How Cahokia Was Mighty
North of Mexico, the pre-Colombian settlement of Cahokia was the most influential andintricate Native American community in North America. A society of mound builders, whichendured from about 9500 B.C. to 1400 A.D., they set up a massive trading center complete withtheir own types of governing bodies, architecture, religion, sophisticated farming, and localspecialties. In one way or another, the Cahokian culture touched even the far reaches of thepresent day United States, " from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes, from the Atlantic coast toOklahoma", all from its central location in the Mississippi region. It is for these reasons thatCahokia was a superior power in the New World before the Europeans came, and even now, canbe considered important and mighty. The first factor that indicates the might of the Cahokian culture is the great structures ofearth that they created for public buildings, residences of the nobility, religious purposes, and asburial ground. These mounds, 120 in number, were built on an area exceeding five squa
Also, as well as there being imported productsin Cahokia, there are also Cahokian products and imitations of Cahokian products found onNative American sites all over the United States. Like any great city has suburbs,Cahokia had satellite settlements which surrounded it. What is so amazing about them is that the number of posts in eachcircle are in multiples of 12 (24, 36, 48, 60, and 72). Another remarkable mound inCahokia, simply called Mound 72, was designed by the Cahokians so that one end of it faced therising sun of the winter solstice, and the opposite end faced toward the setting sun of the summersolstice. The largest mound however, namedMonks mound for the colony of Trappist monks who later tried colonize atop the construction,covers today 14 acres at the base and rises 100 feet in height. There are several ideas of why this happened, but nothing has beenproved. The greatness that is Monks mound was probably used for governing, ceremonies,and for the Cahokian leaders' living spaces and burial plots. Even so, there are things that have transcended the era of the Cahokian people, such asartifacts, bones, and of course the mounds, that aide our imaginations in visualizing the majestyof what was mighty Cahokia. Around this "Grand Plaza", was a stockade built of 20,000 logs forprotection. re miles,and usually were between six and twelve feet in height. A further detail that proves Cahokia's eminence is most obviously the actual size andcomplex set-up of the settlement. It is believed that the posts marked lunarcycles and other celestial arrangements. Examples of this include, but are not limited to, copper from Lake Superior, mica from theEast, and shells from the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. The 22million cubic feet of dirt it took to form the mound, was deposited in stages from about 900 to1200 A.
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