The Lost City of Cahokia

Humanities | September/October 2004 | Emmett Berg

[blam]

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

Maybe the Japanese?

The Zuni Enigma

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

Do you know if there is any evidence of large scale warfare at the site?

I think the possibility of warfare is a given, and is often considered as one possible reason for Cahokia's collapse. I remember reading some time ago that recent excavations indicated that a considerable part of the settlement was burned around 1200. Whether that was from war or some other cause, I guess, is still up in the air. One of the things that contributes to the mystery of Cahokia is that Indians encountered by the first Europeans in the area evidently had no knowledge of the moundbuilders or their history.

[SunkenCiv]

A Blast from the Past.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

[Ciexyz]

Most interesting.

[Aznar5]

There were tons of empty paint cans though.

[Question_Assumptions]

It's entirely possible that many civilizations that we know little or nothing about rose and fell leaving few obvious traces for us to uncover because rather than building and working in stone and metal, they worked in wood, hide, and other prerishable vegitable matter thas has since rotted away and disappeared. All archaeologists find are post holes and discolored earth if they look in the right places.

[Antoninus]

Cahokia was the hub of a way of life for millions of Native Americans before the society's decline and devastation by foreign diseases.

Uh, sounds like a bit of an exaggeration to me. This civilization may have had a wide reach, but to say it encompassed millions is an incredible stretch.

[Antoninus]

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?

Even the Iroquoian and Alquonquian tribes of the Eastern Woodlands had double and triple palisade walls, complete with sluice gates for extinguishing fires and rudimentary towers. Champlain ran into one of these while on a military excursion with the Hurons against the Onondaga in 1615:



Clearly, this image has some fanciful elements to it, but it gives some idea as to Iroquois military architecture.

[ApplegateRanch]

Is it perhaps a World Heritage Site?(shudder)

The UN leased the operating rights from the Peoples National Park Service, after W sold the Interior Department to China, as part of national debt retructuring....

Glad I got to visit Cohokia while it was still American. Fascinating barely covers it.

[bert]

I didn't think it was lost.

The history channel Indiana Jones wannabe went there and it is a park and has been for a long time. There have been extensive studies including earth moving calculations based on straw bags and human gradability.

[ArmyTeach]

I'd love to have seen it while it was still ours ...

[Fraxinus]

to say it encompassed millions is an incredible stretch.

I find any number under 10 million very reasonable. This was a major civilizational center for most of what is now the eastern US. The population of the US according to the 1860 census was in the neighborhood of 60 million.

[Antoninus]

This was a major civilizational center for most of what is now the eastern US. The population of the US according to the 1860 census was in the neighborhood of 60 million.

Sure. And our agriculture and infrastructure was vastly more advanced then compared to what the Indians were doing. The term 'crop rotation' was unknown. They also tended to practice slash-and-burn agriculture and had no qualms about hunting game to local extinction. I highly doubt such a system could support more than a few hundred thousand at most.

At its height, the Iroquois Confederacy numbered about 30,000. If you lump in a few of the surrounding confederacies (the Hurons, Neutrals, Eries, Algonquins, Susquehannocks, Nanticokes, Delawares, and several smaller tribes) you find that no one of them numbered more than 40,000 and together they comprised perhaps 250,000 souls. And yet, they occupied an area roughtly that of modern New York, Quebec, Ontario, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware.

[Fraxinus]

You are comparing numbers for after the tribes you mention lost in excess of 50% of their population due to epidemic diseases. I also have severe doubts that the agriculture practices of the early American Republic were an order of magnitude more productive than that practiced by the Cahokians. There is also extensive, but often ancedotal data that there was significant reforestation in the perion of 1500 through 1600. This was formerly cultivated fields that were alowed to change to forest and were not cut down and returned to annual crops after a long (15+ years) fallow period. The long fallow period is often used in slash and burn agriculture.

[Ptarmigan]

I have read that Cahokia was the largest city in America until Philadelphia and New York. Good find! I have read that when Europeans encountered Indians, their standard of living was better.

[elli1]

Still no sign of the wheel

I think they took a poll--When asked whether the tribe wanted to invent the wheel and be assessed dog tax, dog fuel tax, road building tax, wheel disposal fees, wagon license tax, wagon safety inspection tax, tolls and hire County Boys....OR....Hunt & fish---the majority of the respondents chose Hunt & Fish.

[RightOnline]

""It would be like if you visited Europe in the Middle Ages, and there were no royalty or nobles--only peasants," Bailey says."

Ummmmm..........what??

[commish]

Are the Ocmulgee Mounds in Macon, Ga also Mississippean? Very similar design and layout.

[Antoninus]

You are comparing numbers for after the tribes you mention lost in excess of 50% of their population due to epidemic diseases.

No, I'm not. In 1615, these tribes hadn't been struck by the dread diseases yet. That would happen in the 1630s.

I also have severe doubts that the agriculture practices of the early American Republic were an order of magnitude more productive than that practiced by the Cahokians.

Ever read any of Jefferson's writings on the subject? Fairly sophisticated if you ask me.

[righttackle44]

"Cahokia is not "lost", it is still there. Just....uninhabitable."

I think it really may be lost, if it was the
job of political appointees to keep track of
it.