What Doomed the Great City of Cahokia? Not Ecological Hubris, Study Says

NYT ^ | April 24, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET | Asher Elbein

[BenLurkin]

Excavations at the city, famous for its pre-Columbian mounds, challenge the idea that residents destroyed the city through wood clearing.

A thousand years ago, a city rose on the banks of the Mississippi River, near what eventually became the city of St. Louis. Sprawling over miles of rich farms, public plazas and earthen mounds, the city — known today as Cahokia — was a thriving hub of immigrants, lavish feasting and religious ceremony. At its peak in the 1100s, Cahokia housed 20,000 people, greater than contemporaneous Paris.

By 1350, Cahokia had largely been abandoned, and why people left the city is one of the greatest mysteries of North American archaeology.

Now, some scientists are arguing that one popular explanation — Cahokia had committed ecocide by destroying its environment, and thus destroyed itself — can be rejected out of hand. Recent excavations at Cahokia led by Caitlin Rankin, an archaeologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, show that there is no evidence at the site of human-caused erosion or flooding in the city.

Rather than absolutely ruining the landscape, she added, Cahokians seem to have re-engineered it into something more stable.

[Adder]

And Cahokey Blues...

[ckilmer]

my understanding was that it was flooding that did in cahokia

[Colt1851Navy]

I thought capitalism caused all the flooding and bad stuff.

[UNGN]

I would guess 30 feet of water some spring afternoon doomed Cahokia.