Posted on 07/12/2024 7:16:48 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
The mysterious, sudden abandonment of the ancient lost city of Cahokia by its inhabitants has been puzzling historians for a long time now – and experts have cast fresh doubt on one of the most popular theories to date...
Around the middle of the 14th century, the 50,000 or so people who called the bustling, vibrant city home departed for other places, suggesting that something pretty dramatic and life-changing had taken place.
One explanation for this mass exodus has blamed a severe drought followed by widespread crop failure – but a new investigation from the US Bureau of Land Management and Washington University in St. Louis suggests otherwise...
Here, the research team analyzed soil samples taken deep underground, looking for carbon isotopes (left behind atoms) that act as indicators for the types of crops being planted across the centuries.
Different plants leave different carbon signatures, and the researchers were able to work out that two particular carbon isotopes – Carbon-12 and Carbon-13 – stayed fairly consistent across the period when people were leaving Cahokia. That suggests that drought and crop failure weren't what was happening...
However, while these soil samples give us clues about what didn't happen, they don't really tell us what did happen. The authors of this study think it may have been a more gradual process than we thought, with a lot of contributing factors.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencealert.com ...
“shaman’s union”
That’s a good tongue in cheek way to express a strong possibility. As with the Maya, so (perhaps) with the Cahokies: closely-held esoteric knowledge by ruling priests becomes vulnerable when they are rounded up and murdered (a la the prophets of Baal when Elijah showed them who’s boss).
Into the grave (or pyre) with them goes all that esoteric knowledge on which the whole operation of society was based; then people scatter, scramble and hustle for themselves. Being mostly slaves, they knew how to do stuff, but would’ve had a disdain for the superstructures of former oppression.
A second tongue in cheek theory might be that they tried an open borders policy and were invaded by a massive influx of peons from Mexico who gladly took what wasn’t theirs until, voila!, nobody had anything (and, no, they didn’t enjoy it).
Is that some archeological speculation (as thinking “it simply had to be that way”) or somehow known that that is what the Inca did (with stone)????
But the authors have no idea what happened.
Cahokia reconstruction.
Another reconstructed view.
Most of the mounds were torn down by early settlers to plane crops.
More known: they’ve done some chemical testing of the stone and traces of the paste.
The inhabitants were run out by teenage drug gangs armed with rapid firing crossbows and sling darts.
When in doubt blame it on aliens.
“One explanation for this mass exodus has blamed a severe drought followed by widespread crop failure”
Climate change strikes again!
They're able to come to that conclusion - "bustling, vibrant" - from a mound of dirt?
Maybe it is the ghosts of all those human sacrifices there. Some were found which appeared they were buried alive.
And not a European around to blame it on for centuries.
What an odd take. At this time, and in this part of the world, Cahokia was more developed than anywhere else. It had a trade network that spanned from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada to the East Coast. Pretty elaborate social organization.
And I'm not sure what "incapable of evolving" means in this context.
The Iroquois didn't have guns. But as soon as they got them, they managed to terrorize the entire Northeast for a century. Likewise the Plains tribes and the horse.
When new tech is introduced, even "primitive" people catch up very quickly.
Houthis...
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