The United States Lost Ancient Megacity of Cahokia: A Historical Rewrite (Page 2 ) | April 25, 2025

It’s hard to capture the intensity, the grandeur, the multi-dimensionality of an event like that,” Pauketat said. For days, food and drink would be carried into the city, where a phalanx of cooks fed people arriving for the festivities. Stockpiles of wild game, berries, fruits and vegetables became shared feasts. Visitors would sleep in temporary housing or the homes of friends, heading to the plaza for dances, blessings and other events.

Lost Ancient Megacity of Cahokia
On the plaza, the crowd’s buzzing energy turned to a collective roar when spectators bet on bouts of chunkey. The game kicked off when a player rolled a stone disk across the smooth surface of the ground. Taut with focus, hundreds of athletes hurled their spears even as the stone still bounced and rolled. The winner was the one whose spear stuck nearest to the chunkey stone like a massive game of bocce played with deadly projectiles. Towering poles lining the Grand Plaza may have provided another spectacle of athletic grace, Pauketat said. He imagines men may have climbed the poles or tied themselves in for soaring, airborne dances, a ritual still practised in some Maya parts of Mesoamerica. “In the Mesoamerican ceremony, you have these big, tall cypress poles put in, and four guys who dress up as bird men and fly around those poles,” he said. “We’ve got those poles at Cahokia.”

Shell beads, feathers and fine leather caught the sunlight as everyone donned their most elaborate costumes for such events, Pauketat explained. Cahokians loved a palette of red, white and black; people styled their hair into elaborate buns, mohawks and plumes. Tattoos adorned some bodies and faces. When the parties ended, Cahokians swept waste into pits that now serve as accounts of what the citizens ate and drank together. A decade ago, an analysis of pottery beakers archaeologists found at Cahokia revealed biomarkers for a species of holly, known as yaupon, which is the only caffeinated plant native to North America. Cahokians, it seems, kept the festivities going in part by catching a buzz. And since the native range of yaupon is hundreds of miles from the city site, we know they put significant effort into obtaining it.

Lost Ancient Megacity of Cahokia
That, in turn, may have cemented the plants’ place in ritual life. “Part of their value is in the difficulty of acquiring them,” said anthropologist Patricia Crown, who led the analysis of the beakers. “You had to have the networks to be able to get the substance if it was really important to your religious system. Today, the site of ancient Cahokia is preserved as Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, a Unesco World Heritage Site where archaeological work is ongoing. Seventy of the original mounds are protected there, and a long staircase leads to the summit of Monks Mound, with views across the Grand Plaza. Toting audio guides, visitors walk a 10km path winding through grassland, forest and wetlands.
SEE NEXT PAGE

Advertisement: