Did a Mega-Flood Doom Ancient American City of Cahokia?

National Geographic ^ | October 31, 2013 | Glenn Hodges

[SuziQ]

I wonder if an earthquake on the New Madrid fault triggered a disturbance in the Mississippi River causing a flood.

[ckilmer]

disagree. primary impediment to turning the deserts green is the cost of desalinizing and transporting desalinated water inland from desert coasts.

[clearcarbon]

The big question isn’t so much why it collapsed (all civilization do eventually) — but why it wasn’t eventually replaced with something at least as advanced.

No flood insurance.

[colorado tanker]

The big problem I see is future increases in electricity costs as the lefties work to destroy the coal industry and coal fired generators. And the anti-fracking Luddites want to reverse the expansion of the natural gas industry.

[EVO X]

Some interesting info on the 1993 flood. http://www.nwrfc.noaa.gov/floods/papers/oh_2/great.htm

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks EVO X.

[SunkenCiv]

Assuming it’s a worthwhile goal, the cost-cutting to take place will be in that expense.

[SunkenCiv]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3131394/posts?page=25#25

[SunkenCiv]

The coal industry is getting closer to the implosion point, thanks to Slick and Zero.

[SunkenCiv]

Detroit started to bleed in the 1960s, after the late 1950s auto industry peak (first 10 million vehicle year, and the last one for a long while), followed by the riots, white flight, and the disaster that was Coleman Young.

Cahokia got flooded out, and the flood killed the crops in the field. It never recovered.

[Bernard Marx]

Yes, I read -- and understood -- the original Cahokia article. And I researched Detroit's decline out of strict habit.

Maybe my point was a bit too abstract. Humans don't learn from past natural disasters (witness Fukushima where ancient stone monuments on the hillsides warn not to build below their elevation because of tsunami danger.)

Neither do they learn from past political and cultural folly. Detroit is just one example out of of hundreds in which human greed/vanity/stupidity/whatever have led to severe decline and often destruction. Neither do cultures as a whole learn much from the past. Right now I'm getting a strong sense of 1930s deja vu all over again.

[piasa]

The fire was in a satellite town or “suburb” 10 km away; the main mound city where the huge Monk’s Mound is was not burned.
Still, that burned compound to the west was very important for some reason, as was the Emerald Mound complex to the east.