Mississippian Culture

Mississippian Culture

Introduction

The Mississippian culture was a Native American culture that occurred from approximately 900 AD and emerged from the Woodland period. Its center was located on the middle Mississippi Valley, but extended to the southeast of the present-day United States , and thus roughly the states of Tennessee, Ohio, Arkansas, Illinois, Missouri, Michigan, Indiana, Oklahoma and Texas as well as parts of Alabama and Georgia . About the decline of the culture in the 15th and 16 Century, little is known. The most likely causes are valid disease and the intensive exploitation of nature (deforestation), the destruction of their own economic and livelihood led (hunting game). Cahokia is one of the cultures that supposedly belong to Mississipi. The Cahokians of Mississpi also disappeared (Thomas, Lewis, 1999). Not much is known regarding caused their decline. Therefore, this paper focuses to study and present several facts regarding the Chaokia culture and things that might have led to the decline of this culture.

Discussion

Cahokia

Cahokia is regarded as the main center of the Mississippian culture and was the largest pre-Columbian city north of Mexico. The city measured nearly 5 km from east to west and about 3.5 kilometers from north to south, and covered an area of over 15 square kilometers. The park, which is located in the former city, covers an area of 390 hectares or 3.9 km². Cahokia is not known to have been brought forth nonliterate culture. The town was located close to the present St. Louis in the U.S. state of Illinois. It existed from about 700 AD and was a planned city. By 1000 its population grew rapidly, was related possibly to the fact that the emerging maize formed a safer and richer food source. The residents of Cahokia built food in an area of perhaps 13 km. Estimates of the population range from 8,000 to 20,000, sometimes 40,000. Moreover, there are many findings of a hierarchy out of society. The gentlemen of the city lived in houses on some of the up to 120 mounds. Others of them were used as burial places. The city's name is not recorded. Instead, it was named by Europeans after a group of Illinois, at that time living in the region Indian tribe which, however, only appeared long after the demise Cahokias there (Thomas, Lewis, 1999).

No one knows who they were; no one knows where they came from, or where they went. We are talking about the mysterious inhabitants of Cahokia, the first North American city in what is now the U.S. state of Mississippi. For thousands of years ago settled near the present St. Louis circa 20,000 people lived in a high culture with pyramids and sacrificed young women (Biloine, Melvin, 2000). What was in Central and South America many centuries before possibly originated in the north of the continent until around the year 1000 and has not actually been thought possible. In the year 700, the city was occupied for the first time, and within about three hundred years, Cahokia had ...