Cahokia: North America's First City

Key Points

CAHOKIA

Cahokia was once a city that, at its top from A.D. 1050-1200, was larger than many European cities, including London. The city used to unfold out over six square miles (16 square kilometers) and encompassed at least 120 mounds and a population between 10,000 and 20,000 people.

The pre-Columbian settlement at Cahokia was the largest city in North America north of Mexico, with as many as 20,000 people living there at its peak

Located across the Mississippi River from modern-day St. Louis, it was the largest pre-Columbian city north of Mexico. The inhabitants of Cahokia did no longer use a writing system, and researchers today matter heavily on archaeology to interpret it. The title “Cahokia” is from an aboriginal people who lived in the area during the 17th century.
Cultural finds from the city include evidence of a popular game referred to as “Chunkey” and a caffeine loaded drink. Artistic finds include stone tablets carved with snapshots (such as a birdman) as well as proof of sophisticated copper working, including rings and headdresses.
Recent research indicates that many of the human beings who lived at Cahokia were immigrants who came from throughout the Midwest, perchance journeying from as far away as the Great Lakes and Gulf Coast, a study of their teeth shows. To the south of Cahokia a settlement that archaeologists call Washausen grew to be abandoned around the time Cahokia was at its height around A.D. 1100, a study published recently in the Journal of Archaeological Science Reports found. It’s possible that some of the residents at Washausen, and different sites positioned near it, moved to Cahokia.
The city’s growth might also have been aided by using warmer temperatures. At the time Cahokia flourished, temperatures throughout the Earth have been strangely warm, resulting in increased rainfall in the American Midwest, wrote archaeologists Timothy Pauketat and Susan Alt in a paper posted in the e-book “Medieval Mississippians: The Cahokian World” (School for Advanced Research Press, 2015). “An increase in common every year precipitation accompanied the warmer weather, enabling maize farming to thrive,” Pauketat and Alt wrote.
The city fell into decline after 1200, around the time that a flood occurred, becoming abandoned with the aid of 1400. Much of the city lies buried beneath 19th- and 20th-century developments, along with a highway and the growth of the city of St. Louis. Over the past few decades, efforts have been made to maintain what remains, with Cahokia’s core now part of a state historic site.

Monks Mound – Cahokia

The most brilliant instance of the structure at Cahokia is the 100-foot (30-meter) tall “Monks Mound” — the name given to it due to the fact a team of Trappist monks lived near it in historic times.

It was built with four terraces, covering about 17 acres (6.8 hectares) at its base, the mound towering over the city. Archaeologists have observed giant postholes at the top indicating the presence of what might also have been a temple, most likely made of wood, measuring 104 ft (31 m) by means of 48 ft (15 m). Its postholes are over 3 ft (1 m) in diameter, the constructing being perhaps 50 ft (15 m) tall.
Monks Mound, along with a grand plaza and a crew of smaller mounds, was once walled in with a 2-mile-long (3.2 km) timber palisade. As many as 20,000 timber posts had been used to construct it.

Woodhenge – Cahokia

To the west of Monks Mound is a sequence of 5 circles, every at the beginning made of red cedar timber posts, developed at different instances between A.D. 900 and 1100. They range in size from 12 to 60 posts, the latest one being the smallest. Archaeologists refer to these buildings as a “woodhenge,” a reconstruction of which now exists.
These posts would possibly have been used as a calendar of kinds marking the solstices, equinoxes and festivals important to the inhabitants. A priest may want to have stood on a raised platform in the middle.
The sunrise at some point of the equinox, when it rises to the east, is said to be mainly wonderful from this spot. A submit aligns with the front of Monks Mound and the big structure appears like it “gives birth” to the sun, according to a present-day account recorded on the Cahokia Mounds nation historic website.

Human sacrifice – Cahokia

Mound 72 is a 10-foot-high (3 m) structure located less than a half-mile south of Monks Mound. It dates between 1050 and 1150 and holds the remains of 272 people, many of them sacrificed — the biggest number of sacrificial victims ever located north of Mexico.
The mound’s archaeology is complicated however quite a few instances of human sacrifice can be made out. In one case, 39 guys and ladies were done “on the spot,” wrote Pauketat in the e-book “Cahokia: Ancient America’s Great City on the Mississippi” (Penguin, 2010). “It seemed probable the victims had been lined up on the edge of the pit … and clubbed one by using one so that their bodies fell sequentially into it.”
In any other episode of sacrifice, 52 malnourished women between the ages of 18 and 23 show up to have been sacrificed at the same time, along with a girl in her 30s. It’s not regarded why these girls have been sacrificed. A find out about the teeth of the girls shows that many of them are from the neighborhood area, suggesting that they were now not captured during a war.
The burial mound also has the remains of a man and woman who have been found buried with 20,000 shell beads, possibly the remains of a garment(s). They may have been a couple that had a great amount of electricity at Cahokia. Near their stays, archaeologists found the burials of 12 other people such as several male-female couples as properly as the stays of a child.

Cosmology – Cahokia

The absence of written files makes it challenging for researchers to apprehend all the spiritual and spiritual beliefs that the residents of Cahokia had. However, “new proof suggests that the central Cahokia precinct was designed to align with calendrical and cosmological referents — sun, moon, earth, water and the netherworld,” wrote a group of archaeologists in an article posted in 2017 in the journal Antiquity.
For instance, there is a region that archaeologists call the “Emerald Acropolis,” which marks “the beginning of a processional route” that leads to central Cahokia, the archaeologists wrote in the journal article. At least 12 mounds along with the remains of timber constructions (some of which were possibly used as “shrines”) have been recognized at this acropolis the archaeologists wrote, noting that the mounds and wooden structures have “lunar alignments.”
Additionally, water can also have performed a role in the rituals carried out at the Acropolis. Some of the constructions had been ritually “closed” with “water-redeposited silts” put over them, the archaeologists wrote. In a few cases, mats or hides have been burned inside the structures earlier than silt was once put over them. Burial of an infant was once found in one of the structures and may additionally have been placed inside as an “offering” archaeologists wrote.

Chunkey – Cahokia

Cahokia supported a rich variety of art and cultural activities. Among them are stones used for a once wildly popular game known as “Chunkey.”
Archaeologists cannot be certain what the genuine rules had been at the time Cahokia thrived. Accounts of the sport in the 18th and 19th century tell of a stone disc, called a “chunkey stone,” that would be rolled on a taking part in a subject with human beings throwing giant sticks, larger than themselves, at it, trying to land them as close to the stone as possible. Points would be given depending on how close they came. Gambling on the consequence of this sport was once common, in accordance with writers who lived in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Pauketat envisions Chunkey being performed as a team sport at Cahokia in the plaza beside Monks Mound. In an Archaeology Magazine article, he writes that “the chief standing at the summit of the black, packed-earth pyramid raises his arms. In the grand plaza below, a deafening shout erupts from 1,000 gathered souls. Then the crowd divides in two, and each group run throughout the plaza, shrieking wildly. Hundreds of spears fly through the air toward a small rolling stone disk …” Spectators would cheer them on, witnessing a great sport that captivated the North American city.