Drudge Retort: Red Meat for Yellow Dogs
Thursday, December 22, 2011

Archaeologists have discovered the ruins of an ancient Mayan city in the mountains of North Georgia believed to be at least 1,100 years old. According to Richard Thornton at Examiner.com, the ruins are reportedly what remains of a city built by Mayans fleeing wars, volcanic eruptions, droughts and famine.

In 1999, University of Georgia archeologist Mark Williams led an expedition to investigate the Kenimer Mound, a large, five-sided pyramid built in approximately 900 A.D. in the foothills of Georgia's tallest mountain, Brasstown Bald. Many local residents has assumed for years that the pyramid was just another wooded hill, but in fact it was a structure built on an existing hill in a method common to Mayans living in Central America as well as to Southeastern Native American tribes.

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Way cool!

It must have taken generations for them to make the hike that far.


It must have taken generations for them to make the hike that far.

#2 | Posted by grumpy_too at 2011-12-22 01:16 PM

That was my first thought too. They must have had other settlements along the way.

Not that far if you go by boat.

OH SHIT...

did they find a NEW MAYAN CALANDAR...cause the old one runs out soon

IF you know what I mean...

If archaeology has taught us little else over the last twenty years, it is how constantly migratory humans have always been. Always on the move going to new places, or back to old places and then back to other places. Archaeologists continually are finding evidence of trade and interbreeding among far separated tribes and societies. And with DNA evidence evolving, the ability to trace human migration has proven that truly no group of people are an island unto themselves.

Earthworks and mounds throughout the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys, as well as the Eastern Woodlands isn't exactly a new discovery. Neither are long distance trade goods from Latin America. Referring to them as Mayan ruins has to be one of the most ridiculous things I've read in a long time.

900 AD would put that site right at the end of the Hopewell Period (Swift Creek) and into the early Mississippian Period. Both of which were known for long distance trade, as well as being advanced agriculture/horticulturists, and socially stratified mound-builders.

The southeast in particular is known for some absolutely amazing earthworks.

#7 | POSTED BY KATIEBERRY

From the Examiner article linked within RawStory's report:

The earliest maps show the name Itsate, for both a native village at Sautee and another five miles away at the location of the popular resort of Helen, GA. Itsate is what the Itza Mayas called themselves. Also, among all indigenous peoples of the Americas, only the Itza Mayas and the ancestors of the Creek Indians in Georgia built five-side earthen pyramids as their principal mounds. It was commonplace for the Itza Maya to sculpt a hill into a pentagonal mound. There are dozens of such structures in Central America.

The name of Brasstown Bald Mountain is itself strong evidence of a Maya presence. A Cherokee village near the mountain was named Itsa-ye, when Protestant missionaries arrived in the 1820s. The missionaries mistranslated Itsaye to mean brass. They added town and soon the village was known as Brasstown. Itsa-ye, when translated into English, means Place of the Itza (Maya).

"I am the archaeologist Mark Williams mentioned in this article. This is total and complete bunk. There is no evidence of Maya in Georgia. Move along now." -- comment to this story on Examiner.Com


#9 | Posted by rcade at 2011-12-22 05:10 PM

The comments on the link are just hilarious. An orgy of slap fighting and hair pulling. Worth checking out.

An orgy of slap fighting and hair pulling.
The nooner?

...the ruins are reportedly what remains of a city built by Mayans fleeing wars, volcanic eruptions, droughts and famine.

A precursor of the possible events predicted by the Mayans for December 21, 2012?

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