Fort Mountain-Lost Worlds
Georgia's Ft. Mountain and Prince Madoc of Wales
Posted on 12/29/2008 9:53:57 AM PST by BGHater
The remains of the 855-foot stone wall that gives Fort Mountain its name wind like a snake around the northeast Georgia park,and its very presence begs a question:Who put them there?
A Cherokee legend attributes the wall to a mysterious band of "moon-eyed people" led by a Welsh prince named Madoc who appeared in the area more than 300 years before Columbus sailed to America.
A plaque at the wall says matter-of-factly it was built by Madoc and his Welsh followers,but most professional archeologists give no credence to the legend.
"There has been no archaeological evidence to back up stories that either this Welsh prince or any others came to explore the New World," said Jared Wood, the manager of the archaeology lab at the University of Georgia.
As the legend goes, the group arrived at Mobile Bay around 1170,made their way up the Alabama and Coosa rivers and built stone fortifications at several spots near present-day Chattanooga, Tenn.
Dana Olson, an author who has spent decades trying to prove the legend,said circumstantial evidence on both sides of the Atlantic is too compelling to ignore.
"I've traveled all over the country finding these forts. Some of them are pretty well known,but I'm still uncovering some of them," said Olson, the author of "The Legend of Prince Madoc and the White Indians."
The stone structures have long been a topic of debate. Many scientists have come to believe that the walls at Fort Mountain and other Southeast sites were built by native Americans between 200 B.C. and A.D. 600.
"We're not exactly sure what purposes these enclosures served,"said Wood,the UGA archaeologist."But they were likely well-known gathering places for social events. Seasonal meetings of friends and kin, trading of goods, astronomical observance, and religious or ceremonial activities may have occurred there."
(Excerpt) Read more at archaeologynews.org ...
maybe for inv. ping.
I always wonder why it is that all the “educated” folks refuse to believe what the people who witnessed something have to say. I guess some folks are just to smart to understand what their eyes tell them is true.
Such as the fact that while the 'educated' people prattle on about global warming and the extinction of the polar bears the rest of us have to turn up our heat and carry a .454 Casull just in case one of those over-populated polar bears gets hungry for something other than a seal.
Their masters were concerned the slaves didn't have enough to do and were probably plotting an uprising.
Quite likely the newly arriving Caribe Indians in the South (back in the 9th and 10th centuries) put their Northe American captives to work moving rock and raising corn.
I guess we’d better start making them now. ;)
It’s a great park to visit, been there many times. About an hour north of Atlanta.
The Gahuti trail is a good day or overnight hike and will kick your tail! I never gave the wall much passing thought. Thanks for posting this.
Wow, interesting. I had no idea about this and I’ve lived in GA my whole life. I’ll have to go visit if I can
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Thanks BGHater!"There has been no archaeological evidence to back up stories that either this Welsh prince or any others came to explore the New World," said Jared Wood, the manager of the archaeology lab at the University of Georgia.That's staggeringly ignorant of him. |
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It has been long established that Prince Madoc came over to Mentone, AL. The ruins of the wall can be found there. It was part of our history lesson in the fourth grade, 1963 - 1964. History generally awards discovery to those who establish a “permanant” settlement AND to those who write the history books.
ping
Wish I had known of this August of 2006, when we spent a week a half hour away from it. Would have beat heck out of getting lost in the maze of Peachtree Lane, Peachtree Street, S Peachtree Blvd W, E Peachtree Avenue N, Peachtree Trail....
Thanks for the ping. These stone walls are an interesting mystery.
As they say in Kentucky; “Cymru am bith”.
