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I visited the Cahokia museum in East St. Louis and although there’s still not much to see since most of it has not been excavated yet, it’s still fascinating th
by stephenhuey 8y ago
I visited the Cahokia museum in East St. Louis and although there’s still not much to see since most of it has not been excavated yet, it’s still fascinating there was such a vast Native American city in the Midwest. For centuries, no one had any idea it was even there, and if you’d told Americans a century ago, they probably wouldn’t have believed it was possible. Now this new discovery is a city almost as big with over 20,000 people, which contradicts how we thought the plains had only nomadic tribes chasing the buffalo. For perspective on how advanced some of these Native American cities were, I recommend you visit the ruins of Teotihuacan since half of it has been excavated.
*edit typo
- bunderbunder 8y agoHeck, as far as I can tell, even now, a lot of people who live within a few miles of the place don't really know it was there. I don't know that it's quite accurate to say that it wasn't recognized as a major site for centuries. European settlers pretty much immediately recognized the area as evidence of a large civilization. They just didn't believe anyone related to Plains Indians were capable of monumental architecture, so they instead cooked up legends about the "mound builders" that typically insinuated that they were built by a European culture - one of the lost tribes of Israel is a popular suspect - that had since disappeared.
- jacobolus 8y ago> one of the lost tribes of Israel is a popular suspect As far as I know, this idea is a creation of the Mormon church, which believes (based on their foundational holy text) that all native Americans are descended from a lost tribe of Israel, and which has spent significant resources sending archeologists around North America to prove this theory. (It turns out that if you lead with your conclusions, it is hard to do science. Some of the investigations of physical evidence are alright, but the reasoning and conclusions drawn from them are farcical.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeology_and_the_Book_of_Mormon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeology_and_the_Book_of_Mo...
- bunderbunder 8y agoThe Lost Tribe folklore was already almost 2 centuries old by the time Smith produced the Book of Mormon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Lost_Tribes#Native_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Lost_Tribes#Native_America...
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- jacobolus 8y agoAha, fair enough. The Mormons have put a lot more work into trying to defend/substantiate this theory than its other adherents have, from what I can tell searching around the web.
- ChainOfFools 8y agoit's also not unreasonable to assume that the prevalence of these myths was itself a major contributing substrate of the theology dreamed up by Joseph Smith.
- cmrdporcupine 8y agoI read this book some years ago: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B002FQOHTW https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B002FQOHTW It was really good. But to your point, I'd say: don't assume that Europeans didn't believe the Plains Indians were incapable of the monumental architecture so much as a good many of the settlers actively wanted that knowledge suppressed, primarily for their own economic reasons (if it was on your farm land you made a living on, what would you do?) A good portion of the potential sites were deliberately destroyed. Especially in the modern era. Huge battles about strip malls, highways, parking lots and other construction. People knew to some degree what was there and the fact that it was there was inconvenient to the other narrative: the rise of America and its glory. So artifacts were destroyed and sites suppressed.
- monocasa 8y agoI wonder how much of this is due to the post apocalyptic nature of our first direct interactions with natives. Something like 90% of the population had been wiped out, so it's little wonder that there were roaving bands of nomads where there were once cities. Society had broken down in a way that arguably hadn't been seen since the bronze age collapse.
- adrianratnapala 8y agoIt's very plausible. Perhaps Native American cities were in a uniquely bad spot. On the one hand, plagues spread more in cities than among nomads. But on the other hand their ancestors had not lived for millennia with such germs; especially not the particular ones which the Europeans brought. And maybe even the Bronze Age collapse was similar. Lots of cities then would have been populated by people whose ancestors had been nomads a few centuries ago. As the size and number of such cities grew, you could imagine some critical point is reached where devastating plagues recur.
- bunderbunder 8y agoThat's absolutely what happened with the nations up and down the Atlantic coast, which was densely populated before (post-Viking) European contact. Cahokia, though, was abandoned 250 years before that, in the early 1300s.
- ChainOfFools 8y agoI wonder if any research has been done that may have connected to global rise of the Bubonic plague with this collapse. The Black Death came in multiple waves throughout late medieval Europe, but originated somewhere in Asia. perhaps there was a connection through an avian carrier route or a presently unknown cross-bering strait trade or migration.
- ChainOfFools 8y agoI want a second the recommendation to visit Teotihuacán, but also add that really not anywhere close to half of it has been excavated yet. The impressive ceremonial core of the city, with its pyramids and dramatic Avenue of the Dead, along with a couple of nearby apartment compounds, only represents perhaps 10% of the entire city. the main reason the rest has not been excavated is that it is underneath the modern-era towns of San Juan and San Martin lying to either side of the ceremonial center.
- stephenhuey 8y agoAh, interesting. I wonder if they could tunnel to some of it eventually, or acquire more of the property. I’d take my kids and grandkids someday!