I Sometimes Feel

[abbey1227]

... like a person that sees racism everywhere....... just substituted with anti-capitalists

In 1050 AD, the Native American cosmopolis of Cahokia was bigger than Paris (Credit: Credit: MattGush/Getty Images)
North America USA History
The US' lost, ancient megacity
In the ancient Mississippian settlement of Cahokia, vast social events – not trade or the economy – were the founding principle.
By Jen Rose Smith    13 April 2021

Pity the event planners tasked with managing Cahokia's wildest parties. A thousand years ago, the Mississippian settlement – on a site near the modern US city of St Louis, Missouri – was renowned for bashes that went on for days.

A cosmopolitan whir of language, art and spiritual ferment

Throngs jostled for space on massive plazas. Buzzy, caffeinated drinks passed from hand to hand. Crowds shouted bets as athletes hurled spears and stones. And Cahokians feasted with abandon: burrowing into their ancient waste pits, archaeologists have counted 2,000 deer carcasses from a single, blowout event. The logistics must have been staggering.

Things are quieter these days at Cahokia, now a placid Unesco site. But towering, earthen mounds there hint at the legacy of the largest pre-Columbian city north of Mexico. A cosmopolitan whir of language, art and spiritual ferment, Cahokia's population may have swelled to 30,000 people at its 1050 AD peak, making it larger, at the time, than Paris.

It's what Cahokia didn't have that's startling, writes Annalee Newitz in their recent book Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age. The massive city lacked a permanent marketplace, confounding old assumptions that trade is the organising principle behind all urbanisation.

"Cahokia was really a cultural centre rather than a trade centre. It still boggles my mind. I keep wondering 'Where were they trading? Who was making money?'," Newitz said. "The answer is they weren't. That wasn't why they built the space."

Newitz isn't alone in their surprise. Assumptions that commerce is the key to urban life long shaped a Western view of the past, explains archaeologist Timothy Pauketat, who has studied Cahokia for decades.

"It's definitely a bias that influenced earlier archaeologists," he said. When excavating cities in Mesopotamia, researchers found evidence that trade was the organising principle behind their development, then turned the same lens on ancient cities across the globe. "People thought that this must be the basis for all early cities. It's led to generations of looking for that kind of thing everywhere," Pauketat said.

www.bbc.com/travel/story/20210412-the-us-lost-ancient-megacity?utm_source=pocket-newtab&referer=https%3A%2F%2Fgetpocket.com%2Frecommendations

[Prometheus]

I see what you're getting at but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the people suggesting that "trade had nothing to do with it" are fringe-dwellers.

A lack of trade goods could simply mean that trading was done at a different location and then everyone went to Cahokia for the party. Setting up a market on the steps of your church may have been frowned upon in that society. Jesus would have agreed.

Of course, the archaeologists are saying that it was a place where many people from many places gathered. That means they have found goods in Cahokia which had to have come from other places. To me, that simply reinforces the idea that trading was just done elsewhere.

Also, trade good among the Native Americans of the time were not all what I'd call "durable goods." What if they were simply trading the flesh of one animal for the flesh of another? Or hides? You're not going to find a lot of "leftovers" from that kind of trading.

Maybe Cahokia was a fully, self-sustaining society. maybe they had access to all the resources they needed and just invited everybody over for a big party every once-in-a-while.

[abbey1227]

Apr 17, 2021 4:23:11 GMT Prometheus said:

I see what you're getting at but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the people suggesting that "trade had nothing to do with it" are fringe-dwellers.

A lack of trade goods could simply mean that trading was done at a different location and then everyone went to Cahokia for the party. Setting up a market on the steps of your church may have been frowned upon in that society. Jesus would have agreed.

Of course, the archaeologists are saying that it was a place where many people from many places gathered. That means they have found goods in Cahokia which had to have come from other places. To me, that simply reinforces the idea that trading was just done elsewhere.

Also, trade good among the Native Americans of the time were not all what I'd call "durable goods." What if they were simply trading the flesh of one animal for the flesh of another? Or hides? You're not going to find a lot of "leftovers" from that kind of trading.

Maybe Cahokia was a fully, self-sustaining society. maybe they had access to all the resources they needed and just invited everybody over for a big party every once-in-a-while.

That's pretty much it in a nutshell. Just because they didn't have national coinage or the remains of tablets documenting the trade, doesn't mean people did not mutually come together and barter or whatever.

All I'm reading is "Here's where capitalism sucks compared to the past.".........while most of these types of people wouldn't last a month in the past.

[Prometheus]

Apr 18, 2021 0:43:56 GMT abbey1227 said:

Apr 17, 2021 4:23:11 GMT Prometheus said:

I see what you're getting at but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the people suggesting that "trade had nothing to do with it" are fringe-dwellers.

A lack of trade goods could simply mean that trading was done at a different location and then everyone went to Cahokia for the party. Setting up a market on the steps of your church may have been frowned upon in that society. Jesus would have agreed.

Of course, the archaeologists are saying that it was a place where many people from many places gathered. That means they have found goods in Cahokia which had to have come from other places. To me, that simply reinforces the idea that trading was just done elsewhere.

Also, trade good among the Native Americans of the time were not all what I'd call "durable goods." What if they were simply trading the flesh of one animal for the flesh of another? Or hides? You're not going to find a lot of "leftovers" from that kind of trading.

Maybe Cahokia was a fully, self-sustaining society. maybe they had access to all the resources they needed and just invited everybody over for a big party every once-in-a-while.

That's pretty much it in a nutshell. Just because they didn't have national coinage or the remains of tablets documenting the trade, doesn't mean people did not mutually come together and barter or whatever.

All I'm reading is "Here's where capitalism sucks compared to the past.".........while most of these types of people wouldn't last a month in the past.

Oh, I know what you were getting at. Those people from the article probably wouldn't have made it if they had attended the same classes I took in college. My professors would have chewed them up and spit them out.