Your Daily Giant 1/17/2013
Monk's Mound Cahokia Illinois. Occupied from 600-1400 A.D. Cahokia consisted of 120 earthen pyramids and mounds on a massive 6 square mile site. At its height (1200 A.D.) it was estimated to have nearly 40,000 inhabitants, as large or larger than any European city at the time. In fact no U.S. city had a larger population until 1800. Monks Mound, the largest prehistoric structure in North America is 100 feet high, has a 14 acre base (the Great Pyramid at Giza has a base of 13 acres) and once had a 5000 square foot 50 foot high building on top. An estimated 22 million cubic feet of earth was brought from over a mile away to build the four terraced massive platform mound. A mind boggling engineering feat, anything but nomadic and unsophisticated were the Native Americans who built this site. Cahokia once had a "woodhenge" used as an astronomical calendar and the site boasts many alignments
From the St. Louis Post Dispatch in 1906 we find the following from a researcher, "A Mr. Hill who once lived upon it, while making excavation near the northwest extremity recovered human bones and white pottery in considerable quantities. The bones which instantly crumbled to dust upon exposure to air, appeared larger than ordinary, while the teeth were double in front as well as behind.
Monk's Mound Cahokia Illinois. Occupied from 600-1400 A.D. Cahokia consisted of 120 earthen pyramids and mounds on a massive 6 square mile site. At its height (1200 A.D.) it was estimated to have nearly 40,000 inhabitants, as large or larger than any European city at the time. In fact no U.S. city had a larger population until 1800. Monks Mound, the largest prehistoric structure in North America is 100 feet high, has a 14 acre base (the Great Pyramid at Giza has a base of 13 acres) and once had a 5000 square foot 50 foot high building on top. An estimated 22 million cubic feet of earth was brought from over a mile away to build the four terraced massive platform mound. A mind boggling engineering feat, anything but nomadic and unsophisticated were the Native Americans who built this site. Cahokia once had a "woodhenge" used as an astronomical calendar and the site boasts many alignments
From the St. Louis Post Dispatch in 1906 we find the following from a researcher, "A Mr. Hill who once lived upon it, while making excavation near the northwest extremity recovered human bones and white pottery in considerable quantities. The bones which instantly crumbled to dust upon exposure to air, appeared larger than ordinary, while the teeth were double in front as well as behind.
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