Cahokia was the most important center for the peoples known today as Mississippians. Their settlements ranged across what is now theMidwest, Eastern, and Southeastern United States. Cahokia maintained trade links with communities as far away as the Great Lakes to the north and the Gulf Coast to the south. Pottery and stone tools in the Cahokian style were found at the Silvernale site near Red Wing, Minnesota.
At the high point of its development, Cahokia was the largest urban center north of the great Mesoamerican cities in Mexico. Although it was home to only about 1,000 people before ca. 1050, its population grew explosively after that date. Archaeologists estimate the city's population at between 8,000 and 40,000 at its peak, with more people living in outlying farming villages that supplied the main urban center.
If the highest population estimates are correct, Cahokia was larger than any subsequent city in the United States until about 1800, whenPhiladelphia's population grew beyond 40,000.
| Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site* | |
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| UNESCO World Heritage Site | |
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Cahokia was settled around 650 CE during the Late Woodland period. Mound building did not begin until about 1050 CE, at the beginning of the Mississippian cultural period. The inhabitants left no written records beyond symbols on pottery, shell, copper, wood, and stone.[3]. The city's original name is unknown.
The name "Cahokia" also refers to an unrelated clan of Illiniwek people living in the area when the first French explorers arrived in the 1600s, long after Cahokia was abandoned. The living descendants of the Cahokia people associated with the Mound site are unknown, although many Native American groups are plausible.
The Travel Channel has called it the "world's largest pyramid."
Cahokia was abandoned a century or more before Europeans arrived in North America in the early 1500s. Scholars have proposed environmental factors such as over-hunting and deforestation as explanations. Another possible cause is invasion by outside peoples, though the only evidence of warfare found so far is the wooden stockade and watchtowers that enclosed Cahokia's main ceremonial precinct. Due to the lack of other evidence for warfare, the palisade appears to have been more for ritual than military purposes. Diseases transmitted among the large, dense urban population are another possible cause of decline. Many recent theories propose conquest induced political collapse as the primary reason for Cahokia’s abandonment.[12]
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