Posted on 08/19/2016 11:42:09 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Located in southern Illinois, eight miles from present-day St Louis, it was probably the largest North American city north of Mexico at that time. It had been built by the Mississippians, a group of Native Americans who occupied much of the present-day south-eastern United States, from the Mississippi river to the shores of the Atlantic.
Cahokia was a sophisticated and cosmopolitan city for its time. Yet its history is virtually unknown by most Americans and present-day Illinoisans.
...
Its mix of people made Cahokia like an early-day Manhattan, drawing residents from throughout the Mississippian-controlled region: the Natchez, the Pensacola, the Choctaw, the Ofo. Archaeologists conducting strontium tests on the teeth of buried remains have found a third of the population was “not from Cahokia, but somewhere else”, according to Emerson, who is director of the Illinois State Archaeological Survey. “And that’s throughout the entire sequence [of Cahokia’s existence.]”
The Native Americans at Cahokia farmed, traded and hunted. They were also early urban planners, who used astronomical alignments to lay out a low-scale metropolis of 10-20,000 people, featuring a town centre with broad public plazas and key buildings set atop vast, hand-built earthen mounds. The largest of these mounds was 100 feet tall and covered 14 acres – and still exists today.
But rather than developing, like London, into a modern metropolis, Cahokia is more like the fabled lost continent of Atlantis. Having become a major population centre around AD1050, by 1350 it was largely abandoned by its people – and no one is sure why. Neither war, disease, nor European conquest drove Cahokia’s residents from their homes. Indeed, the first white man to reach these lands, Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto, didn’t do so until 1540.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
No one survives East St. Louis
“Why did North America’s largest city vanish?”
Democrats.
Because it was a neolithic city. No survivabilty when things got rough. Europe left the stone age about 5,000 years earlier.
While not from Illinois, I have heard about this previously.
I am curious how this may connect with the alleged great die-off that occurred just prior to European colonial migration beginning.
Section 8?
Democrats.
They will still vote in the general election though.
Global Warming?
Wait...Bush’s fault!!!
Myth building is a lot like Conspiracy fabrication. Both are for entertainment purposes only.
Thanks for posting. I grew up near there, and it is still one of my favorite places to visit whenever I am in the St. Louis area.
Many of the thriving areas in the southwest were abandoned around that time period, as well. Something drove them to other places. My bet is weather patterns changed drastically for a period long enough to convince them to leave.
Dead people inside the mounds look to have been murdered. Sure, archeologists can call the victims ‘sacrifices’ but the truth is they were killed on orders from the elites.
People, whether Indians from a thousand years ago, or Americans from the present day, will not tolerate the crazed actions of those who control the government.
Depopulation and abandonment seems to coincide with the end of the medieval warming period and the onset of the mini-ice age.
So a change in the weather patterns making this site less desirable as a population center is the most likely culprit.
They woke up one summer day and realized air conditioning wouldn’t be invented for nearly 1000 years...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3461086/posts
Archaeological work has also discovered a mound containing mass burials. While the extent of it is debated, it appears the Mississippians may have conducted ritual human sacrifices, judging by what appears to be hundreds of people, mostly young women, buried in these mass graves. Some were likely strangled; others possibly died of bloodletting. Four men were found with their heads and hands cut off; another burial pit had mostly males who had been clubbed to death.
This sort of thing tends to seriously annoy the neighbors. Sometimes, they band together and kill the perpetrators.
Beat me to it!
Anita Alverez and most of the crooked Dems in charge would tell you it never existed...
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