Hidden beneath Michigan’s forests, researchers have uncovered vast ancient farmlands built by ancestral Menominee communities, revealing a complex agricultural system. Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, with its cold weather, brief growing season, and thick forests, has long been considered an unlikely
  • grue@lemmy.world
    8·
    6 days ago

    That Defy the Limits of Agriculture

    [X] doubt

    Defy the researchers’ liberal biases about the size limits of an egalitarian society, more like:

    “When you look at the scale of farming, this would require the kind of labor organization that is typically associated with a much larger, state-level hierarchical society,” says McLeester. “Yet, everything we know about this area suggests smaller egalitarian societies lived in this region, but in fact, this may have been a rather large settlement.”

    • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
      8·
      5 days ago

      “But why would people want to do feed their community without a profit motive?” - people telling on themselves just as much as when they ask why someone would behave ethically without the threat of hell.

  • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
    7·
    6 days ago

    However, a new study led by Dartmouth researchers has revealed strong evidence that ancestral Native American communities once practiced intensive agriculture at the Sixty Islands archaeological site along the Menominee River. This discovery identifies the area as the most complete ancient farming site found in the eastern United States.

    The site contains an extensive network of raised ridge fields dating from roughly the 10th century to around 1600, many of which remain well preserved today. These ridged garden beds, measuring between 4 and 12 inches tall, were cultivated by the ancestors of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin to grow corn, beans, squash, and other crops.

    So cool!