What do we actually know about Mississippi civilization?

>>3050445
mudhuts

>>3050509
You're supposed to put effort int bait.

>>3050523
>into
time to get a new keyboard soon

>>3050523
I'm not baiting

File: CahokiaMOunds-Dig-5-1030x824.jpg (189KB, 1030x824px) Image search: [Google]

189KB, 1030x824px

>>3050531
That's alright. Thanks for the bump anyway.

>>3050538
lol

>>3050445
There are no surviving written records from them (assuming they had any), and they didn't use stone to build things, so it's a hell of a lot of guesswork based on archaeology and sparse Spanish records.

File: big arse mall.jpg (70KB, 640x456px) Image search: [Google]

70KB, 640x456px

>>3050445
Last I heard about an interesting find in Cahokia, there was found to be a significant salination layer in the area. There seemed to be some debate as to whether this was a whole lot of really determined and really angry surrounding tribes salting their land, or more likely, they pulled the same stunt that nearly every third agricultural civilization does in its early years, and grew so fast that they had to fsk up their crop rotation to keep up, and effectively salted their land themselves... Eventually leading to famine, may haps combined with disease, leading to either a) mass human sacrifice, or b) abandonment.

Unlike some of those other ill fated proto civilizations, however, it seems these guys had plenty of arable land around them to grab and expand with. If they tried to, and failed, presumably whoever they were in conflict with would take over and pick up where they left off, so *shrug*.

Before the salt find, everyone always chalked it up environmental changes.

There was also some evidence of flooding found in 2015, but population decline was kinda slow for that.

Beyond that, I think all we know is that, before the decline, there was a whole lotta trade going on there. Place was more mega-mall than city. But, as there's no written records, we kinda know nadda. Unlike a lot of other tribes, they didn't even leave much artwork or carvings behind - I guess maybe they were a very practical people.

>>3050572
>There was also some evidence of flooding found in 2015, but population decline was kinda slow for that.

Could be there was repeated flooding and a flight over time, with a lot of hangers-on and resettlement each time. More and more folks just got sick of being flooded over and over again and eventually gave up. Plus, all their trading partners, which depended on, would probably stop visiting for longer and longer flood seasons.

So, potentially, like a lot of cities on the Mississippi now. At risk of alluding to Monty Python - you can only build so many castles in the swamp.

White Nordic Aryans that descended from Germanic seafaring peoples founded out, and it thrived until outsiders destroyed it and removed all traces to hide the shame of not creating civilization

>>3050652

The Mississippi is not prone to flooding so far north, and the Mound Builders occupied a huge stretch of land, it's extremely unlikely that the occasional flood would have done anything to destabilize them.

>>3050696
Might have been more prone to much more massive foods, ~800 years ago.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/131030-cahokia-native-american-flood-mystery-archaeology-pollen/
Then again, folks in Europe were having ice parties in April back then, so one would think it'd be less likely, but climate evolution be weird, yo.

>>3050707

The "Little Ice Age" was confined to Europe, the rest of the world saw a period of unusual warming instead.

>>3050572
I go to uni 20 minutes away from this place and I've never been to it. I should really check it out some time.

>>3050445
We know that the buffalo was introduced to the area only about 1,000 years before discovery. Some believe the abundance of that animal provided a better food source than what could be cultivated, so they reverted to a nomadic lifestyle

Anon already mentioned it. Salted their fields by growing too much corn on them. Food productivity decreased, societal unrest occured so they lost their place as a sedentary trade center.

Did Chaokian pyramids share any cultural origins with mesoamerican ones?

I get that pyramids are super prone to convergent evolution, so to speak, since it's a relatively simple shape that bears it's own load well, but even accounting for that, there's a lot of outward visual similarity between Cahokian or other mound builder society pyramids and those in mesoamerica that aren't shared, by, say, egyptian or mesoptimian ones.

>>3052726
No way to tell, but I suspect, given all the trading they were doing, and the extent of the various mesoamerican cultures, there was probably some contact between them, even if it was second or third hand - much as there was some contact between the first mesopotamian civilization and those in asia, north africa, and europe.

>>3050445
We know that they're dead.

File: landfill in cahokia.jpg (235KB, 900x601px) Image search: [Google]

235KB, 900x601px

>>3050572
>>3050538
The ironic thing is that about two miles away from the Cahokia Mounds, there's a similarly shaped but far larger mound that contains all the garbage from St. Louis.

>>3053325
They had corn which is native to central mexico. So probably some trading influenced them

>>3050445

They didn't leave behind any written languages, or much except material artifacts and mounds.

Nobody really knows, as such, how they formed and how they exactly collapsed.

Anyways, they were not much but a number of decentralized communities centered around scattered townships/trading areas. They were able to productively apply agriculture, had a basic class system, and had long-distance routes to trade with other tribes.