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New research on why Cahokia Mounds civilization left
The Cahokia Mounds, once a thriving settlement near present-day St. Louis, was abandoned by 1400, leaving behind a mystery. Recent research challenges the long-held belief of drought-induced crop failure as the cause. Instead, evidence suggests the Cahokians may have had the skills to mitigate such
But a new study in the journal The Holocene by Natalie Mueller, assistant professor of archaeology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and Caitlin Rankin, PhD ’20, suggests the Cahokians likely had other reasons to leave town. Rankin dug deep into the soil at the historic Cahokia site to collect isotopes of carbon, atoms left behind by the plants growing when the human population collapsed and drought was common across the Midwest. Future Research and the Real Reasons for Abandonment To get a better grasp of the diets and agricultural practices of Indigenous people of the Midwest, Mueller hopes to build a database that collects paleo-botanical evidence from across the region.
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