How Cahokia Was Mighty :: essays research papers

North of Mexico, the pre-Colombian settlement of Cahokia was the most influential and intricateNative Ameri tush community in North America. A society of agglomerate builders, which enduredfrom rough 9500 B.C. to 1400 A.D., they set up a massive trading center pinpoint with their own parts of governing bodies, architecture, religion, sophisticated farming, and local specialties. Inone modal value or another, the Cahokian culture touched even the far reaches of the present day UnitedStates, from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes, from the Atlantic coast to okeh, all fromits central location in the Mississippi region. It is for these reasons that Cahokia was a excellentpower in the New World before the Europeans came, and even now, can be considered importantand mighty. The first factor that indicates the might of the Cahokian culture is the great(p) structures ofearth that they created for public buildings, residences of the nobility, religious purposes, and asburial ground. Th ese mounds, 120 in number, were built on an atomic number 18a exceeding five squ be miles,and ordinarily were between six and twelve feet in height. The largest mound however, namedMonks mound for the resolution of Trappist monks who later tried colonize atop the construction,covers today 14 estate of the realm 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 one thousand 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 living spaces and burial plots. Another curious mound inCahokia, simply called Mound 72, was designed by the Cahokians so that one end of it faced therising sun of the winter solstice, and the oppositeness end faced toward the setting sun of the summersolstice. An additional type of architecture in the Cahokia realm that fascinated the excavatorswho found its remnants, are wood henges. Labeled for a likeness to Englands Stone-henge,the wood henges are several readinesss with different diameters of hundreds of feet and are made upof posts at stock 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 marked lunar