Member-only story
The Mounds of Cahokia
“One of the best kept secrets in American history…”
The fifth largest pyramid in the world…
The largest earthwork in North America…
Like Stonehenge and the Pyramids of Giza, this has been designated a World Heritage Site by the UN.
It’s also a National Historic Landmark.
This is the Great Mound at Cahokia, in southwestern Illinois, just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, Missouri — you can see the city and its arch from the top the mound.
It’s 100 feet high. Covering about 14 acres, its footprint rivals that of the Great Pyramid of Egypt. About 21 million cubic feet of dirt went into its construction, which occurred from about 900 A.D. to around 1250 A.D., built by an urban agrarian culture we call The Mississippians.
Likely home to 20,000 people at its peak, the population of the ancient city of Cahokia rivaled and may have surpassed those of contemporary European cities like London or Paris.
This hierarchical Native American society was more like Egypt under the Pharaohs than the stereotypical portrayals of nomadic…
