For most of us, this is what American history looks like.
But the real history of America is down here in the dirt, and over the next half hour,
the archaeological history that we uncover is going to be the history of all of us.
Centuries before the arrival of the first Europeans, as many as 35,000 people lived
in the largest city in prehistoric America. But by 1400, that city was abandoned,
and entire civilization vanished. This is a history of our America. It's a frontier story
on the sharp edges of history. I'm Monty Dobson. Join me as I investigate what happened in this
city of mystery. Archaeology is like detective work. This could be a shovel of dirt, some rocks,
organic matter, a little bit of vegetation. But if you look closely and you know what you're
looking for, it could be the voice of the dead.
My journey took me along I-44 to St. Louis, Missouri.
From there, we flew across the Mississippi River to the site of one of the greatest mysteries
of early America. It's all down there, the houses, temples, burials of this magnificent
enigmatic city. Our job is to use all the tools in our archaeological tool kit to find out what
happened here. I'm standing in front of a hill that looks like it's a natural feature, but it
isn't. It's man-made. More than 15 million baskets of earth were moved to create a monument
that's two acres larger than the Great Pyramids at Giza. Between the 10th and the 14th century,
Monks Mound is at the center of a thriving Native American metropolis right here in the
Mississippi Bottomlands in Cahokia, Illinois. We call the people who lived here the Mississippians.
In fact, that's a name we apply to all of the people in the southeastern United States in the
Mississippian period, and it refers to the role of the Mississippi River and ultimately the other
river systems in the region in linking these peoples and places together. We know they must
have had a highly organized society, but they left no written records, so in the absence of
birth certificates, newspapers, and other sources, we can use archaeology to decode what life was
like for the Cahokians. To date, dozens of mounds have been investigated. What we have is one of
the greatest mysteries of early America. Who were these people? What were they doing here? And what
happened to them? I met with my friend Neil, who's the director of the Center for Archaeological
Research at Missouri State University, in order to learn more about the archaeology at Cahokia.
We can draw on the ethnographic record, and when you go back into the prehistoric past,
you know, you don't have people to talk to to understand what they're thinking, you know,
and their religion. All you have are, as an archaeologist, artifacts, and sometimes that evidence is
very spotty. In the places where people are living, the stuff that we leave behind in our everyday
life builds up over time. We call that stratigraphy, and as archaeologists excavate that, it's like
peeling back the layers of an onion. The further down you go, the further back in time we are.
Where's the trash pile at now? Okay, down where he's working, yeah? Fantastic.
This modern landfill in Springfield, Missouri demonstrates the way that stratigraphy builds
up over time. But instead of taking place over centuries, here, hundreds of tons of trash are
dumped every day. Think about it. The types of things that we throw away say a lot about who
we are as people. By rummaging around in the contents of this modern garbage dump here,
we're able to build up a picture of what daily life is like for the average American.
We can find information about what kind of food that we're eating for breakfast,
what brand of soft drinks we might like to have.
We find information about what we're eating for dinner,
and a little bit about the latest fashions. And inside, we can find something out about
trade networks. I'll bet Simon's Scama doesn't have to do this.
Back at the coffee house with Neil. Well, Coqui was certainly a very complex society. I mean,
it's probably the site itself alone is nine or ten times larger than anything north of the Valley
of Mexico. So it's a whole nother scale above other Mississippi in a late prehistoric phenomena
and historic as well. Part of, you could say, wet fuel, Cahokia was a major increase in
the agricultural intensification. Cahokia is the largest city in North America before the 19th
century. And for the Mississippians, maize fueled the population growth. Once you can grow more
food than you need to support yourself, you can free other people up to specialize, be creative,
and innovate. Back at the Cahokia Mounds Visitors Center, I met with Bill Eisenmanger,
who's the on-site archaeologist, to see if he could tell us more about the types of things
the Cahokians were growing. They had a variety of crops. One of the primary ones, of course,
was corn or maize and several varieties of that. But they had a lot of other crops that were very
important to them as well that had an earlier and more ancient history in the Midwest and Eastern
U.S. Things like magrass, little barley, there was squash, sunflower, lamb's quarter, and a few
other things that produced a lot of different seeds, oily and starchy seeds, which were important
in their diet. What is there a trade in that? Were they producing a surplus and moving this
around to other sites? Or do we know perhaps about how that worked? We think to some degree,
there was a surplus being produced, and this allowed them to use that surplus for trade,
as well as to feed the population that was here. And probably a lot of the outlying communities
were producing food, all these crops, and maybe a percentage of that is going to Cahokia
for the elite, the leaders to redistribute as they saw fit. Taxation.
