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What does seem to be intentional is the central plaza within the rings. (View QTVR) Thus, even though the shell rings themselves may be trash piles, their central plazas were indeed the location of ceremonies, feasts, dances, games and other activities of village life.
It is quite possible that the ancestors of Georgia's Timucua Indians constructed these shell rings. The Timucua controlled large parts of south Georgia and north Florida at the time of European contact. Linguistic evidence suggests they migrated into the area from somewhere in South America, possibly Venezuela, by island hopping until reaching the coastal areas of Florida and Georgia.
When the first French explorers settled just south of Sapelo in present day Jacksonville, Florida at Fort Caroline,  they described how the Timucuans lived in circular fortified communities. An artist on the expedition, Le Moyne, drew pictures of such circular villages surrounded by stockades.
While not necessarily planned or intentional, perhaps as Sapelo's shell rings grew larger and taller they also served as an earlier form of defensive structure. The large shell ring at Sapelo would have been nearly impossible to successfully attack from the river. It rises an impressive 20 feet above the river bank and its walls are very steep, giving the residents the high ground and forcing any would-be attackers to slow as they attempted to scale the oyster shell walls. (Watch video below.) Bow-and-arrows were not invented until 2500 years later thus attackers would have used spears, atlatls, clubs and other close-range weapons that required scaling the oyster shell walls for a successful attack.
The oyster shells themselves would provide another form of defense since they are quite
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Above: Watch as archaeologist Victor Thompson climbs the larger of the three Sapelo Shell Rings.
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sharp and would slice the feet of any barefoot attackers. Today, the oyster shells are covered by 4,000 years of dirt and debris thus making the walls less dangerous to climb. But when first constructed the rings were composed of exposed oyster shells.
Particularly noteworthy about the Sapelo Shell Ring complex is the fact that some of the oldest pottery in North America was found here. The natives of Sapelo appear to be some of the first people in North America to settle down into permanent villages. This was made possible by the extensive natural resources located around the site. In fact, even today this area is the most productive estuary on the east coast of North America. Thus the people who first settled Sapelo no longer needed to migrate to find food on a seasonal basis and instead could stay in one place and still have all their needs met. It is believed that this new sedentary lifestyle facilitated the creation of the new technology of pottery.
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Above: Watch as archaeologist Victor Thompson discusses Sapelo's pottery tradition.
(Bonus footage not featured in the DVD.)
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A similar pattern has been found at shell ring sites around the world. Shell rings also exist in Japan, Peru and Colombia as well as other coastal areas of the Southeastern United States. In Japan, Colombia and the Southeastern U.S. these shell ring sites are all associated with the earliest pottery to be found in their respective areas.
Sapelo marked the beginning of a new way of life for Georgia's indigenous people. From this humble beginning, these ancient architects would go on to create some of the most complex civilizations on the continent. They would also create some of the most amazing monuments in North America including the next site in our story: Rock Eagle.
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The oldest monumental constructions in the state of Georgia can be found along the Atlantic coast on Sapelo Island. Known as the Sapelo Island Shell Ring Complex, these three structures are each doughnut-shaped mounds built from successive layers of different types of shells including oysters, conch, clams, and mussels. The rings rise approximately 20 feet above the tidal marsh and the largest of the three has a diameter of 255 feet. The site has been radiocarbon dated at 2170 B.C. making it older than Egypt's pyramids!
