Ancient American City Cahokia was a 'Melting Pot': Researchers Find

Ancient American City Cahokia was a 'Melting Pot': Researchers Find

At least a third of all people living in the ancient American city of Cahokia were immigrants, a new study has found.

Cahokia, situated in near Mississippi river, was the largest pre-Columbian city in North America. The Cahokia Mounds in Illinois are listed as a World Heritage site in the United States.

The ancient urban center near modern-day St. Louis was a melting pot of cultures and had people coming from the Midwest and even from Great Lakes and Gulf Coastal regions, according to Livescience.

The study, conducted by researchers at University of Illinois and colleagues, challenges the idea that Cahokia had a homogenous population derived from nearby regions.

"Increasingly archaeologists are realizing that Cahokia at AD 1100 was very likely an urban center with as many as 20,000 inhabitants," Thomas Emerson at University of Illinois and an author of the study, said in a news release. "Such early centers around the world grow by immigration, not by birthrate."

As many of you who have read some of my previous threads on related topics know I've often speculated about this very find. I've also wondered and speculated about just how far away did they trade? Could they have sailed down into the Gulf and then West to Central America and had possible contact with the Mayans in their post classic period or may even have either knew of or even possibly influenced/seeded the Aztecs?

I'm speculating of course but some of the previous theorized pieces are starting to fit...

Kinda throws out the whole "native Americans were small tribes of hunter gatherers" idea I had.

Nice find, checking out the link now

Love ya work

reply to post by SLAYER69


Cahokia is amazing. I thought contact with the Aztecs has been confirmed. But theories, with which I agree, say the city was much older. Used for centuries as a central trading hub for tribes from most geographical areas. I dont know whether or not the Northeastern tribes travelled that far, but who knows?

If you ever visit...make sure you take the right exit. East St. Louis is even worse than how it was portrayed in National Lampoons "Vacation".

We visited Cahokia a few years ago. It's a really interesting place and we learned a lot.

Seems that the people of those times were much more mobile than was previously believed.Not a huge suprise to me.As you know, I believe that people were much more capable of moving around the world than they are given credit for.

The Mississippi was a perfect water highway to the Gulf of Mexico, and also to near the Great Lakes and other portions of North America.To me it makes perfect sense to use that highway for trade.Having a central trading place is a terrific idea. After all don't we do that today?

Companies have a central warehouse and collect product there to distribute to areas around the warehouse. Seems that perhaps this is a very old idea. Humans haven't changed much have they?

reply to post by SLAYER69


Hi Slayer

I remember this video on Cahokia from a documentary called 500 Nations.

I don't know how accurate it is but it was very interesting.

lonegurkha
Seems that the people of those times were much more mobile than was previously believed.Not a huge suprise to me.As you know, I believe that people were much more capable of moving around the world than they are given credit for.

The Mississippi was a perfect water highway to the Gulf of Mexico, and also to near the Great Lakes and other portions of North America.To me it makes perfect sense to use that highway for trade.Having a central trading place is a terrific idea. After all don't we do that today?

Companies have a central warehouse and collect product there to distribute to areas around the warehouse. Seems that perhaps this is a very old idea. Humans haven't changed much have they?

I agree, it makes perfect sense that a large site located so near a main waterway that meanders from the currently northern borders of the US all the way to the Gulf of Mexico would also serve as a centralized meeting place for trade and socialization in a similar fashion to what some archaeologists believe happened at many European Neolithic sites like Gobekli Tepe. It is naïve to think that these people were so "primitive" that they were incapable of travelling long distances or establishing trade and even more so with the new evidence of an immigrant population as sizable as is estimated at Cahokia.

I like your threads, Slayer because they really make me think.

SnF!

Cahokia Mounds was such a neat place when I was a kid, too dangerous of an area now.

I love about 20 minutes away and used to go there all the time..the big mound is great exercise!

Any relation to the large and extensive canals of North America dating back to that period?

Living in St. Louis (Mound City as it is still referred to here sometimes--unfortunately most where St. Lou now stands were destroyed), I try to go to Cahokia every couple of years. Great place to learn and explore.
It also has "wood henge" near one end.
A short documentary on the PBS channel here said that across the Mississippi near the river, the caves were used for things like sacred practices and some burials too.

Having the Missouri river confluence with the Mississippi just a little north of Cahokia really made it a hub.



Per usual love your thread.

IkNOwSTuff
Kinda throws out the whole "native Americans were small tribes of hunter gatherers" idea I had.

Nice find, checking out the link now

Love ya work

Yea they were never small tribes of nomad hunter gather sorts. Youre talking about early man when you say that. lol

We are talking whole civilizations, look at the cities in Mexico. You guys recall where we were talking about bricks and trade...

"This city has many public squares, in which are situated the markets and other places for buying and selling. There is one square twice as large as that of the city of Salamanca, surrounded by porticoes, where are daily assembled more than sixty thousand souls, engaged in buying and selling; and where are found all kinds of merchandise that the world affords, embracing the necessaries of life, as for instance articles of food, as well as jewels of gold and silver, lead, brass, copper, tin, precious stones, bones, shells, snails, and feathers."

Thats from Hernan Cortez to Charles V back in 1520 or abouts.

reply to post by IkNOwSTuff


Only an uninformed dumb ass would believe that Indians lived in small tribes through history. Prior to the arrival of the Spanish in the late 1400s there where massive populations of native american living here in the United States. There where mound cities up and down the Mississippi River and all throw out the Ohio Valley. Some of these cities had population of 100,000 plus according to Ponce de León who was the first European to explore the the Southern half of the United States. Ponce de León died of small pox while on one of his expeditions and was buried some where in modern day Florida.

