Cahokia
The largest city north of Mexico, with a pyramid bigger at its base than Giza's.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 300 years
- Known to
- ± 30 years
- Era
- Post-Classical, Holocene
Cahokia near modern St Louis reaches perhaps 15,000 to 20,000 people around 1100 — larger than contemporary London — with over a hundred earthen mounds. Monks Mound covers more ground than the Great Pyramid. Its plazas, woodhenge solar calendar and mass burials indicate a stratified society with considerable coercive power. It is largely abandoned by 1350, with drought, flooding of the Mississippi and political failure all proposed.