The Mystery of Lost City of Cahokia's Abandonment Just Got Even Deeper

Science Alert ^ | July 11, 2024 | David Nield

[Migraine]

“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).

[Wuli]

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)????

[PIF]

A pre-Columbian Native American city (which existed c. 1050–1350 CE) directly across the Mississippi River from present-day St. Louis, Missouri.

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.

[pierrem15]

More known: they’ve done some chemical testing of the stone and traces of the paste.

[Candor7]

The inhabitants were run out by teenage drug gangs armed with rapid firing crossbows and sling darts.

[George J. Jetso]

When in doubt blame it on aliens.

[aquila48]

“One explanation for this mass exodus has blamed a severe drought followed by widespread crop failure”

Climate change strikes again!

[SunkenCiv]

Is such a thing even possible? Yes, it is.

[aquila48]

"Around the middle of the 14th century, the 50,000 or so people who called the bustling, vibrant city home"

They're able to come to that conclusion - "bustling, vibrant" - from a mound of dirt?

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Maybe it is the ghosts of all those human sacrifices there. Some were found which appeared they were buried alive.

https://www.ancientpages.com/2015/08/27/human-sacrifice-at-cahokia-victims-were-locals-not-foreign-captives/

https://pages.vassar.edu/realarchaeology/2023/11/12/new-discoveries-on-the-origins-of-the-sacrifices-in-mound-72/

And not a European around to blame it on for centuries.

[Claud]

In other words, a primitive, backwater Paleolithic tribe that was incapable of evolving beyond the Stone Age.

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.

[Paul R.]

When new tech is introduced, even "primitive" people catch up very quickly.

Houthis...

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks for the new link!

The Rise and Mysterious Fall of Cahokia: Researchers Unearth New Secrets
of America's Greatest 'Lost' Ancient Megacity
Tim McMillan | October 23, 2025 | The Debrief

...The Mystery of the Mitchell Log... The newly dated wooden monument, known as the Mitchell Log, was first unearthed in 1961 at the Mitchell site, one of Cahokia's outlying ceremonial precincts about six miles (10 kilometers) north of the central city... Using a combination of tree-ring radiocarbon dating and strontium isotope analysis, the research team determined that the wood came from a bald cypress tree that grew hundreds of miles south of the site.