Macon, GA is listed as a Fall Line city. This qualification has many important impacts. Indigenous peoples would have found this area very useful because of the abundance of fish and other means of nutrition. Fall line cities represent a point where travel by riverboats is not possible anymore. Riverboats began traveling and bringing goods into to Georgia at the mouth of the Ocmulgee River around Hazelhurst, GA, on the coast. They found that the trip was no longer possible around the area that is now Macon. This is because of the fall line. A fall line is an area where the hard "basement rock" of the Piedmont transitions to "a softer sedimentary rock." In the past, this was where the ocean met the shoreline of prehistoric North America. Places like Macon, Columbus, and Augusta (all on different rivers) became the final port for transferring goods into the state by water. From Macon, goods would be shipped out via land.
This is a picture of the Eastern Seaboard Fall Line with the coast of North Carolina on the right of the picture. The gray coastal plain transitions into the bright colors of the Piedmont (literally: foot of the mountain).
Ocmulgee National Monument
We also explored the Ocmulgee National Monument in Macon. This a place where Native Americans built mounds of Earth that served many different purposes. The mounds were built by hand by the people of the local Mississippi culture. The largest (The Great Temple Mound) was built as a plateau that overlooked the town. Earth lodges were also built for public meetings. Various burial and ceremonial mounds are also present. According to the National Parks website, this site shows 17,000 years of continuous human presence.
The Great Temple Mound
The Earth Lodge
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