In regards to this page http://rockpiles.blogspot.com/
I thought you might find them an interesting read considering your blog (which I've only just found).
(PWAX) I strongly recommend that last link. It is much more detailed and convincing that there actually is a Mayan presence in Georgia. Of course, let me be the first to say, that things like small flat topped pyramids in Fitchburg might have a connection to those people as well. The only problem I see with the argument of Mayans coming directly to the eastern US, is that so many cultures between Mexico and the eastern US have the same kind of arrowheads as the Maya - so it should be viewed [I think] as a continuum from Mexico to here.
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This is just fantastic news. Now some people are taking seriously the idea that someone (and not just any someone but the archeologically "high status" Mayans) built mounds using stone in the eastern US.
It would be fun to be a fly on the wall when this news hits the New England academic convention-ocracy. They will be sputtering about how somewhere between northern Georgia and New England, the stone walls change their character and start being solely agrarian and practical.
For some reason this blog is the first link returned by Google when you enter "Johannes Loubser". Visitor traffic is spiking (near 300 yesterday).
Note that the author of the Examiner article writes, in an update to the article: "There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever of a Maya presence in Georgia. He is typing on this computer right now. Like most Georgia and South Carolina Creeks, I carry a trace of Maya DNA. I think you will find that some branches of the Seminoles and Cherokees also carry Maya DNA."
I think this "Mayan Presence" is a rousing good tale but wait till conventional archeologists unloose their skeptical pens on the subject. Here are some enthusiast questions versus predicted conventional wisdom:
Q: Similar architecture to the Mayans?
A: Mutual parallel development. Also there is a 1,000 years time delta between Mayan civilization and the Mississippian mound builders. So there is no real Mayan connection.
Q: Stone piles are Mayan.
A: Where is the writing? The stelae?
Q: What about the Mayan words in the Creek vocabulary?
A: Coincidence. For example Algonquian is full of Norse terms but we know there is no connection.
etc.
AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND ETHNOHISTORICAL
Making coffee on Christmas morning, I'm reading:
APPRAISAL OF A PILED STONE FEATURE COMPLEX IN
THE MOUNTAINS OF NORTH GEORGIA
By Johannes (Jannie) Loubser (Stratum Unlimited, LLC) and Douglas Frink (Worcester State College)
http://www.stratumunlimited.com/uploads/4/8/1/5/4815662/track_rock_paper.pdf
I've been to the site in the company of Carey Waldrip, who discovered the stone terraces in Track Rock Gap. Loubser investigated one stone mound and found Indian artifacts dating to about 1000 B.P. I don't buy the Mayan hypothesis.
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