[robowombat]

The words 'lost city' summons up images of jungle choked ruins or sand engulfed remnants of some vanished city not the suburbs of St. Louis, but there you have it.

[MNJohnnie]

Cool!

[Onelifetogive]

Around 500 B.C.E.

Ah, Common Era instead of Christ. I wonder what event marks the beginning of the Common Era?

[alloysteel]

Cahokia is not "lost", it is still there. Just....uninhabitable.

Much like a large part of the city of New Orleans.

[Shalom Israel]

I visited Cahokia, and it's actually quite cool. It's also a cautionary tale against socialism. The (unknown) tribe that built the place, built a landscape of hills for their city. The chief forced workers to carry sacks of dirt from the river, to build a hill covering sixteen acres for his lodge:

Other mounds were used for homes for other elites, for burying important dead, and for ritual purposes. What made Cahokia a "lost" city is that only the mounds remain, along with whatever's under them.

[parsifal]

Bump! (PS: Did the mound builders suffer from piles?)

parsy, the naive american.

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

I grew up around St. Louis and frequent visits to the Cahokia Mounds were a part of my upbringing. I still visit every year or so. It used to be just a place to go for picnics, with a small museum, but in the past few years they have gone to great lengths to preserve the area as a historical/archaelogical site, and the new museum is very informative. It's a worthwhile stop for anyone passing through the area.

[Riverine]

There is also a great mock-up of an Indian village scene in the interpretive center across the street from the "Great Pyramid". In present day Cahokia, several miles away, there stands a very interesting French Colonial vertical log cabin.

[mikeus_maximus]

They employed exotic materials such as shell from the Gulf of Mexico, copper from present-day Michigan, mica from what is now North Carolina, and obsidian from the land that became Wyoming.

The Mississippian Culture had a fascinating trade network. I've been to the museums at the Etowah mounds near Rome, Georgia, and at mounds near Spiro, Oklahoma- what, 1000 miles away? They show the extensive interchange of goods and materials between these peoples, east, west, north and south.

What I don't understand is how an article like this can neglect the most famous Mississippian mound complex of all: the Serpent Mound in southern Ohio.

[GOP_Party_Animal]

Still no sign of the wheel.

[popdonnelly]

Archaeology is cool. Some day your PC may be in a museum.

[fish hawk]

Were the Cahokians a mix of Chinese (who discovered American on the West Coast) and Vikings (who discovered American on the East Coast)?

[ArmyTeach]

My Dad used to tell, with a remorseful shudder, how many time he and his friends - in childish ignorance - dug up, broke into and for working purposes destroyed what would have been archaeological treasures along the Chattahoochee River. Looking for arrowheads and other trinkets...

[SunkenCiv]

A Blast from the Past.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
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[Ciexyz]

Most interesting.

[Question_Assumptions]

It's entirely possible that many civilizations that we know little or nothing about rose and fell leaving few obvious traces for us to uncover because rather than building and working in stone and metal, they worked in wood, hide, and other prerishable vegitable matter thas has since rotted away and disappeared. All archaeologists find are post holes and discolored earth if they look in the right places.

[Antoninus]

Cahokia was the hub of a way of life for millions of Native Americans before the society's decline and devastation by foreign diseases.

Uh, sounds like a bit of an exaggeration to me. This civilization may have had a wide reach, but to say it encompassed millions is an incredible stretch.

[bert]

I didn't think it was lost.

The history channel Indiana Jones wannabe went there and it is a park and has been for a long time. There have been extensive studies including earth moving calculations based on straw bags and human gradability.

[Ptarmigan]

I have read that Cahokia was the largest city in America until Philadelphia and New York. Good find! I have read that when Europeans encountered Indians, their standard of living was better.

[RightOnline]

""It would be like if you visited Europe in the Middle Ages, and there were no royalty or nobles--only peasants," Bailey says."

Ummmmm..........what??