Probably the most ideologically significant things that the Cahokians are making
are these ceremonial copper plaques. They're made from material that's mined as far away as the
Northern Great Lakes in Canada, and these plaques are being given as prestige gifts to subordinate
chiefs in other villages in the Mississippian culture area. At Cahokia, the copper workshop
was located in the area now known as Mount 34. John Kelly, senior lecturer in archaeology at
Washington University in St. Louis, has worked at Cahokia since 1969. He's currently excavating Mount
34. We knew earlier, from the earlier excavations, that there were potentially two copper workshops
that had been found underneath the mountain north edge. In 2007, we located the first evidence of
the copper working. And at that time, all we had was an area roughly a meter wide,
by two meters long, with several hundred little pieces of copper, a couple bigger pieces,
and then some tools that were left behind, hammer stone. And we discovered that there were
small pits in the floor of the house, and we suspected what the pits represented were places
that they had set wooden anvils on which to work. This is a copper sheet that was found in Missouri,
and it's probably about this big, and it's very thin. I mean, you can see the edges of it here.
It's probably less than a millimeter thin. And what we think they were doing is hammering nuggets
into thin sheets, using a hammer stone and a stone anvil, and then making a template out of wood,
and then putting the sheet on top and hammering it into the template. So these are the two biggest
pieces that we found. But all of them have been hammered very, very thin, and they've all been
cut. They all have cut edges. So what we know that they've been doing in this area is hammering it
into sheet and cutting something. Whether they were trimming the edges or whether they were
trimming out these negative spaces, like some of these negative spaces, we don't know because we
haven't found any finished pieces, but it's not a native item in this area. What's the
likely source of what we've been finding? Michigan. We're starting to build up a picture of a major
prehistoric city across the river from what is now St. Louis with trade networks that stretch
from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada. The people there are exporting agricultural surplus in
exchange for prestige items that the great son or chief can give out as gifts, but they're gifts
with some strings attached. It's a bit like your local mafia boss giving your brother-in-law a job.
Another thing too that we believe is being produced here at Cahokia are a lot of these
figurines made up of a reddish-colored stone. These figurines are expressions of the Cahokian
cosmos. They're depictions of its gods, goddesses, and warriors. And we see these figurines in many
places throughout the southeastern U.S. especially into Oklahoma, Tennessee, Arkansas, and other
places. And we think perhaps the message of Cahokia, maybe even a new religion or a way of looking at
religion that's being transmitted, and these are probably carried as symbols of this religion.
Religion has been a major component of every human society since before Fred Flintstone
and his cronies invented fire. By studying the religious practices of people, we can gain access
to a window into their view of the cosmos. Meanwhile, the Cahokians worship the sun god.
They believe that the world was made of three parts, an upper realm where the sun god lived,
a middle realm where man lived, and an underworld. And right here, high atop Monk's Mount, the great
chief occupied a special place between god and man. People who've had political power probably
also had religious sway over the populace too. They served both functions more or less, and we
know that the great chief was considered the son of the sun. In the Cahokian universe, gender
distinctions are less important than birthright, and the great sun could be either male or female.
It was that birthright that gave you the privileges of power.
Symbols of authority are all around us, and we live in the shadow of political power every day.
Combine the control of religious power and political authority, and you have a potent cocktail indeed.
We're starting to build up a picture of how the great sun used trade and gift giving to their
advantage in order to gain power. But why are the mounds arranged this way? Who organized the plan,
and why? Back at Mount 34, I turned to John Kelly for the answer. They look at life, they look at
the way in which the season cycle, and so things are born again. For example, probably what created
this mound was the building that was here before the mound was built, and that was the important
thing. What we do know is that they totally raised anything that was with that structure.
It was taken off the top and pushed over the side, and so we have good evidence of that.
I mean, that's where we find the pieces of engraved shelf, that's where we find
certain kinds of arrow points, other kind of clubs that just totally smash.
And then they bury it, they cap it off, and then it's no longer used.
So we have an idea of how the smaller mounds came about, but what about Monk's Mound,
that enormous public works project in the middle of Cahokia?
So when you see a mound like Monk's Mound, you know, it's got 20 cubic million cubic feet of
earth in it. That dirt had to be dug up, had to be by some people, had to be carried by others,
had to be shaped by others. So there's got to be someone who's in charge of all that organizing
and scheduling all that kind of activity. This kind of extensive public works project
would be paid for by a combination of slave and corvy labor. Corvy labor is similar to the kind
of labor a medieval serf would pay their landlord by working the fields. Plus the Grand Plaza,
which is about 40 acres in the middle of our site here, and we find that's artificially filled
and level to make a prepared platform for people to gather on and perform rituals and ceremonies
and other kinds of public activities. So there's a lot of things that infer a very structured
type of social organization at this site. Another important piece of Cahokia's ideological
landscape is Woodhenge. Woodhenge is a calendar device, a lot like Stonehenge in England.
