The Lost City of Cahokia

Humanities | September/October 2004 | Emmett Berg

[popdonnelly]

Archaeology is cool. Some day your PC may be in a museum.

[fish hawk]

Were the Cahokians a mix of Chinese (who discovered American on the West Coast) and Vikings (who discovered American on the East Coast)?

[ArmyTeach]

My Dad used to tell, with a remorseful shudder, how many time he and his friends - in childish ignorance - dug up, broke into and for working purposes destroyed what would have been archaeological treasures along the Chattahoochee River. Looking for arrowheads and other trinkets...

[BDR]

Why does the United Nations Flag fly at this site?

[Betis70]

The Serpent mound is earlier and part of the Adena/Hopewell complex. Slightly different mound construction, not quite as organized and earlier than the Mississippians.

Cahokia is probably the biggest Mississippian city, along with Etowah and Moundville in Alabama.

[sphinx]

I've only been to Cahokia once. Fascinating site. What stuck me was the reconstructed wall. A simple palisade would not have been a surprise, but the park shows (based, I presume, on posthole traces) a bastioned wall with towers and a simple but still obvious gate complex -- in short, a developed piece of military architecture. Do you know if there is any evidence of large scale warfare at the site?

[ArmyTeach]

Why does the United Nations Flag fly at this site? Is it perhaps a World Heritage Site?(shudder)

[Verginius Rufus]

I think the Englishman who wrote that book 1421 has the Chinese coming around Africa to the Gulf of Mexico and up the Mississippi River, but I'm just going on a vague memory from seeing him on TV a while back.

[fish hawk]

I was mostly being a smart ass. Heaven forbid there just might have been "Indians" here before any of them.

[okie01]

Ping-a-ling

[okie01]

"At Talomeco [in present day South Carolina] they found a town of five hundred houses, abandoned, its fields choked with weeds," Bailey says. "They were told that a few years earlier the town had been struck by a pestilence, which had killed many of the people, and caused the survivors to flee. Some iron tools found at the deserted town by De Soto men showed that the people had already come in contact with Europeans. Most likely they had met the Spanish settlers at San Miguel de Guadalupe, a coastal settlement founded in 1526 and abandoned the following year."

I was under the impression that they were unsure of why the society declined and disappeared. I was more under the impression that it may have been do to climatic factors.

I was always curious about what great new ideas came into Cahokia and central US around 500 B.C. Their art looks very Aztec.

The following might have a connection to Cahokia...

Megadraught and Megadeath in 16th Century Mexico (Hemorrhagic Fever)

We know that DeSoto found a thriving civilization in the Southeast and the Mississippi Valley in the early 16th century. But when later explorers returned to the area, just a generation or two later, the large settlements he reported had ceased to exist.

It also seems to be established that the Mississippians had a cultural contact and conducted extensive trade with the Aztecs and other Central American tribes.

Similarly the Pueblo cultures of the Southwest also had extensive contacts with Central America -- though, apparently, very little with the Mississippian culture.

Amazing that there is so much we don't know -- and are only now discovering -- about the history of our own continent.

[Psycho_Bunny]

Just think of it as "Before the Christian Era" and "Christian Era".

[blam]

"The following might have a connection to Cahokia... "

Thanks. I thought of this connection/possibility when I read this article this morning. We have much to learn.

[blam]

"It also seems to be established that the Mississippians had a cultural contact and conducted extensive trade with the Aztecs and other Central American tribes."

I believe the Aztecs ate the Anasazi.

Did Cannibalism Kill The Anasazi Civilisation?

[Westlander]

It was at the shop getting balanced. Those weights just don't stay on oak.

[Mr Rogers]

He was also a wacko. His story is fiction.

[Lurker]

I'm taking my family on a trip down there late this summer. It is a fascinating place.

That stretch of the Mississippi was also a notorius hangout for river pirates. (I'm not making that up.)

L

[okie01]

I believe the Aztecs ate the Anasazi.

Thanks for the link. It's certainly possible.

Alternatively, did you realize there were two separate cultures living in Chaco at the same time?

If you've been there, you're aware that, on one side of the draw, you have the so-called Great Houses -- Pueblo Bonito, et al. Structures of considerable scope...exhibiting exquisite engineering and alignment. These weren't drawn up on the back of a napkin, so to speak. Nor did they employ your brother-in-law for a contractor.

But, on the other side of the draw (or the tracks, one might say), are situated a group of hovels. Small, "single-family" dwellings, crudely constructed out of inferior materials. Likewise, their kivas were smaller and markedly less elaborate.

Unquestionably a caste system -- the upper crust...and the hired (or enslaved) help. The Chacoan and, as I recall, the McElmo cultures were co-existent.

Master and slave? Did the slaves revolt? Maybe they ate their masters?

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

Why does the United Nations Flag fly at this site?

It is a World Heritage Site.