Other mounds were used for homes for other elites, for burying important dead, and for ritual purposes. What made Cahokia a "lost" city is that only the mounds remain, along with whatever's under them.
Posted on 01/17/2006 2:01:14 PM PST by robowombat
Cool!
Ah, Common Era instead of Christ. I wonder what event marks the beginning of the Common Era?
Cahokia is not "lost", it is still there. Just....uninhabitable.
Much like a large part of the city of New Orleans.
Maybe Ray Nagin can run for Mayor of Cahokia.
Other mounds were used for homes for other elites, for burying important dead, and for ritual purposes. What made Cahokia a "lost" city is that only the mounds remain, along with whatever's under them.
Bump! (PS: Did the mound builders suffer from piles?)
parsy, the naive american.
Troublemaker.
I grew up around St. Louis and frequent visits to the Cahokia Mounds were a part of my upbringing. I still visit every year or so. It used to be just a place to go for picnics, with a small museum, but in the past few years they have gone to great lengths to preserve the area as a historical/archaelogical site, and the new museum is very informative. It's a worthwhile stop for anyone passing through the area.
There is also a great mock-up of an Indian village scene in the interpretive center across the street from the "Great Pyramid". In present day Cahokia, several miles away, there stands a very interesting French Colonial vertical log cabin.
I've been there twice. Most recently two years ago. 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.
When the native peopes of s.e. US, i.e. Mississippi were first contacted they had an elaborate class system.
I suspect the new religion or religious ideas included a priestly caste and human sacrifice.
The upright log cabin is very early French. Easterly made a Daguerrotype of the first courthouse in St. Louis, upright log, it was still standing in 1848.
The beginning of the fourth year after the birth of Christ, of course.
The Mississippian Culture had a fascinating trade network. I've been to the museums at the Etowah mounds near Rome, Georgia, and at mounds near Spiro, Oklahoma- what, 1000 miles away? They show the extensive interchange of goods and materials between these peoples, east, west, north and south.
What I don't understand is how an article like this can neglect the most famous Mississippian mound complex of all: the Serpent Mound in southern Ohio.
Still no sign of the wheel.
I think the writer had a bit of a problem crafting this sentence. Plus, here and there, he shows some bias against European and American settlers. So, while there were indigenous peoples in later centuries who did die because of new diseases brought in by settlers, there's no evidence that this was true of Cahokia. You're right, it could have been climate-related, but every possible cause is speculation at this point, and the final decline of Cahokia remains a mystery.
In the history books I've seen that are more than about 5 years old, they always talk about a mysterious, unexplained decline in Indian population after 1500 or so.
In the things I've read that were written less than about 5 years ago (like this book), they invariably talk about a huge population decline caused by foreign diseases, to which the Indians had no resistance.
So I guess history writers feel the mystery has been solved.
I don't Nagin would stand a chamce.
They should just keep B.C. and A.D. and tell people the initials stand for "backwards counting" and "after dat."
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