Descendants of Ocmulgee's early inhabitants, the Muscogee (Creek) people, continue to hold these lands sacred in keeping with their traditions. Archeological investigations conducted on this site during the 1930s uncovered evidence of extensive human habitation dating as early as pre-9600 B.C.E. with Ice Age nomadic hunters, and artifacts and features from every southeastern time period have been discovered on Ocmulgee Fields. The continuing mission of Ocmulgee National Monument, as established by Franklin D. Roosevelt on December 12, 1936, directs the National Park Service to preserve and protect the lands commonly known as the Old Ocmulgee Fields for present and future generations. These lands were once occupied by an advanced and skilled farming community known as the Mississippians. More than 500 years before Columbus sailed to the New World, the Mississippians at Ocmulgee built a thriving town of thatched huts and constructed a series of earth mounds for religious and political ceremonies. They lived by farming the river bottomlands with corn, squash, beans, pumpkin, and tobacco crops, and they fished and gathered shellfish in the nearby Ocmulgee River. At their peak occupation on the Macon Plateau, the Mississippians at Ocmulgee numbered more than 2,000 at a single time.