Will He or Will She?

When I was growing up and became upset over some trifle, my grandmother would tell me, "in a hundred years it won't make any difference". It annoyed me no end when she would say it, but I would grudgingly realize I was probably creating a tempest in a teapot. Now I've decided to apply her advice to the campaigns being run by the two people running for president of the United States.

I've stopped listening to the coverage of the campaigns since it has been reduced to an endless recitation of the insults nominees hurl at each other. Instead, I've turned my attention to reading about a long ago city with a population of 40,000 that existed in the Mississippi valley more than a 1000 years before European contact. Cahokia, a pre-Columbian Native American City, was located directly across the Mississippi river at St Louis, Missouri.

Cahokia was a complex and sophisticated society sustained by a three fold agriculture, corn, beans and squash. It was larger than London in 1250. The people of Cahokia began mound building sometime around the 9th century. The original site contained 120 earthen mounds over an area of 6 sq. miles, but only 89 remain. Many of them destroyed by later farming. To achieve this, thousands of workers, over decades, moved an estimated 55 million cubic ft. of earth in woven baskets, creating a network of mounds and plazas that covered 14 acres and topped by a massive 5000 sq. ft. building 50 ft. high. A mound called Monk Mound has 4 terraces and is 951 ft. long, 836 ft. wide and covers 13.8 acres. It contains 814,000 cu yard of earth.

Anthropologists think the original idea, that Cahokia may have had a warrior-male structure, is a misunderstanding. New discoveries in Mound 72 the highly decorated grave site may have clues to the politics and culture. Cahokia was abandoned around 1300 and not re-occupied by indigenous tribes. The fate of the people remains a mystery. The site may have become unhealthy with polluted water ways, over hunting, deforestation and flooding. In 2015, evidence was found of two severe floods occurring: one in 1100 and one in 1260.

Cahokia is a UNESSCO Heritage Site. The Illinois State Historical Site maintains the park along with the Cahokia Preservation Agency. It's open to the public with tours and events listed on the Illinois web page.