In reading the archaeology of Cahokia, we can see that the site reflects careful planning,
especially in the relationship between Monk's Mound and Woodhenge. The chief's house, a top
Monk's Mound, is aligned with Woodhenge so that twice a year on the equinoxes, it looks like the
sun rises and sets out of the chief's class. Social class, that is. Archaeologists can read
social distinctions in a number of ways. Food, wealth, burial, all of these things are indicators
of status, but it's proximity to power that speaks loudest of all. Other things such as burial
can tell us about social class. Elaborate burials can tell us about the social status of the deceased,
our friend Birdman here is an excellent example of a high status burial.
While his shell bed might not make a comfy eternal resting place, it tells us an awful lot
about his social status. His funeral bed is made up of 20,000 shell beads and the shells are not
from here, but come from the Gulf of Mexico. That distance makes them expensive and hard to get.
And by throwing them away forever with the dead, our friend and his family were telling us something
about how wealthy and how powerful they were. That it had become important for them to do so
may tell us something about how and why Cahokia ended. So we're beginning to build up a picture
of what life was like in Cahokia 600 to 1,000 years ago. We've learned something of the average
person, how they fed themselves, who and what they worshiped, and how they live their daily lives.
At its height, Cahokia was ruled over by a succession of powerful chiefs who act as
intermediaries between the gods and man. In about 1150 AD, Cahokia was the most powerful
city in the Mississippian world. Farmers produced abundant crops, the rivers and surrounding lands
supplied meat and fish, and Cahokian potters, copper workers and stone workers produced stunning
works of the highest artistic expression. Life was good for the average Cahokian, but not for
everyone who lived there. In part, this is because they relied on the slave mode of production,
and the Cahokians couldn't have known it, but their world was about to fall apart.
Sometime around 1150, the Cahokians built a massive defensive wall around their city.
I'm standing in front of a reconstructed section that demonstrates what the upright timbers would
have looked like with their plaster covering. This is also the same time that the outlying
villages are being abandoned. It could be that the Cahokians were undone by a combination of
greed and warfare. They wouldn't be the first society to end that way. Others have argued
for a much more insidious end. We know that the Cahokians practiced human sacrifice and slavery,
and it could be that in the end, this was simply unsustainable.
It's relatively quickly, but it's a gradual process. It starts in the early 1200s or so.
We start to see a diminished population here, and so people are beginning to disperse,
but it's still more ritual activity. It's more like a ceremonial center and less of a population
center, but by the mid-1300s, the site had been essentially abandoned.
By 1400, the city is abandoned. It's great walls, magnificent homes, a rotting ruin.
What caused the demise and collapse of this city is a question that still perplexes archaeologists.
One possibility is suggested by the landscape itself. The sheer size and complexity of the city
placed an unsustainable drain on the natural resources of the surrounding environment,
and increased competition for the remaining resources may have led to warfare.
Besides the Cahokia site here, you could double that population for all the surrounding sites
that were part of this bigger system. Sort of catchment area. Right, and then you're cutting
down all the trees for firewood, for building houses, stockade walls, other types of things
for thousands of people for hundreds of years. You can cut down the forest, you're cutting down
habitats that you rely on, certain plants and animals rely on. You're competing more for what's
left, so there's more conflict or warfare, so it's kind of this domino effect. Society dependent
on the riches of its agriculture would be hard-pressed to survive a prolonged drought,
and there's good evidence for droughts in the 12th and 13th centuries.
Alternately, famine due to excessively cold winters might have been the cause,
and we know that this was a period of a little ice age throughout the world.
So when you start having shortages of things, you start having problems with production. This is
when you start having social unrest, and this kind of domino effect leads to the eventual demise of
Cahokia. It's not unlike a post-industrial city that's begun to exhaust its intellectual and
industrial capacity. In the case of modern cities, their collapse is often the result of more than
one factor, general decay, unemployment, more people than work, and often corrupt leadership.
It's a lot like what might have happened to Cahokia. But to me, some combination of all of these
factors is probably where the answer lies. Famine, disease, degradation of natural resources,
warfare—any one of these is enough to erode the power of the Great Chief.
The Great Sun occupied a place in the Cahokian cosmos between man and God, and it was from
this position that they drew their strength, power, and right to rule. If the Great Sun could no
longer intervene with the gods and bring victory in battle or ensure a good harvest, then they were
unnecessary. Whatever the cause, it's a compelling and fascinating mystery that archaeologists are
still unraveling. I'm Monty Dobson, urging you to stay curious and keep learning about the world
around you. Thank you for joining me.
Thank you.
Thank you.
