Timeline
- 1000 B.C. During the Woodland Period the first
semi-permanent villages with burial mounds are built in the Macon Plateau.
- A.D. 900 During the Early Mississippian Period,
new sociopolitical ideas and intensive agriculture (corn, beans, squash
planted in the fertile river bottomlands) are introduced by the Macon Plateau
Culture. Large temple and burial mounds, and elaborate earthlodges constructed
on the Ocmulgee River are still-visible evidence of what may have been
the largest town in the Southeast during its time period.
- A.D. 1200 During the Mature Mississippian Period,
the large ceremonial center on the Macon Plateau declined while the Southern
Cult flourished at towns as Etowah in Georgia, Moundville in Alabama, and
Spiro in Oklahoma.
- A.D. 1350 During the Late Mississippian Period,
the Lamar Culture, named for the Lamar Mounds and Village site which is
part of Ocmulgee National Monument, spread across much of the Southeast.
Towns were more numerous and many were marked by two mounds situated on
opposite sides of an open plaza.
A.D. 1540 Spaniard Hernando de Soto, accompanied
by 600 men with 300 horses, traveled through the interior of Georgia at
a town believed to be the Lamar Village.