Culture · c. 1050–1350 CE
Cahokia, city of the Mississippians
Cahokia Mounds, Illinois (USA)
Around 1050 a sudden building boom beside the Mississippi, across the river from today's St. Louis, created Cahokia, the dominant centre of the maize-farming Mississippian culture.
At its peak around 1100 it held perhaps 10,000–20,000 people, and its Monks Mound, about 30 m high and 290 m long, is the largest earthen mound north of Mexico. The city declined over the following centuries and was abandoned by about 1350.
Why it mattered
Cahokia was the largest and most complex settlement north of the great cities of Mexico, showing that North America had its own urban societies long before Europeans arrived.
Related
- The world in 1000: The Millennium Turns chapter
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