Higher Ground: America's Mound Builders · Episode 6 of 7 · 40 min
Granaries in the Sky: Were the Mounds Ancient Seed Vaults?
This is the heart of the argument. The Mississippian world ran on a maize-beans-squash surplus, and a surplus has to be stored dry. De Soto's chroniclers described towns stacked with corn in raised granaries; sediment cores show a flood needed to rise about 33 feet to drown such stores, while a mound summit stood higher. The episode argues mounds were a safe-deposit box for seed, food and leadership, separating evidence from hypothesis.
Who's who
- Hernando de Soto+2 more episodesLed the 1539-1542 Spanish expedition whose chroniclers described Southeastern granaries
Where it happens
- Moundville, AlabamaMississippian center occupied and built up from c. 1000 CE
- Winterville, MississippiSite whose Temple Mound reached about 55 feet
Timeline
- c. 600-1200 CELow-flood window lets farming intensify and populations swell.
- c. 900 CEMaize agriculture intensifies and the surplus economy takes hold.
- c. 1200 CEA major flood appears in sediment cores as Cahokia's decline begins.
- 1539-1542De Soto's expedition records towns holding large stores of maize in raised granaries.
Still debated
No one has excavated a platform-mound summit and recovered an unambiguous purpose-built flood granary, so the claim is a coherent hypothesis built from three solid facts rather than proof. De Soto's granaries were also mostly at ground level.
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