Another place worth sharing on YouTube. A place you don't have to go too far to visit of great historic or archeological significance. Just take a drive into southern Illinois.
Via Popular Science:
Just a river’s crossing away from St. Louis, Missouri, rests an ancient and mysterious anthropological site that few Americans know of. Scholars still discuss the potential reasons for the demise of Cahokia, a massive settlement that may have housed as many as 20,000 people by 1050 A.D. The metropolis, which sits in the fertile floodplain of the Mississippi River Valley that’s now western Illinois, was made up of towering, handmade earthen mounds, the largest of which still exists at the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site. While there are a lot of unknowns when it comes to this ancient civilization, including why it disappeared, remains have helped researchers paint a picture of what the city was like at its peak.
Ancient teeth at this site hint that it was home to a diverse group of Indigenous people. Roughly a third of the population came to Cahokia from other areas in middle America, based on the varying strontium levels in the dental fragments. The architecture is telling too: The organization of the mounds in Cahokia leads archeologists to believe this city had some level of urban planning, and was not just a collection of villages. Rulers lived on top of mounds, looking down at the structures other inhabitants lived in. Farming, hunting, logging, pottery, and weaving were all conducted inside this massive city.
The Cahokia Mounds is a state park and is in consideration for a Nat'l Park designation. Illinois is home to many great historic or natural sites that if you have the interest you can check out!
And this site is of great significance to this state's native American history.
No comments:
Post a Comment