News Wales (UK) | 8/26/02 | Unknown
Posted on 08/29/2002 9:51:38 AM PDT by scouse
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/741385/posts
(Prince) Madoc In America
Arthur In America
Posted on 07/10/2003 5:56:52 PM PDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/943967/posts
Undeniable Evidence - Arthur’s Voyage To The OtherWorld (America)
Arthur in America
Posted on 07/11/2003 6:58:50 PM PDT by blam
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/944676/posts
Britons In USA In 6th Century - Shock Claim (Prince Madoc)
REweb.com | 11-26-2003
Posted on 11/26/2003 3:31:04 PM PST by blam
Edited on 11/20/2004 12:49:24 PM PST by Jim Robinson. [history]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1029625/posts
Explorer Madog ‘Never Existed’ (Prince Madoc)
IC Wales | 2-27-2004 | Darren Devine
Posted on 02/27/2004 12:12:09 PM PST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1086856/posts
Basques In The Susquehanna Valley 2,500 Years Ago?Back in the 1940s, Dr. W.W. Strong assembled about 400 inscribed stones from Pennsylvania's Susquehanna Valley. Called the Mechanicsburg Stones, they seemed to bear Phoenician characters -- at least Strong interpreted them as such. Naturally, Strong was ridiculed, for the Columbus-first dogma was dominant then. More recently, however, B. Fell claimed that the Mechanicsburg Stones are the work of Basque settlers circa 600 BC. The Basque theory has fared no better than the Phoenician. Now, a noted authority on the Basque language, Imanol Agire, has strongly supported Fell's conclusion that ancient Basques carved the stones.
by William R. Corliss
Spring 1981America B.C.A fascinating letter I received from a Shoshone Indian who had been traveling in the Basque country of Spain tells of his recognition of Shoshone words over there, including his own name, whose Shoshone meaning proved to match the meaning attached to a similar word by the modern Basques. Unfortunately I mislaid this interesting letter. If the Shoshone scholar who wrote to me should chance to see these words I hope he will forgive me and contact me again. The modern Basque settlers of Idaho may perhaps bring forth a linguist to investigate matters raised in this chapter. [p 173]
by Barry Fell
(1976)
find it in a nearby library
A Cherokee legend attributes the wall to a mysterious band of "moon-eyed people" ... who appeared in the area more than 300 years before Columbus sailed to America. ... but most professional archaeologists give no credence to the legend.Right Jared you tell them."There has been no archaeological evidence to back up stories that ... any others came to explore the New World," said Jared Wood ...
Oops ... better scratch that. 
“..just meandering through the countryside without apparant purpose anywhere in the world you know they were built by slaves.”
“I guess we’d better start making them now.”
Do windmills and solar panels stretching to the horizon count?
Oh, yeah, and we have to change our beliefs ~ we must no longer believe in individual initiative and hard work ~ we must begin believing in carbon footprints and cap and trade.
I can just imagine some Cherokee Indian telling the first White Settlers these were built by Welshmen. They probably never even heard of a Welshman.
People should check out the Mound- Builders to see what native Americans were perfectly capable of constructing all by themselves or the Anasazi cliff dwellings.
The word "enclosure" is PC-speak for, "We're going to put our hands over our eyes and loudly shout, 'It's not a fortification because we're positive the indigenous people were peaceful and wouldn't need fortifications." They apparently believe primitive people had nothing better to do with their time than build heavy stone and wood "enclosures" to ensure privacy for their "social events" and to keep their animals from wandering off. It's the sort of willful ignorance that would make someone look at Fort Ticonderoga and call it a corral, enclosed pasture, or meeting hall.
In his book War Before Civilization (which goes into the willful ignorance at work in archaeology), Lawrence Keeley talks about being denied research grants to dig on ancient "fortifications" in Europe until he changed the word "fortifications" to "enclosures" on his research grant request. The map he provides of one of his digs proves the absurdity of interpreting the large palisades of logs as anything but a fortification, with arrowheads concentrated around the wall and particularly clustered around the gate, as you might find from an attack.
Sounds more like Union bosses. ;-)
Yep, because the White Sea-Baltic Canal's been done already.
The Archeologists answer to any pile of rocks!
They built it because the tribal elders wanted to keep the neighboring tribes’ kids the hell off their lawn.
Cool! Thanks for the ping!
Trashed as he is by the “experts”, I highly recommend the “America BC” series of books by Barry Fell.
America, B.C.
