Archaeologists explore a rural field in Kansas, and a lost city emerges

LA Times ^ | August 19, 2018 | David Kelly

[C19fan]

Of all the places to discover a lost city, this pleasing little community seems an unlikely candidate.

There are no vine-covered temples or impenetrable jungles here — just an old-fashioned downtown, a drug store that serves up root beer floats and rambling houses along shady brick lanes.

Yet there’s always been something — something just below the surface.

[C19fan]

The archaeologists believe this site is almost as large as the largest site discovered in North America Chaokia. Chaokia is believed to be a major ceremonial site so I wonder if this lost city served the same purpose. People for a long time dismissed Spanish accounts but a lot of recent discoveries have validated them.

[OrangeHoof]

I thought it was NCAA Headquarters.

[Tennessee Nana]

PING

[neverevergiveup]

Lost city? Kansas? So THAT’S where I left it.

[cuban leaf]

I’ve been reading some articles lately that suggest that Native Americans actually had a thriving civilization here, but a plague wiped out possibly as many as 90% of them, which is why the Vikings had quite a challenge with them but subsequent visitors did not. It may be that they caught something from the vikings.

There are stories of settlers coming across spectacular gardens, roads, etc. And there are a lot of odd and large mounds (hundreds of feet in diameter and many tens of feet in hight) here and there that nobody has bothered to check out for some reason.

[Larry Lucido]

[C19fan]

This story is a perfect example. The Spanish made contact with this city and retreated but they left behind smallpox, and other diseases that wiped the area out making it a piece of cake for later Europeans to move in. Some say pigs were a major disease vector. The Spanish would leave pigs behind in an initial exploration as a future food source. The pigs multipley and expand cleaning out areas that never saw a European.

[Lurker]

Ping

[Sasparilla]

...Town leaders are hoping for a UNESCO World Heritage site designation...

Does that farmer really want the UN and other government control over his land?

[zerosix]

Nope we’re not lost.

We’re just where we have always been.

Everyone else were looking in the wrong place - Hollywierd sound stage?

[drunknsage]

I follow this guy on youtube and he discusses the mound builders quite a bit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MM8UqbWP30

[BitWielder1]

Lost cities are always in the last place you look.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Tennessee Nana and Lurker. Lost city? I didn't think it was in Kansas anymore.

[MrEdd]

I believe that there are theories that both Americas were as densely populated as Europe several times, but that hemorrhagic fevers swept through both continents several times.

The lack of varied livestock (particularly cattle) meant that their immune systems weren’t subject to as constant a pressure pressure, and their populations didn’t maintain as rubust an immune system as populations in Africa, Asia, and Europe.

[Pontiac]

“We get about 10 calls a day to see the lost city,” said Pamela Crain, director of the Convention & Visitors Bureau. “The vision is to have a visitors center. The other key is to persuade landowners to allow people onto their property.”

Nope, wouldn’t be prudent.

I would not allow people on my property.

If you allow it long enough it becomes an easement. People never just go where markers say it is permitted. Then they would start picking up artifacts and taking them home. Some would even start digging.

If you allow them on they take it as an invitation to do anything and everything. Litter is just a minor irritation.

Unless you figure you can make a handy profit don’t even consider it.

Tourist are on the whole pigs.

[Starboard]

Another UN foothold. No thanks.

[Red Badger]

Lost Vegas?..................

[Delta 21]

If he thinks he will be paid more $$ by them than his own government not to grow crops, probably.

[Rurudyne]

I put more stock in the idea that the little ice age played a big role. Wars too.

[Clutch Martin]

The Spainish did a couple of things to help them explore, one was to take pigs onboard ships and when they got close to islands they would throw the pigs overboard. The pigs would then swim to the islands and populate the islands with future sources of meat for the Spanish Fleet when they were plying the Waters of the new world. Another, which is chronicled in the travelogs of DeSoto, was to drive small herds of pigs with them and essentially bring their own lunch. Pigs carry disease which are transferable to humans, and the Indians contracted these diseases and died off as a result. There are accounts of large hanging Gardens down where DeSoto was exploring which no longer existed a mere hundred years later because the populations had died off or deserted them and nature took over.