Poverty Point, a 3,500-year-old earthen mound, is a well-researched UNESCO World Heritage Site, but a pair of studies re-examines its original purpose.

Poverty Point, located north of New Orleans, is an archaeological site believed to have been a major trading center between roughly 1700 B.C.E. and 1100 B.C.E. A new study suggests that the massive 1.5-square-mile site was built by an egalitarian hunter-gatherer society, challenging earlier ideas that such monumental earthworks required hierarchical leadership. The discovery of artifacts from across the Midwest and Southeast supports the view that Poverty Point functioned as a significant trade hub.

Around 1,500 B.C.E., major civilizations were emerging worldwide. Ancient Egypt was entering its New Kingdom, the Hittites were establishing themselves in the Middle East, the Shang Dynasty rose in China, and the Olmecs appeared in what is now Mexico. At the same time, hunter-gatherers in the Lower Mississippi Valley about 350 miles from the river’s mouth were constructing one of the oldest and most impressive earthwork complexes in the Americas.

Today known as Poverty Point a name originating from a 19th-century plantation nearby this 3,500-year-old site is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its scale is remarkable: the ancient builders moved the equivalent of 140,000 dump trucks of soil, accomplishing this feat without the use of horses or wheels.