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One thousand years ago, on a floodplain of the Mississippi River near modern-day St. Louis, the massive Native American city known today as Cahokia sprang suddenly into existence. Three hundred years later it was virtually deserted... While analyzing cores from Horseshoe Lake, an oxbow lake that separated from the Mississippi River some 1,700 years ago, Munoz's team discovered a layer of silty clay 19 centimeters (7.5 inches) thick deposited by a massive ancient flood. It's unlikely that the ancient floodwaters were high enough to inundate the ten-story mound at Cahokia's center, a structure now called Monk's Mound... But a flood...

People living 700 to 900 years ago in Cahokia, a massive settlement near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, ritually used a caffeinated brew made from the leaves of a holly tree that grew hundreds of miles away, researchers report. The discovery – made by analyzing plant residues in pottery beakers from Cahokia and its surroundings – is the earliest known use of this “black drink” in North America. It pushes back the date by at least 500 years, and adds to the evidence that a broad cultural and trade network thrived in the Midwest and southeastern U.S....

Just exactly what makes a Mississippian a Mississippian?Our topic for today, class, is defining Mississippi's heritage. Just exactly who are we? Where did we come from? How did we get here? What is it about Mississippi that is easily distinguishable? These are, of course, questions that have been asked more than once down through the ages. There are, of course, no easy answers. It's one thing to say you'll know a Mississippian when you meet one, but it's quite another to distinguish one of us from one of "them" when one of them is from western Alabama, southern Tennessee or...