January 23, 2013 Lost City of Cahokia

[Sundae]

Originally Posted by CaliforniaMama

When do we move on? We can't preserve every bit of land that had been inhabited by other people or we'd never have any place to live.

You don't live on a little island.
Foot once told me that we'd run out of oil to make plastic bottles far sooner than we'd run out of space to bury them. That spoke to me about the huge expanse of America.

You can save some space to preserve history if you can spare some to bury stuff that could be recycled.

Of course I suggest you learn from us. Preserve some, but also knock down beautiful places and build execrations next to them. I suppose it provides architects a cheeky smile to see the juxtaposition. Unless they are all inducted into a secret "who can bulid the ugliest building" contest. And trust me, I live in a town blighted by the '60s. And pretty much every decade from since then. Oh wait. I mean DON'T learn from us.

Our history is ten-a-penny, so we're casual about it. But in odd woods and fields or preserved in publicly accessible basements of office blocks (our cities cities have layer upon of layer of history) and in strange corners of the country, we still have the past. It anchors you.

[ZenGum]

Archeological finds are not such a problem here, although burial sites have to be respected.

The fun thing here is that all the really juicy mineral deposits are usually directly under the really important sacred sites. Like, sacred to people living today. This can cause tension.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Easy, just kill the people it's sacred to... or allow them to build casinos.

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by SPUCK

sigh - kiss the bridge goodbye.

They can move the location of the bridge, they can't move the location of the city.

Originally Posted by DanaC

more higgledypiggledy

New user title.

[Diaphone Jim]

There are many more astonishing Native American things to find. And further in the past than we expect.

With any luck we will find the bridge they used across the Mississippi and we won't have to build a new one.

[footfootfoot]

I went back to Cahokia
But my city was gone
There was no train station
There was no downtown
South Howard had disappeared
All my favorite places
My city had been pulled down
Reduced to parking spaces
A, o, way to go Cahokia

Well I went back to Cahokia
But my family was gone
I stood on the back porch
There was nobody home
I was stunned and amazed
My childhood memories
Slowly swirled past
Like the wind through the trees
A, o, oh way to go Cahokia

I went back to Cahokia
But my pretty countryside
Had been paved down the middle
By a government that had no pride
The farms of Cahokia
Had been replaced by shopping malls
And Muzak filled the air
From Seneca to Cuyahoga falls
Said, a, o, oh way to go Cahokia

[Griff]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

They've know it was there for a long time, part of a chain of "urban" centers stretching as far as Florida. Being off limits to amateurs, and not much chance of finding treasure, it's left to the government to explore. What the proposed bridge brought was the money and mandate to dig into the details of the layout and construction.

One of my old fencing buddies is an archeologist who does these kinds of digs. It is interesting that the money to do the work is never there until a bridge, mall, or gas pipeline comes through. Projects around here have the advantage of undeveloped space to shift to. I imagine the Mississippi bridge is pretty site specific. Everything points to a much higher population density than previously thought, so I guess we have more history in America than we think.

[xoxoxoBruce]

The number of natives in the western hemisphere circa 1492 seems to be about 40 million. Working back the 25,000 years or so there seems to have been natives, it's easy to come up with maybe 100 million have lived (and left trash behind) in the Americas.

Of course most of their trash was organic, therefore long gone, but of the more durable stuff of metal/stone/bone/clay, I'd guess we haven't seen most of it.

As I understand it the Poplar St Bridge carries I-70, I-64, I-55, and sundry traffic over the river into St Louis. The new bridge will carry a rerouted I-70 over the river further north entering St Louis at Cass St. This is quite a ways from the Cahokia Mounds Park which is already penned in by I-70, I-55, I-64, I-255 and suburbia, so I don't see how this project affects that. If they're saying the Cahokia site should be much bigger, the new bridge is the least of their problems.
Methinks the Mail is hyperboling.

[Trilby]

Originally Posted by Griff

Everything points to a much higher population density than previously thought, so I guess we have more history in America than we think.

Like what Lisa said to her mother when Marge 'discovered' the internet: "I'm proud of you, mom. You're like Christopher Columbus. You discovered something millions of people knew about before you."

[ZenGum]

The number of natives in the western hemisphere circa 1492 seems to be about 40 million. Working back the 25,000 years or so there seems to have been natives, it's easy to come up with maybe 100 million have lived (and left trash behind) in the Americas.

These numbers seemed high to me, so I had to go and look stuff up.
The 25,000 years I'll go along with, although it's not really certain. There's quite a puzzle about the early migration to the Americas.

But 40,000,000 in 1492? That a HECK of a lot. And it would project backwards over just a few generations to well over the 100 million all time tally you wrote. Did you mean 4 million?

[Griff]

Wiki has a good article with estimates and discussion of the difficulty of fixing a solid number.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populat...f_the_Americas

There are a lot of known sites and the mound builders did a lot of work...

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by ZenGum

These numbers seemed high to me, so I had to go and look stuff up.
The 25,000 years I'll go along with, although it's not really certain. There's quite a puzzle about the early migration to the Americas.

But 40,000,000 in 1492? That a HECK of a lot. And it would project backwards over just a few generations to well over the 100 million all time tally you wrote. Did you mean 4 million?

No, 40 million, from here.
You can see by the chart there have been a number of scholars weigh in on this and it seems to have come back to 40 million in the latest thinking. Remember this isn't the US, this is the Americas, two continents.

Assuming the 25,000 years holds up, and looking at the recent excavations in central and south america, show the Inca 9-16 million, Maya 2 million, Aztec 25 million, populations that had several boom/bust cycles. Those are just the major groups. There's a whole lot of generations in 25K years, and would add up to a shitload of people, methinks over 100 million.

You can't sacrifice 84,000 people in four days, to dedicate the temple, unless you have a surplus.

[SPUCK]

Yeah I was just gong to say, there'd have been a bucket load more of them if they hadn't sacrificed so many.

Didn't realize it was THAT many.
What a bunch of dorks.