Cahokia
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Cahokia
Archaeologists have found evidence dating from around 8000 BC of a Paleo-Indian culture in southern Illinois named Cahokia (meaning "wild geese"). The Cahokia culture was the last major prehistoric cultural development in North America, lasting from about AD 800 to the time of the arrival of the first European explorers. It spread over a great area of the Southeast and the mid-continent, in the river valleys of what are now the states of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, with scattered extensions northward into Wisconsin and Minnesota and westward into the Great Plains. The Mississippian people, whose religious center was Cahokia in southwestern Illinois, was the largest pre-Columbian (around AD 1300) community north of Mexico in the Mississippi floodplain. Why did this community prosper when other communities were just holding on? What did Cahokia do differently that made the culture so successful? First, researching the environment the culture lived in and the background of where the people came from will help to understand the culture more in-depth. The investigation of the culture and its aspects will give the answer to why the culture could strive so high.
"The city of Cahokia is the focal point of what is known as the American Bottoms, the broad alluvial valley of the Mississippi River just south of the confluence of the Missouri, Illinois and Mississippi Rivers" (Deeter 2003). This area is considered to be one of the most fertile agricultural zones in North America...