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The Mystery of Lost City of Cahokia's Abandonment Just Got Even Deeper
Science Alert ^ | July 11, 2024 | David Nield

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 ...


TOPICS: History; Science; Travel
KEYWORDS: cahokia; godsgravesglyphs; precolumbian; radiocarbondating
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1 posted on 07/12/2024 7:16:48 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
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To: StayAt HomeMother; Ernest_at_the_Beach; 1ofmanyfree; 21twelve; 24Karet; 2ndDivisionVet; 31R1O; ...

2 posted on 07/12/2024 7:17:14 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Putin should skip ahead to where he kills himself in the bunker.)
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To: SunkenCiv

It’s Illinois, I blame property taxes.


3 posted on 07/12/2024 7:20:57 AM PDT by glorgau
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To: SunkenCiv

Around the middle of the 14th century..............Europe was having Black Plagues at the same time...................


4 posted on 07/12/2024 7:21:18 AM PDT by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegals are put up in 5 Star hotels....................)
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To: glorgau

The shaman’s union pension fund bankrupted them. The tribe moved to Florida.


5 posted on 07/12/2024 7:26:57 AM PDT by I-ambush (From the brightest star comes the blackest hole. You had so much to offer, why didya offer your sou?)
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To: SunkenCiv

The inhabitants of Cahokia left nothing in any writing, at least nothing that has been found. That raises questions about the intellectual means and methods they employed in creating Cahokia. Like how were measures taken? How were successful means and methods transmitted for repeated use? How were their stories told and passed on, orally alone? And many other questions that answers are often found for in other ancient civilizations that had methods of writing.


6 posted on 07/12/2024 7:27:00 AM PDT by Wuli
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To: SunkenCiv

Though the absense of other evidence makes a connection unlikely, what a coincidence that the Black Death ravaged Europe and Asia in the mid-14th century. Nothing like a plague to make concentrated populations disperse, economies and trade break down, etc.


7 posted on 07/12/2024 7:31:19 AM PDT by Chewbarkah
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To: Wuli

If the writing or symbolic representations were all done on organic materials it would be hard for anything to survive. For example, the Inca knotted ropes. Only the Mesoamericans seem to have devised a hieroglyphic system that has survived because a few organic codices were kept during the Spanish conquest plus extensive use of carved stone architecture and monuments.


8 posted on 07/12/2024 7:36:30 AM PDT by pierrem15 ("Massacrez-les, car le seigneur connait les siens" )
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To: Chewbarkah

Wouldn’t surprise me.


9 posted on 07/12/2024 7:36:38 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Putin should skip ahead to where he kills himself in the bunker.)
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To: Red Badger

https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/4250649/posts?page=9#9


10 posted on 07/12/2024 7:37:03 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Putin should skip ahead to where he kills himself in the bunker.)
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To: Wuli
And many other questions that answers are often found for in other ancient civilizations that had methods of writing.

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

The US Bureau of Land Management is footing the bill for this make-work, pointless slab of pork, because?

The Washington University in St. Louis, no doubt, funneled a nice portion of the BLM grant monies back to the DNC, while
employing a small contingent of rabid Lefties with a paycheck.

11 posted on 07/12/2024 7:37:46 AM PDT by Thommas (The snout of the camel is already under the tent.)
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To: Red Badger
Depending on the acidity of the soil a plague like event would at least show evidence of a mass grave. However, you may be correct, how much of what we know about these people is conjecture and how much is fact. How did they dispose of waste? How did they dispose of their dead, etc…. Artist renderings don't show garbage, feces animal and human, lying in the streets. Standing pools of water and urine, etc. Gradual dispersing would indicate problems with the site and over time it became uninhabitable. Tons of human and animal waste, mosquitoes, flies and other pests may have been a problem over time.
12 posted on 07/12/2024 7:41:42 AM PDT by OldGoatCPO (No Caitiff Choir of Angels will sing for me. )
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To: SunkenCiv
Clearly, they were driven out by evil Republicans, led by Donald Trump.

(They are to blame for everything else bad that ever happened, so why not this?)

13 posted on 07/12/2024 7:45:38 AM PDT by sima_yi ( Reporting live from the far North)
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To: pierrem15

What you postulate may be true and it somewhat goes with how Cahokia was built, which was not with stone (at least not large massive stones) which says something about what natural materials were available around Cahokia. Maybe without a lot of available natural stone formations, “organic” materials would have been used for whatever “records” they kept.

Which takes us back to the Inca and it makes me think others before the Inca built many of the massive stone works that have been attributed to the Inca, as I do not see the knotted cords of the Inca as equal to the task of transmitting the sophisticated methods in building the massiv stone works. I think maybe the Inca inherited them and just took them over. Maybe wh they took them over from were peoples who were there during the last ice age.


14 posted on 07/12/2024 7:45:53 AM PDT by Wuli
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To: SunkenCiv

Wasn’t this about the time that there was a suspected major volcanic eruption that resulted in colder temperatures and a lot of crop failures? I’m guessing they migrated south.

I know 536 was suspected for that and the Justinean plagues were thought to be inflated due to the resulting malnutrition.

The black plague was in the 14th century in Europe - I wouldn’t be surprised if it had a similar eruption related climate event resulting in failed crops and malnutrition related disease susceptibility as well.


15 posted on 07/12/2024 7:49:45 AM PDT by reed13k
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To: Red Badger

In the 14th century western Europe was a meteorological mess. France was having way too much rain and it was cold. Crops failed again and again. The 1400s reversed all that and things got most excellent again.

But Cahokia apparently didn’t have bad weather or crop failures. I always assumed that they were having a bad time too, but no.

Maybe the population was getting too big for the available hoof protein, and they left for greener pastures.


16 posted on 07/12/2024 7:49:57 AM PDT by Doctor Congo
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To: Wuli
The Inca seemed to have devised a unique way of setting stone.

Like field stone fences, they found or created blocks of varying sizes that could be fitted. They then cut/chipped the stone down to a pretty close fit and applied a thin, special paste mortar when the stones were set. When wet the paste dissolved the last few millimeters of the rough faces of the stone, the paste washed out and the stone fit together with microscopic tolerances.

The close fit of irregular stone made the walls very earthquake resistant. Really freaking clever.

17 posted on 07/12/2024 7:56:59 AM PDT by pierrem15 ("Massacrez-les, car le seigneur connait les siens" )
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To: glorgau

Graboids


18 posted on 07/12/2024 7:57:38 AM PDT by usurper (AI was born with a birth defect.)
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To: SunkenCiv

Bookmark


19 posted on 07/12/2024 7:57:54 AM PDT by Southside_Chicago_Republican (God save the United States!)
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To: Doctor Congo

Their dispersal is apparently what gave us all the different tribes of the US plains and Midwest.................


20 posted on 07/12/2024 8:00:14 AM PDT by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegals are put up in 5 Star hotels....................)
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