Unraveling Cahokia: The Forgotten City That Redefined Ancient America

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Monks Mound is the largest earthen structure at Cahokia (for scale, people below and on top). About 80 earthen mounds or earthworks survive at the archeology site out of perhaps as many as 120 at the city’s apex. Wikipedia Commons

Around 900 years ago, an extensive and sophisticated culture existed across the Mississippi River from present-day St. Louis, home to approximately 50,000 people in the metropolitan area. This was Cahokia, one of the largest communities in the world at that time. However, around 1400, this bustling, once popular site, was deserted. Why this mass exodus happened, remains shrouded in mystery.

The Missippian way of life developed along the Mississippi River Valley long before Hernando de Soto explored the area (1539–1540). The Mississippian culture was a Native American civilisation that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 to 1600 CE, though it varied regionally. This culture developed advanced societies across much of what is now the Central and the Southeastern United States, beginning more than 1,000 years before European contact.

Not only was it composed of a series of urban settlements, it also included satellite villages, all linked together by a loose trading networks. The entire culture built large earthen platform and other shaped mounds. Cahokia was the largest and most influential urban settlement of the Mississippian culture. It is thought that Cahokia was a…