Poverty Point belongs to the years before the Common Era — dated here to c. 1700 BCE at Louisiana, USA. The date is a scholarly centre of gravity, not a foundation-stone timestamp.
C-shaped earthen ridges and a 22-metre bird mound built by hunter-gatherers who imported stone from hundreds of kilometres away.
How it was made
Millions of basket-loads of soil. No agriculture required for monumentality — a challenge to old textbooks.
Why it still counts as a wonder
It never needed a Greek list to be a wonder: the labour, the alignment, or the survival is enough.
It is North America’s Caral: a wonder of dirt, geometry, and trade.
On dating
BCE in this series means years before the traditional birth of Christ, counted backward. A monument listed as c. 1700 BCE may have been founded earlier, rebuilt later, or famous only in one phase. Where ancient writers disagree — as they do for Babylon’s gardens — we say so.
This is story 99 of 100 in The Trend Ledger’s illustrated desk on world wonders raised before the Common Era.