Anthropology
A Lost American City’s Legacy
a thousand years ago, a flourishing city existed near what would become St. Louis. Between 10,000 and 30,000 inhabitants lived in homes and worshiped in temples with thatched roofs and walls. They supped on heady stimulants, worshipped female goddesses and charted the stars from an observatory that was the wooden equivalent of Stonehenge. Rising from the city’s center was a pyramid nearly 100 feet tall, the largest earthen structure in the New World. It was surrounded by a 50-acre public square and 100 earthen monuments.
After prospering for about 250 years, the inhabitants vanished mysteriously around
1300 A.D. The remnants of the city (which can be viewed at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site near Collinsville, Illinois) have been subject to mythologizing and speculation since white settlers first came to the area. But fresh research, collected in a new book, Revealing Greater Cahokia, North America’s First Native City, is bringing the city to life in a way that its authors hope will change how the world envisions North America’s native societies.
The book, co-edited by archaeologist Thomas Emerson, is the result of excavations and studies carried out between 2008 and 2018, when archaeologists found 1,500 native structures and more than a million artifacts, including flint, copper and stone tools. Emerson calls the
discovery a “game changer.”
The evidence suggests that residents ate food they had hunted and gathered, though much of it they grew themselves. In fact, the arrival of cornbased agriculture might have been a key to the city’s success. Remnants of plants scraped from coffee mug–like clay beakers suggest the city’s dwellers indulged in a stimulant made from holly tea. It’s possible the city was organized by religious beliefs. Initially, the religion seems to have centered on world renewal and fertility, evolving later to a faith symbolized by warrior and sun motifs. “People immigrated to this new city from far and wide, probably perceiving it to have been blessed by spiritual forces,” says coauthor Timothy Pauketat, professor of anthropology and medieval studies at the University of Illinois.
By examining the teeth of dozens of people who were buried in the city, archaeologists concluded that at least a fifth of inhabitants were immigrants. Many objects were created using resources not available in the region, indicating visitors to Cahokia likely arrived bearing gifts. (Among the items found: ocean shells and shark teeth.) “Cahokia comes into existence specifically because it had the ability to attract immigrants throughout its 300-year history,” says Emerson of a pattern repeated in successful civilizations around the world.
During its heyday, between 1050 and 1200 A.D., the population would have equaled that of many European cities of the day. But then it was abruptly abandoned, and nobody knows why. Possible reasons, says Emerson, include economic failure and environmental factors, like floods, droughts or over-exploitation of resources. But he suspects social and political fragmentation were to blame, with the multiethnic residents dispersing across what is now the United States.
Although remnants of moundbuilding cities can be found across the Southeast, Emerson says the archaeologists’ decade of digging and detective work settles any questions about the scope and significance of this site, which conclusively demonstrate that a massive city in the middle of the U.S. existed in the 11th century A.D. “These findings,” he says, “should forever put to rest those scholars who have downsized Greater Cahokia.”