Dr. Little reminds his followers on X about something that few Latter-day Saints are aware of.
If you have friends who have been misled into thinking there was hardly any civilization in North America during Book of Mormon times, you can help educate them by starting with this post.
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https://x.com/DrGregLittle2/status/1773512120375652402?s=20
I have to routinely show this map because there are so many new followers. This is an 1894 map by the Smithsonian's Bureau of Ethnology showing the mound sites they had identified at that time--but only in the eastern half of the USA. The red dots are sites, many with multiple mounds. So many more sites have been found since then that a map of the eastern half of the US would be covered with dots. For example, right now there are over 12,000 mounds known to exist in Minnesota today--and about 90% of what existed have been destroyed. All of coastal Florida would be solid red as would the coast of the Carolinas.
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Some of the comments are important, too.
Looks like Michigan had quite a lot of them along its coastlines as well. Strangely not many in the U.P.
As of now, there are about 12,500 mounds that still exist in Michigan including some in the U.P. Too many to put on a map! But in 1894, when that map was made, that area was not really explored yet.
Comment:
What's in the mounds? Burials?
Some are burial mounds. Some were truncated pyramids (called platform mounds) that had structures on the tops, Some were formed into huge animal/human effigies. Some were geometric earthwork mounds. Different purposes for all of them. Many mounds had stone outer walls which few people know about. There are also stone mounds, mostly for spiritual purposes.
I'll add that the mound complexes (sites that had multiple mounds up to over 100) were the center and focal point of the surrounding towns.
