Poverty Point was abandoned around 1100 B.C., and a more recent native group added another mound in about A.D. 700, occupying only a small fraction of the site for a brief period.

Then we got up close and personal with history, climbing the wooden staircase to the top of Mound A, the largest mound built at Poverty Point. It is 72 feet tall, 710 feet long and 660 feet wide.

The enormous earthen monument Poverty Point, built on a Mississippi River bayou some 3,200 years ago, is an impressive feat of engineering. Hunter-gatherers moved more than 26.5 million cubic feet ...

Mound A, also called the Bird Mound, 1300 B.C. Poverty Point as it looks today, aerial view 'Indians, Cajuns, and Cowboys' (detail), oil on canvas, 1988 ...

Known as Poverty Point, the elaborate site consists of six concentric, arc-shaped ridges surrounded by a number of mounds. The tallest of them, Mound A, now rises 70 feet and seems to be shaped ...

Poverty Point, one of four U.S. archaeological sites with a World Heritage Site designation, is located in what is now West Carroll Parish. It's an earthwork that consists of several man-made ...

"Poverty Point is the largest and most complex earthworks site of its age, and actually, until about 2,000 years later here in the U.S., so it's a pretty unusual, significant site," said Greenlee.

Poverty Point, one of four U.S. archaeological sites with a World Heritage Site designation, is located in what is now West Carroll Parish. It's an earthwork that consists of several man-made ...

The illustration above shows the core features of the Poverty Point site in northern Louisiana. The green to the right is the Mississippi River flood plain. The orange is Macon Ridge, the higher ...