http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiro_Mounds

The mayans reached thier height about the same time as the Roman Empire. You seriously dont think people with stone age tech would have a chance aganst the Roman legions?

I posted a pic from Colorado.
 

Probably been said, but there are plenty in the west.  Cave Dwellings, Adobe, brick buildings.  Nothing on the scale of the Pyramids in the US, but some decent sized towns that are still relatively intact.  Hell, I drive by 2 of them every day on the way to work... 3 if I take the bike (or surface streets).

Poverty Point?



http://www.nps.gov/popo/index.htm






 

Excellent books on the subject are titled 1491 and 1493.

While building a gold course south of Rochester, NY, the remains of a butchered mastodon were uncovered.  It had been carved up, packed and sunk in a cold water pond for future use.  Whoever did it never came back for it.    Well over 11,000 years old.

There's a bunch in northeast AZ on the reservation and around Monument Valley. I used to go jeeping all around that area.

FWIW, the classical era Mayan civilization that we thought was their height now appears to have been a bit of a Renaissance.  Mayan civilization may actually have reached its height while the Greeks were killing each other while showing off their abs.

It was too cold.

there are also mounds in Moundsville wv

 

There are also medicine wheels constructed by Indians.

Medicine Wheels


The most impressive example such a circle lies some 10,000 feet above sea level at the summit of Medicine Mountain in Wyoming. Though it has always been presumed the wheels were used for some sort of spiritual purpose, the 28-spoked Big Horn Medicine Wheel is one of the few that also bears an astronomical alignment. Not only did the 25-yard circle mark the ascent of the four brightest summer stars – Sirius, Fomalhaut, Aldebaran, and Rigel – but the beginning of the summer solstice as well and possibly even served a daily calendar. (Unfortunately for its builders, the Big Horn Wheel was unable to do the same in the winter, as it would have been buried under snow.) Originally built by the Crow people, it is currently supposed that the site was in use from at least 1200 AD onwards.

Given that the height of Mayan architecture was 'the cleverly arranged pile of rocks', it doesn't really appear that their cultural zenith was much to crow about.

a number of them have been listed, so i'll just restrict myself to saying that according to a lot of scholarship, the population in the western hemisphere was overwhelmingly in the south.  coming out of the last glaciation, conditions north of the rio grande weren't terribly congenial for sedentary human habitation.  add to that the near-desert precipitation west of the mississippi, and you make things tough for agriculture, which is the basis for urbanization.  take away the cities and the surplus labor, and you don't get a lot of those major construction projects that make for good 'ruins'.  

Also, there are supposedly some megalithic ruins in Massachussetts, though I know little about them.

Other New England Megalithic sites

Megalitic Ruins in MA

that description could also be applied to any stone architecture––pyramids, temples, dams, aqueducts, cathedrals...

 

You have to admit they were very good at killing.

So mayan temples in Mexico, the pyramids in Egypt, and the best Native Americans could come up with is dirt mounds?
 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beattie_Park_Mound_Group

"The Beattie Park Mound Group is located in downtown Rockford, Illinois' Beattie Park. The mounds and mound remnants in Beattie Park date from an era during the Late Woodland known as the Effigy mound Period. This period spanned from about 300-1100 C.E. and influenced the Upper Mississippi River Valley in Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Native American Mound builders were not a culture, per se, it is more likely that there were vast differences in culture associated with the groups building effigy mounds during the same time period."

It's amazing the sort of things that you can learn about here. I had no idea there were so many types of sites, or that they were so varied. There was some sort of small mound on my uncles' land (in PA). He always assumed that it had something to do with Indians. He often thought about digging it up but finally decided that if it was a burial site that they should just be left alone. Him and my aunt are both gone now and I have no idea who owns the property now, so I guess I'll never know.

This picture is from another site in the same county in PA - Berks County.

And Canyon de Chelly

That's cool, I'd like to visit those.

The Pilgrims did little to nothing.

Plymouth colony was established in 1620. That's after over 100 years of exploration by Europeans in the New World.

A shitton of people in North America were already dead when the Pilgrims appeared. When the Spanish were first sailing on the East Coast of the US they recorded large amounts of people. They were almost all gone by 1620.

I think you should have stopped before you started this time.

