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Cakohia, the ancient city in the US where history is being rewritten

2025-03-31 15:28:00, Kuriozitete CNA

Cahokia is the ancient ruins of a pre-Columbian Native American city, which existed from about 1050–1350 AD, directly across the Mississippi River from modern-day St. Louis, Missouri. This historic park lies in southwestern Illinois between East St. Louis and Collinsville .

Things are quieter these days at Cahokia, now a peaceful UNESCO site. But the towering mounds there hint at the legacy of the largest pre-Columbian city in northern Mexico.

A cosmopolitan mix of language, art, and spiritual solace, Cahokia's population may have grown to 30,000 people at its peak in 1050 AD, making it larger, at the time, than even Paris itself.

It's surprising what Cahokia didn't have, writes one author in her recent book "Four Lost Cities: The Secret History of the Urban Age." The massive city lacked a permanent market, upsetting long-held assumptions that trade is the organizing principle behind all urbanization.

Cakohia, the ancient city in the US where history is being rewritten

When they excavated cities in Mesopotamia, researchers found evidence that trade was the organizing principle behind their development, and then turned the same lens on ancient cities around the globe.

"People thought this must be the basis for all early cities. It has led to generations looking for this kind of thing everywhere," the archaeologists said.

They did not find trade at Cahokia, which archaeologists believe may have been conceived as a place to connect the worlds of the living and the dead. Spread across a landscape that blends hard ground with patches of swamp, Cahokia may have served as a kind of spiritual crossroads.

"It's a city built to overcome water and dry land," says the archaeologist.

Living residents settled in drier areas, while burial mounds were erected in wetter places. Lidar scans of the site have revealed raised walkways connecting the "neighborhoods" of the living and the dead, physical walkways that joined the kingdoms.

And if living on top of both worlds sounds pretty bleak, Cahokians seem to have seen their city as a place of celebration.

Cahokia planners created structures and public spaces dedicated entirely to mass gatherings, where individuals would be involved in the joy of collective experiences. Most spectacular of all was the 50-acre Grand Plaza, where 10,000 or more people could gather together for celebrations in a monumental space surrounded by earthen pyramids .

Cakohia, the ancient city in the US where history is being rewritten

In the plaza, the buzzing energy of the crowd turned to a collective roar as spectators arrived for short periods. The game began when a player rolled a stone disc across the smooth surface of the ground. The tall pillars that line the Grand Plaza may have provided another spectacle of athletic grace. Men may have climbed the pillars or been tied together for flying dances, a ritual still practiced in some Maya parts of Mesoamerica.

The Cahokiaans loved the colors red, white, and black, and people styled their hair in buns with tattoos adorning some bodies and faces. When the festivities were over, the Cahokiaans ate and drank together. A decade ago, an analysis of pottery vessels that archaeologists found at Cahokia revealed biomarkers for a species of yam known as the yaupon, which is the only caffeine-containing plant native to North America.

Cakohia, the ancient city in the US where history is being rewritten

Modern life is not far away: Cahokia is framed by a mid-American stretch of interstate highways and suburbs. But it wasn't modern development that ended Cahokia's exciting history.

Eventually, the Cahokians simply chose to leave their city behind, seemingly driven by a mix of environmental and human factors, such as climate change that crippled agriculture, turbulent violence, or catastrophic flooding. By 1400, the plazas and mounds were quiet.

Cakohia, the ancient city in the US where history is being rewritten

When Europeans first saw the extraordinary ancient city of Cahokia, they saw a lost civilization. They wondered if some distant people had built Cahokia and then vanished, taking with them the brilliant culture and sophistication that had once flourished in the last land of the Mississippi, where the land was enriched by the floods of the rivers. But the people of Cahokia, of course, did not disappear. They simply left, and with them, Cahokia's influence spread to distant lands, where some of their most beloved pastimes survive to this day./CNA

Cakohia, the ancient city in the US where history is being rewritten