the man had to leave and the woman kept all the stuff. (Kind of like it is now ) There is a common misconception that the women were second class in those days, but that wasn't the case with the Creeks. As a matter of fact it was quite common for white women to join the Creek nation, because women were treated much better in Creek society than in the white society.

My 6th great grandfather was a Creek chief, but he was already 3/4 Scottish. Whatever tiny bit of Creek I have in me dwindled down to almost nothing in my DNA over 6 generations of nothing but white folks.

There’s a know it all in every crowd...

In all my life I have never been to moundville. My uncle was born there. Always wanted to go and have driven all around it but never to it.

You obviously didn't go to school in or near Tuscaloosa. Field trips there seemed like they were monthly.

Keep paying your tax to the king and tell me that slavery doesn't exist today. Stop paying your property taxes on a property that's paid for and tell me it's not slavery. Refuse to pay your vehicle registration and tag renewals and let me know how long the king lets you drive on his roads.

I'm as libertarian as they come, but c'mon. A car tag is not slavery in the same sense. We have more freedom now than 99.9% of all people that have ever lived. Is it perfect? No. Unless you have your own fiefdom with your own military, you're going to pay some taxes.

I lived right down the road from Moundville in the early 80's. I have found hundreds of points from Moundville south to Cypress from Moundville era back to transitional Paleo stuff. Used to visit the University lab there and drive Eugene crazier than normal with questions. Also spent a summer helping at a dig there, very neat.

They still do the mass field trips like we use to do when we were kids. When they have a tool making day or something you should see the convoy of busses going in there. Im glad to see they still do it.