Poverty Point Indians in NW Louisiana are pretty friggin old. Traded with indians as far away as Wisconsin and Florida.





http://www.crt.state.la.us/archaeology/virtualbooks/LAPREHIS/ppt.htm

One thing that's missed by many is that North America really isn't suited for the development of civilization. First, you have the fact that with the verdant natural resources, a culture could do pretty damn well for themselves without needing to develop the trappings of what we call "civilization". If you read the books referenced earlier, mainly "1491", about pre-Columbian America, you'll find that there is good evidence that the natives were practicing agriculture––Just not as we'd recognize it. Why go to the bother of plowing and planting fields if you can get the same results by some judicious heaping of fish and so forth to grow corn?

Additionally, North America is very unstable, over the long haul. Consider the odds stacked against anything developing a civilization we'd recognize as such in a location like the Puget Sound region. Every five to six hundred years, you get a massive earthquake that wipes everything out, and the accompanying tidal waves wash the survivors out to sea. Then, there's the local volcanos, and God knows what else. Given that anything major you build is going to get destroyed every couple of hundred years, it's not a huge surprise that the local tribes were more concerned with living large off the abundant local resources, and having massive Potlatch parties every so often. Had they bothered to build a Northwestern Athens, it would have been flattened at least once a millennium, without fail. No surprise that they didn't.

Similar issues prevail across the rest of the North American continent. Europe and China are comparatively stable, and that's where civilization that we'd entitle as such got their starts. North America? Let's face it: It's a great place to live, but the odds against developing much here in between modern-era technology and the stone age are not good. It's an either-or thing, with no in-between. And, we may find out that it's not-so-prime real estate ourselves, if something like the Yellowstone Caldera decides to uncork in the next few years. Me? I'm waiting for the next big one to hit up in the Straits of Juan de Fuca, and then I'm gonna go pick up a bunch of cheap beach-front property on the eastern shore of Lake Washington...

Yup...

Worth seeing.

really?  i don't see what's particularly controversial there, although you spend more time in the archaeological literature than i do.  everything i've read indicates that population south of central mexico was 5-1 or greater (much greater) than northwards pre-colonization.  conditions poor as the glaciers were retreating?  seems logical.  wind shadow of the rockies?  check.  agriculture driving urbanization?  pretty well established.  

There are plenty in the south west.



They aren't exactly the great pyramids, but the indians made some pretty cool towns/buildings, some of which are still standing.



This one is near where I grew up.







And come to think of it, Mexico actually does have pyramids!






 

Been there, awesome place.

Also been to multiple Anasazi ruins in the American southwest.  Actually uncovered a few down there too...

Just out of curiosity, how old does a civilization have to be in order to be considered "ancient"?  I've seen things posted in this thread that I would consider old, but not ancient.

The largest in the SW, Chaco Canyon.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaco_Culture_National_Historical_Park

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Prehistoric-Roads.jpg

All over AZ as mentioned. Plenty off the map locations that most don't know about either

Aren't the Greeks starting to do that again right now?

Stonehenge in Lake Michigan...with Mastadon carving.

Crossed the "Land bridge" to North America my hairy Red ass.




Look up Yam Ko Desh. They left mounds and artifacts around here that are as old as anything in the South west, and were more advanced than Europeans before the Pokagon and Ottawa drove them out.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV0SdsVYyuw[/youtube]


Nope. Gotta be ALIENS!!!

i know, mexico has aztec pyramids and the second largest church in the world but nobody cares.

There are, and there is evidence of a grand ancient North American culture (pre-dating what we now call the American Indian tribes). For many reasons, pre-Colombian history in North America was re-written or erased during European colonization with a fevered pitch just prior to and continuing after the American Revolution.

Because the earth is only 6,000 years old.

they did but the damn spaniards would always double down and win.



 

Come on your better than this...
Go to Arizona there are ruins all over the place,The Anasazi?
In Mexico you have the Mayan temples.

this. I think a more accurate thread title would have been "why are there no ancient ruins in the US" seems that people forget that most of mexico is considered North america.

Aren't there some castle foundations along some rivers in Pennsylvania that very close dimensions to some in the UK?  I thought I remember reading something about that.

Shell mounds all along the Florida coastline

That's a common liberal lie. Disease wiped out most of the 2nd wave (Clovis) of native Americans during the exploration of the Spanish.

just curious, what makes that a liberal lie?

Mystery Hill. Supposedly either celtic or nordic in origin.

There's also the mounds here in the mid-west. There's one less than a mile form my house.