According to carbon dating, the ancient Native American city of Cahokia was established around 1050 near the Mississippi River and supported a population of up to 20,000 residents at its height. The striking proximity of its establishment with a supernova in 1054 and the astounding accuracy in the geometric contours of the giant earthen mounds in relation to the stars have led some archaeologists and historians to question whether the astronomical event led to Cahokia’s inception. Mississippian trade routes emanating from Cahokia reached from Wisconsin to the Gulf of Mexico. Ritual human sacrifice, a grand plaza the size of thirty-five football fields, and the one-hundred-foot tall earth Pyramid now called Monks Mound suggest Cahokia contained a rigidly stratified society with powerful elites. Cahokia dispels the erroneous Eurocentric notion of the ecologically noble savage and proves North America was not an untouched wilderness. Furthermore, the collapse of Cahokia before the Columbian Exchange demonstrates a non-European-induced environmental calamity and/or political upheaval. Rather than an anomaly, the over-exploitation of natural resources and failed economy characterize the collapse of complex societies. Moreover, it suggests that American Indian civilizations contained the same distinctive shortsightedness inherent in human groups and were not uniformly ecologically minded.
Contributed by Gregory Hitch
Course: Modern Global Environmental History
Instructor: Dr. Wilko Graf von Hardenberg
University of Wisconsin–Madison, US