Cahokia: the lost megalopolis where “wild parties” were held for days

Apiádense from the organizers of the wild festivals of Cahokia. A thousand years ago, this colony of Mississippian culture, located near the modern American city of St. Louis, Missouri, was famous for its festivities, it went on for days.

Crowds filled the space in the squares, while Caffeinated drinks were passed from hand to hand. People were shouting their bets as the athletes threw spears and stones. The Cahokiens celebrated wildly: after digging in their old rubbish pits, Archaeologists found 2000 deer carcasses from one social party. The logistics must have been incredible.

Things are calmer these days in Cahokia, now a serene place under the protection of Unesco. But the towering mounds of earth allude to the legacy of the largest pre-Columbian city in northern Mexico.

It was a cosmopolitan site of language, art and spirituality. The population of Cahokia could have reached 30,000 people at its peak in 1050; thus making it larger than it was, at that time, Paris.

But it’s what she didn’t have that makes Cahokia surprising, she writes Annalee newitz in his recent book Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age (“Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age”). The massive city lacked a permanent market, overturning the old assumption that commerce is the backbone of urbanization.

“Cahokia was truly a cultural center more than a shopping center. It always stuns me. I always wonder: where did they trade?who was making money? Newitz says. “The answer is no. That’s not what they built this space for.”

Newitz is not the only one to be surprised. Assumptions that commerce is the key to city life have shaped a Western view of the past, says archaeologist Timothy Pauketat, that Cahokia has studied for decades. “Absolutely is a bias that influenced in previous archaeologists, ”he explains.

While excavating cities in Mesopotamia, researchers found evidence that trade was the organizing principle of their development and then used the same criteria in ancient cities around the world.

“People thought that this must be the basis of all primitive cities. It took generations to look for this stuff everywhere, ”Pauketat said. They did not find him in Cahokia, which Pauketat said could have been designed as a space to build a bridge between the world of the living and the dead.

For many cultures with roots in ancient Cahokia, “Water is this barrier between the world of the living and the world of the dead”, He described. Stretching across a landscape mingling solid earth and swamp, Cahokia may have served as a kind of spiritual crossroads.

“It’s a city built between water and dry land,” says Pauketat. Living residents settled in the driest places, while burial sites were intended for the wettest places. Scans of the site revealed roadways connecting the “neighborhoods” of the living and the dead, the physical paths that literally connected the realms.

And if living on the edge of the two worlds seems quite dark, the Cahokiens seem to have envisioned their hometown as a party place.. In Newitz’s book, the author explained that the planners of Cahokia created structures and public spaces dedicated exclusively to mass gatherings, places where people were enthusiastic about the joy of collective experiences.

The most spectacular of everything was the large 20 hectare square, where 10,000 or more people could gather for celebrations in an area surrounded by earthen pyramids. “It is difficult to imagine the intensity, the grandeur, the multidimensionality of an event like this”, manifiesta Pauketat.

For days, food and drink were brought to the city, where an army of cooks fed the people who arrived for the festivities. The Stocks of wild game, berries, fruits and vegetables they became shared parts.

Visitors slept in temporary homes or friends’ homes and headed to the plaza for balls, blessings, and other events. On the square, the vibrant energy of the crowd turned into a collective roar when viewers bet on episodes of chunkey.

It is a game which consisted of rolling a disc by the participant of stone by the smooth surface of the ground. Intensely focused, hundreds of athletes threw their spears even as the stone bounced and rolled again.

The winner was the one whose spear stuck closest to the stone, like a huge set of bowls but with deadly projectiles.

The towering posts that lined the main square could have provided another display of athletic grace, Pauketat said. The archaeologist imagines that the men climbed the poles or tied themselves to perform dances in the air, a ritual that is still practiced in some Mayan communities in Mesoamerica.

“During the Mesoamerican ceremony, these tall and tall cypress stakes are placed and four men who disguise themselves as birds and fly,” he explained. “We have these messages in Cahokia.” Bracelets and ornaments of snails, feathers and fine leather were among the most elaborate costumes for such events, the archaeologist explained.

The Cahokiens loved red, white and black. People adorned their hair with elaborate bows, headgear and Mohawk feathers. Tattoos were also present on some bodies and faces. At the end of the holidays, The Cahokians dumped their waste into wells that now serve as accounts of what they ate and drank together.

Ten years ago, analysis of broken ceramic vessels that archaeologists found in Cahokia revealed biomarkers for a species of drink, known as yaupon, who is the only one caffeine plant native to North America.

The Cahokiens, it seems, kept the festivities in part to gain attention. And since the native range of yaupon it is located hundreds of kilometers from the site of the city, we know that they made a significant effort to obtain it. This, in turn, may have consolidated the use of plants in ritual life.

“Part of their value lies in the difficulty of acquiring them,” said the anthropologist Patricia crown, who led the analysis of the broken ceramic vessels. “You had to have the connections to be able to get the substance if it was really important to the religious system,” he added.

Today, the site of ancient Cahokia is preserved under the name of Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, a Unesco World Heritage site where archaeological research is carried out. Seventy of the original mounds are protected and a long staircase leads to the top of the Monks Mound pyramid, overlooking the main square.

With audio guides, visitors walk a 10 km trail It winds through meadows, forests and wetlands. Again, as in ancient times, a constellation of great poles aligns with the rising sun to measure the passage of the seasons.

The enclave’s interpretation center presents scenes of life recreated, as well as exhibitions of stone and ceramic tools molded by skillful hands of Cahokian. Modern life isn’t far away: Cahokia is framed on an expanse of highways and suburbs in the United States.

But it wasn’t modern development that ended Cahokia’s exciting story. With time, the inhabitants quite simply they chose to leave townSeemingly driven by a combination of environmental and human factors, a changing climate that has crippled agriculture, violence or disastrous floods.

Around 1400, the squares and mounds were desolate. When Europeans first encountered the remarkable Cahokia Mounds, they saw a lost civilization, Newitz explains in his book.

They wondered if distant people had built Cahokia and then abandoned it, taking with them the brilliant culture and sophistication that once thrived in the soil of the Mississippi lowlands, where the land is enriched by flooding rivers.

But the people of Cahokia, of course, have not disappeared. They just went there and with them the influence of Cahokia moved to distant places, where some of his most beloved hobbies are celebrated to this day.

the yaupon who loved to drink is seeing a comeback as a sustainable local tea that can be harvested in the forest. the chunkey, Cahokia’s favorite game, hasn’t disappeared either.

In some indigenous communities, it has attracted a new generation of young athletes and is part of the Cherokee community play list, alongside the stickball and blowpipes.

But there is more to it. Cahokiens loved to chill out with a good barbecue and sporting events– a combination that, Newitz notes, is remarkably familiar to almost all Americans today. “We celebrate this way all over the United States,” he said. They “fit perfectly into the history” of the country.

BBC Mundo