Saga America
Bronze Age America
I find a lot of odd things on the mountain that “experts” attribute to “paleo Indians” when in reality, they look exactly like paleo-European artifacts, to me.
[since when did “Indians” sit around and carve cup marks into granite glacial boulders?]
Also, why they think something like this wasn’t built for defense, but for some religious ceremony or something. We put fenses around our properties today for defense or setting boundries to keep our kids and pets in. Why are these “acedemics” such goofs?
Mystery?
To be able to farm, you have to clear rocks. What do you do with the rocks? Stack them up. After a while, you get enough where are you're making a wall...then it becomes a fence.
We make the boys pick up rocks to clear grazing pasture and ones that float up in the wheat field (Rocks float). Use the rocks for erosion control. Then the boys made a three sided structure off in the back...it should last for hundreds of years. *If the cows can't knock it down, it will last.
i would wonder what legends actually say now. did the white welsh folks describe themselves as being from cymraeg (was this name used in the 12th century already in old welsh?), or some other gaelic-derived place? any place-names? was the Madoc name actually used Lack of any written records makes it hard to know what filtered in from spanish and others later on in the colonial period. What is the earliest recorded spanish or english transcription of the legend?
does enough remain at the site to make any comparison to contemporary stone-work in wales at this time? there are a many structures in wales older than the date given here which have extant parts from before this period intact still.
ANY actual finds on -site of demonstrably british origin pre-16th century?
at any rate, these are the first things that come to mind.
The fences in the pictures posted here seem to have a definite purpose. They are built on very steep hills which probably means they were agricultural, in order to create "steps" on which to grow crops in hilly terrain.
Just a guess looking at these pictures.
I have been there. It sure doesn’t look like it could have served as fortifications - the “walls” are much too low.
Could have been ceremonial, there is a “rock eagle” made of piled stones in southern Georgia.
Lower down, the Indians built very defensible mound villages and forts with stockades, etc.
It’s always possible it wasn’t a fortification, but that shouldn’t necessarily be the default assumption. I highly recommend Keeley’s book. It’s well written with some interesting arguments and conclusions.
Hilltop fortifications were widespread across Wales and into England, in the correct period for this to be somewhat plausible. I tend to give at least some credence to native legends involving the encroachment of other peoples upon their territories. There is no obvious, compelling reason to lie about such things. Where the original truth might go astray is in attributing these hilltop fortifications to a specific Welshman by the name of Madoc. But, then again, there appears to be at least some corroboration. Native tribes are considerably more European, genetically speaking, than they should be, unless just this sort of encroachment had occurred.
Oh, and those hilltop fortifications were known variously as “Toothill,” “Totehill,” “Tuthill,” etcetera. The original English translation of the Bible, for which Wyclyffe was branded a heretic, had “watchtower” translated as Toothill ... “upon the Toothill of the Lord I am stondeth.”
The hilltops would have been kept bare of trees. Fortified for protection/defense, also used for astronomical/astrological observation and possibly for communication over distance, one to the next. Quite a bit of lore built up around them, ley lines and such. The one near London had quite a reputation as a pagan ritual site, but that might have come about in later years as a result of popular misunderstanding. Who knows.
Toothills are typically found atop natural high ground, but I think there’s one near Glastonbury that involves a barrow, a manmade hill. Left breast of the Virgo Effigy, if I’m not mistaken.
I’ll check the library. But the piles of rock that make up the “walls” there wouldn’t hold livestock in, much less attackers’ out. They’re not even much good as cover. Maybe they were better built and higher once?
Keeley doesn’t talk about that site in particular but about the tendency among archaeologists to assume that primative people are peaceful and that things serve a non-warlike purpose by default in general. It’s possible that this particular site isn’t a fortification but don’t assume that what you see now is all that was ever there. A lot of primative fortifications were built of mixed materials that included gravel, dirt, clay, wood, and other materials that can decay or wash away. Stone is heavy and hard to work and thus requires a lot of effort to build with. England was once covered with small castles and keeps made of wood, none of which have survived. All you’ll see now are mounds of dirt that were once part of the fortifications.