One Hundred Years later, other set out to find these massive cities Ponce de León described in his journals, how ever the place were found but the people where long gone. The Small Pox that had killed Ponce de León also wiped out the native population in less than a century. When the later explores ask the the locals what happened they said the the old one died out and there cities were abandoned. Then nature did the rest and removed the evidence.

Look at another place Angkor Wat in Cambodia. It was a thriving city for thousands of years even Marco Polo had been there on his trips to Asia, but some time in the 1500s the whole city was abandoned. This city was largest city in terms of size on the planet and it just diapered back in to the jungle from whence it came. Even today there still finding parts of the city they didn't know existed.

reply to post by JBRiddle


"Smallpox is believed to have arrived in the Americas in 1520 on a Spanish ship sailing from Cuba, carried by an infected African slave. As soon as the party landed in Mexico, the infection began its deadly voyage through the continent. Even before the arrival of Pizarro, smallpox had already devastated the Inca Empire, killing the Emperor Huayna Capac and unleashing a bitter civil war that distracted and weakened his successor, Atahuallpa."

I never really believed folks were up and down the misses from north all the way down to the southern parts of our continent. And the only way I could agree is if they were selling or bartering, ect but then you look back at the tribes and the early colonies... and what we know of what the remaining people are telling us today.

Then you have the history of spain O.o derka derka I said before look to the jesuits.

Look at how the northern tribes tie us allll together now.
www.mappery.com...
pueblosoriginarios.com...

America is Baskin Robbins heh

reply to post by SLAYER69


NPR Article

Nephalim
reply to post by JBRiddle

 

"Smallpox is believed to have arrived in the Americas in 1520 on a Spanish ship sailing from Cuba, carried by an infected African slave. As soon as the party landed in Mexico, the infection began its deadly voyage through the continent. Even before the arrival of Pizarro, smallpox had already devastated the Inca Empire, killing the Emperor Huayna Capac and unleashing a bitter civil war that distracted and weakened his successor, Atahuallpa."

I never really believed folks were up and down the misses from north all the way down to the southern parts of our continent. And the only way I could agree is if they were selling or bartering, ect but then you look back at the tribes and the early colonies... and what we know of what the remaining people are telling us today.

Then you have the history of spain O.o derka derka I said before look to the jesuits.

Look at how the northern tribes tie us allll together now.
www.mappery.com...
pueblosoriginarios.com...

America is Baskin Robbins heh

Many are unaware that what Western expansion did, was simply mop up the remains of a far greater people, that Got devastated by disease that started with the first explorers.

Some estimates range as high as 70-80 percent population lost to sickness before the first settler even arrived.

reply to post by SLAYER69


At looking at the biggest mound complex (Monks mound), it reminds me of the Teotihuacan pyramids. But Teotihuacan preceeds Cahokia by several hundred years. A site at Cahokia called Mound 72, it was discovered that a very important person was buried there, along with many other bodies believed to be sacrificed in honor of him. The idea of human sacrifice was also practiced in Mesoamerica. Was this an idea that was shared?
Since I never heard about Cahokia, I started to do some researching. I noticed that the inhabitants had the knowledge to make copper items.
Then this lead me to the Spiro Wulfing and Etowah repousse copper plates that were discovered in Georgia. One of them, the so-called Rogan plate looks eerily similar to Aztec/Mayan art. Needless to say...mind blown!

Thanks Slayer!

reply to post by JBRiddle

Only an uninformed dumb ass would believe that Indians lived in small tribes through history. Prior to the arrival of the Spanish in the late 1400s there where massive populations of native american living here in the United States.

I wholly embrace my uninformed dumbassery.

Its one of the things I love about this site and Slayers threads, everytime Im cruising the boards here I get a bit more informed and become slightly less of a dumbass

Ill be in Angkor Wat next week, cant wait

Great thread.
I've not been able to read the original source (no longer subscribe to professional journals) but will check it out when I'm next at the U library. However, I have a bit of concern over some of the statements that seem to have been made by journalists rather than the researchers.

"At least a third of all people living in the ancient American city of Cahokia were immigrants, a new study has found."

This is my first cocked eyebrow. According to info in the article the study was made of the teeth of 87 people found buried there. That is a very small sample for a site that was active for hundreds of years. There is a lot of information left out in the news pieces---how were the samples collected?---what was the male/female, adult/child ratio?---and I could go on and on. It's true that one third of the sample showed that the person did not grow up in the area. However, there is no way that I know of to say that 87 people were a true small sample of the whole. And that's just the known burials. I've no doubt that there are hundreds if not thousands of burials that have not been excavated on the site.
I'm not taking issue with the findings of the studied sample. Strontium ion sampling is pretty accurate as far as I can tell. But to take a sample of 87 people out of thousands of burials and project it to the entire population isn't really very good science.
But the study does support the few genetics studies I've seen that have been done on populations in the St. Louis area, in the Black Bottoms area if I'm remembering correctly. There were significant genetic differences in even small village populations, something that surprised the researchers greatly. But that was a long time ago, back in the '90s or maybe earlier, when genetic testing was very new.
I'd like to see funding for genetic testing of all the human remains held by research institutions. I think it should be mandatory before the remains are returned for reburial. But that's another issue...
Cahokia is indeed an awe-inspiring place, well worth spending at least a day there to soak it all in. It is one of the places I'd really like to visit when I get my time machine! or learn to do remote viewing...

IkNOwSTuff
Ill be in Angkor Wat next week, cant wait

Waves hand

You WILL take a bunch of pics and WILL post them in a thread.