How Cahokia Was Mighty :: essays research papers

North of Mexico, the pre-Colombian settlement of Cahokia was the most prestigious and intricateNative American community in North America. A society of mound builders, which enduredfrom about 9500 B.C. to 1400 A.D., they set up a gigantic trading center complete with their owntypes of governing bodies, architecture, religion, sophisticated farming, and topical anaesthetic specialties. Inone way or another, the Cahokian culture touched level the far reaches of the present day UnitedStates, from the Gulf Coast to the smashing Lakes, from the Atlantic coast to Oklahoma, altogether fromits central location in the Mississippi region. It is for these reasons that Cahokia was a superiorpower in the sensitive man before the Europeans came, and even now, can be considered importantand mighty. The first agent 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 asb urial ground. These mounds, 120 in come in, were built on an area exceptional five square miles,and usually were between six and twelve feet in height. 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. What is even mightier about thismound, which happens to be the largest pre-historic earthen structure in the New World, is thatit took over 19 million hours of labor to complete, and that it was done all by hand. The 22million cubic feet of dirt it took to form the mound, was deposited in stages from about 900 to1200 A.D.. The greatness that is Monks mound was probably used for governing, ceremonies,and for the Cahokian leaders accompaniment spaces and burial plots. Another remarkable mound inCahokia, simply called muckle 72, was designed by the Cahokians so that one end of it faced the upgrade solarise of the winter solstice, and the opposite end faced toward the setting sun of the summersolstice. An additional type of architecture in the Cahokia realm that interest the excavatorswho found its remnants, are wood henges. Labeled for a twin to Englands Stone-henge,the wood henges are several circles with different diameters of hundreds of feet and are make upof posts at regular intervals. 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). It is believed that the posts attach lunar