There is a map of the outline of the 'stone wall' on this website, the outline of which is repeated on pottery discovered at the site.
Reminds me very much of Serpent Mound. IMO what we see here is the representation on the ground, of a celestial phenomenon.
“...By far the most intriguing theory positions the wall as a product of ancient astronomers. The seemingly random zigzagging shape of the wall could very well be intentional. During the same period the wall was being constructed, Native Americans in southwest Georgia were producing pottery with strange zigzagging designs quite similar to those of the Fort Mountain wall. Some say these patterns reflect observations of specific planets and their movement across the night sky over time. Makes sense. After all, where are observatories? On the top of mountains. And native people wanting to study the heavens would seek out high unobstructed places as well...”
http://www.wildernessviewcabins.com/ActivitiesDetail.aspx?ActID=161
Building them on hillsides meant the slaves probably had to carry the rocks up from the bottom ~ must have been an exceptionally aggressive bunch of slaves to scare their masters that way.
OK. I’m just not as hung up on the slavery slant, obviously. There are stone walls all over Ireland that were about agriculture, not slavery. They cleared land of rocks to plant, and built fences/retaining walls with them. A very Celtic/European trademark. There’s no indication the people who are the subject of this article had slaves. That’s something you brought to issue.
Ya’ll can always come visit the Barony of Bryn Madoc hehe
Well, y’all might just see us! :-)
My pleasure. I’m pretty sure I’d never heard of it myself, and I’m sure there are hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of such enigmatic sites. The best known (I think) is Mystery Hill in, hmm, VT? NH? It’s a large site, although for the most part only the big structures on the crown of the hill are talked about. It has often been claimed (and probably still is) that it was built by some family as a “colonial root cellar” and foundation, but the fact is, it wasn’t — and verifying this is a radiocarbon date from a hearth inside the structure, yielding a 2000 BC date.
Well put. I love his discussion of “marks made by plowshares”.
Thanks!
Yup, seen 'em all too ~ only takes two different flights over the place at the right altitude to see just how covered the place is with stone walls.
To some degree the stone walls served as cattle fences. On the other hand, the guys who owned the cattle essentially "owned" the good ol'boys who dragged the rocks over to build the fences.
Neolithic lifestyles demanded a top down sort of structure where the noblemen at the top owned the servants at the bottom. Things improved a bit about 700 BC when the guys who'd conquered Galicia decided they could conquer the British Isles and did so.
I think they were the first to establish a sort of caste system that recognized priests, nobles, tradesman/mechanics, and finally the guys who followed the cows around.
Ultimately that created some social mobility in what had been an incredibly stratified society.
So, yeah, the stone fences/walls in Ireland were built, for the most part, by people who could not be differentiated from slaves. It's kind of an Indo-European pattern repeated society after society.
Other groups did the same thing.
They called these guys "subordinate tribes" , or "tributaries". Obviously individual tribe members having personal slave servants was not feasible in barbarian or tribal societies ~ after all, the slave would kill the master at the first chance. Only civilized people get to pull off the personal servant deal.
The Iroquois Indians had no problem referring to their years under the Huron with the expression "when we were slaves". The Jews report the same thing (See: Moses).
BTW, that's a good example of a top dog putting his slaves to work at backbreaking busywork ~ Pharoah tells the Hebrews to make bricks without straw. Must have been a rock shortage in Egypt that year.
Now, regarding slavery among native Americans, there are people who want to idealize them ~ others object to that and point out that human sacrifice and cannibalism was common in MesoAmerica ~ and guess who got to be eaten!
For your next trip... There’s a megalithic tripod (a large stone, more or less triangular in at least two dimensions, set on three smaller but still good-sized stones) right up on Lookout Mountain, in the tourist trap area. It’s attributed to glaciers, but that’s clearly b.s.
Having grown up in farm country, I remember well seeing windrows of rocks like this, put there by past farmers clearing them out of fields so they could plant. They had to put the rocks somewhere so they made piles of them along tree-lines and property lines. Some of them marked abandoned fields which had since overgrown with second growth woods, making the rocks look rather mysterious in their origins.
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