Cahokia Civilization

As Indian groups started to settle in the Mississippi floodplain, their cultures and political systems began to intertwine, creating a complex sociopolitical structure (Page, 70). The largest polity to arise out of this area, known as the American Bottom, was Cahokia. At its height, it resembled a city, extending over five square miles, mounds and structures that towered over smaller dwellings, and a population, that some believe to have been the largest, north of Mexico, for its time (Page, 70). Estimates predict several thousand lived at the site of Cahokia, many of them elites, whose particular talents or skills, earned them the privileged title (Pauketat). Beyond its boundaries were smaller groups and

a. Cahokia was a Mississippian settlement located in modern-day Illinois, which was home to around 25,000 people at its peak

The Cahokia Indians were settled near modern-day St. Louis, Missouri close to the Mississippi River. Some archaeologist believe that the Cahokia once had 20,000 Natives and over 100 mounds in their village. The reason they believe in these outstanding growth in people was the land around them. Situated with land with great

Many of the local villages shared in the same customs as the Cahokians, because of the same beliefs one could easily see a centralized city forming. The construction of modern developments, makes it difficult to know what Cahokia was like at its height. Because a modern highway system is now in the same spot of Cahokia, archeologists often have trouble doing work. Though learning about the scope of Cahokia may be difficult, archaeology research can still show us many things, one of which was the idea of outdoor games. Games played a very important role in the social

The time when iron was beginning to be used primarily for making tools is referred to as the Iron Age.

"Man corn", warfare and atlatls were not the only interesting aspects of the Anasazi culture. The history and lifestyles of the Ancestral Puebloans may have contributed to their mysterious disappearance. Their societies were more complex than most humans realize.

Cahokia is located near St. Louis and constructed numerous mounds. There were three major types of mounds found at Cahokia: platform, conical and ridge-top. One mound, called Monks Mound was enormous, it stood 100 ft. high and covered 16 acres. It is thought that this mound would have required many workers with mound experts supervising and took about 370,000 days to build (Fagan 2005: 472). Cahokia made improvements in agriculture through intercropping, and built a great plaza used for games and ceremonials that was the size of 35 football fields. Large public feasts were held at Cahokia. There are signs of people with a higher social status seen in where they lived and how they were buried. (Fagan 2005: 475). Mound 72 has the burial of a high-status male on a platform of 20,000 shell beads, with 800 arrowheads, copper and mica sheets, and 15 polished stone disks (Fagan 2005: 475). Cahokia had a large population of over 10,000 people and a three tier chiefdom. Moundville was occupied AD 1050 – 1450 and is located west-central Alabama. It had a large central plaza, a protective palisade, large mounds with numerous other earthworks, and over 3,000

Small communities in southern Mesopotamia evolved to one of the earliest states due to environmental changes that occurred between the Ubaid and Uruk periods. These environmental changes such as the creation of Arabo-Persian Gulf increased population in certain regions, which in turn increased competition, warfare, and optimal settings for trade. All this lead to some of the earliest states being formed in Southern Mesopotamia.

The Cahokia lived in temples and teepees. I know teepees were a common place to live in back then, but I never knew that people could live in a temple. I thought temples were a place where people did religious things like praying. I feel like I’ve heard of the Cahokia people, but I know nothing about them. It was interesting that their dictator who they called “The Great Sun” would howl at the top of the temple every morning to determine whether it was morning or not. I wonder why the sun meant so much to them. They had a sun god and invented poles that aligned with the sun at the equinox and solstice.

Long before Europeans explored North America, a group of people now known as The Ancestral Puebloans, migrated throughout the four corners region and finally settled in Mesa Verde. For more than 700 years they and their descendants lived and flourished, advancing their build technologies, and material usage. Eventually achieving a clear understanding of their environment, its changing climates, they manipulating their buildings to take advantage of the natural occurrences their communities peeked. Being simple worshippers and having respect for nature their creations left little negative impact on it relative to others of their time. Once reaching their communal peak they suddenly migrated away and disappeared, still today scientist struggle

The largess of Monk’s Mound showed that Cahokia was powerful and consisted of a lot of inhabitants, which most likely, was foreboding to enemies. Monk’s mound is speculated to have been used for ritual; structures could have been built on the flat terraces that could have served as places of worship or sacrifce. This mound could have also been used for the powerful leaders in the society, a place for them to be seen by society at all times, be a constant presence in people’s lives. However, as Glenn Hodges (2011) states, “ we do not know if Cahokia had a single leader, we don’t even know what this place was called, the name Cahokia is borrowed from a tribe that lived nearby in the 1600s, or do we know what the people who lived here called themselves.” Overall, the knowledge and the data collected at Monk’s Mound are meager, and do not provide much insight into the largest human-made structure of the Mississippian

A walled city with many three story roofs called pueblos was built by the Anasazi. Kivas were two large circular chambers and community religious functions were carried out here. Hides or cotton cloth are what clothes were made from. Pueblo Bonito had hundreds of compounds that housed thousands of

The Cahokia Mounds characterized Mississippian culture and environment from around 600 to 1400 CE. They were situated directly across the Mississippi river and were basically large human made earthen mounds. It was these large human made mounds of “packed earth” that impacted the social structure of the eastern woodland peoples in a profound way. These mounds were situated right next to large (around fifty acres) rectangular plazas. Small communities also filled the spaces all around the mounds. Above all the mounds were platforms to perform rituals and were also built to cover

The culture of which the city was the fountainhead, and which overspread the southeastern U.S., we call Mississippian. That portion of the city now owned by the state of Illinois to protect it from real estate developers. It was called the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site.The city 's thatched wooden houses had hard-packed clay around them; even the mounds may have been covered with clay rather than prairie grasses.

In the Olmec civilization, rulers exitsed whom watched over the entire civilization. These multiple rulers served as the majority of the government.