Your Local Museum.

[Razgovory]

We have Museum in the State capital.  They have letter written over a hundred years ago about pigs, an illegible message carved in the wood of a maple tree, a betamax video cassette player dating from the last century and the prize exhibit: a 1958 Desote that ancient Missourians used in settling the state.

It isn't in Jefferson City, or even Missouri (though it is near St. Louis), but I think Cahokia is one of the best places in the country. It seems crazy to me that what is in St. Louis gets so much publicity but a borderline worldclass site a few miles away is barely mentioned. And from what I've seen, gets few visitors.

Cause it's a mound of dirt.  I reckon hills are bit more rare in Illinois, but we lots of them here in the Ozarks.

[derspiess]

Is there anything there besides a pile of dirt?  Dorks should have done some stone carvings or something.

I have a great deal of respect for Maya, Aztec, and Inca civilizations.  Indians in North America were slackers by comparison.

[derspiess]

Frankly, I count anything within an hour's drive as local.

Hour & a half for me

I keep wanting to take my kid to Serpent Mound but can't justify the 3 to 3.5 hours worth of driving to do so.  Would be different if they had something else nearby worth doing.

Wow...that's....madness. An hours travel of any sort is pushing it in my book let alone driving. That could take you into a totally different part of Britain easily.

Out west I've heard people call something 3 or 4 hours away as "just up the road".

[Razgovory]

Is there anything there besides a pile of dirt?  Dorks should have done some stone carvings or something.

I have a great deal of respect for Maya, Aztec, and Inca civilizations.  Indians in North America were slackers by comparison.

Somebody built some stairs.  Those are modern though.  I think there's a museum with the stuff they dug up.  If you are going to build an impressive civilization you should use more then just dirt and sticks.  They never should have hunted all the mammoths and horses to extinction.  Such a short sighted people.

[Barrister]

Frankly, I count anything within an hour's drive as local.

Hour & a half for me

I keep wanting to take my kid to Serpent Mound but can't justify the 3 to 3.5 hours worth of driving to do so.  Would be different if they had something else nearby worth doing.

Wow...that's....madness. An hours travel of any sort is pushing it in my book let alone driving. That could take you into a totally different part of Britain easily.

Out west I've heard people call something 3 or 4 hours away as "just up the road".

You should try living in the Yukon.  We'd drive two hours for lunch, then come back.  People routinely drove 24 hours to Edmonton, or 16 hours to Anchorage.

[Sheilbh]

Give the motorists a nice view?

That does sound possible if the road was an early one.

[alfred russel]

Is there anything there besides a pile of dirt?  Dorks should have done some stone carvings or something.

I have a great deal of respect for Maya, Aztec, and Inca civilizations.  Indians in North America were slackers by comparison.

Yes, there are a number of piles of dirt.

What is impressive (to me at least) is the site is quite large: it was obviously a city supported by horticulture. You also have evidence of defensive structures (walls) and the mounds are arranged in a way that they were incorporated into the city design (for example, a large plaza is in front of the largest mound).

You won't get the impression just from Cahokia, of course, but other Mississippian sites are laid out very similarly, despite great distances (the second largest site is outside of Atlanta, the third largest is in Alabama). Native American cities, united by a common culture across a large distances and supported by agriculture with a need for city walls, moats, etc, are not the lifestyle reflected in cowboy and indian movies. I thought it was interesting and really cool, others may think otherwise.

[Razgovory]

I'm not sure it's fair to say they were united by a common culture.  Anymore then Ancient Rome and Parthia were united by an ancient culture.  I mean they farmed and built cities, but since they came from entirely different language groups It's likely their cultures were quite different.

[alfred russel]

I'm not sure it's fair to say they were united by a common culture.  Anymore then Ancient Rome and Parthia were united by an ancient culture.  I mean they farmed and built cities, but since they came from entirely different language groups It's likely their cultures were quite different.

Maybe if you visited a few sites or read books on Mississippian culture you would have a different perspective. It seems rather bold to suggest the culture didn't exist. 

[garbon]

I'm not sure it's fair to say they were united by a common culture.  Anymore then Ancient Rome and Parthia were united by an ancient culture.  I mean they farmed and built cities, but since they came from entirely different language groups It's likely their cultures were quite different.

Maybe if you visited a few sites or read books on Mississippian culture you would have a different perspective. It seems rather bold to suggest the culture didn't exist. 

He could just hit up wiki.

[alfred russel]

I'm not sure it's fair to say they were united by a common culture.  Anymore then Ancient Rome and Parthia were united by an ancient culture.  I mean they farmed and built cities, but since they came from entirely different language groups It's likely their cultures were quite different.

Maybe if you visited a few sites or read books on Mississippian culture you would have a different perspective. It seems rather bold to suggest the culture didn't exist. 

He could just hit up wiki.

A (maybe interesting) story is that for a long time I wouldn't trust anything I read about precolumbian societies being in any way sophisticated attributing the claims to political correctness. When I was a kid, I was visiting a fort where they used to hold native americans. The ranger giving us a tour was giving us a very primitive impression of the people before the white man: no wheel, no writing, hunter gatherers, etc. A couple got really upset by this and tried arguing with the guide, and were asked to leave. My father explained that they were kooks pushing a PC agenda and the ranger knew what he was talking about.

What really changed my perspective is I was visiting Mexico City and my driver kept telling me to visit the pyramids at Teotihuacan. I didn't want to because I knew they were primitive and all that, but eventually I gave in. My driver was actually a really smart guy--spoke four languages and knew the ruins and culture inside out. He gave me a tour that was a bit off the tourist path, and afterwards I couldn't really deny that it was an enormous and rather advanced city for the time -- one of the largest in the world (even if it didn't have the wheel).

Derspeiss is right that Cahokia doesn't compare to Teotihuacan, but then they weren't hunter gatherer primitives either.

[Malthus]

Is there anything there besides a pile of dirt?  Dorks should have done some stone carvings or something.

I have a great deal of respect for Maya, Aztec, and Inca civilizations.  Indians in North America were slackers by comparison.

Yes, there are a number of piles of dirt.

What is impressive (to me at least) is the site is quite large: it was obviously a city supported by horticulture. You also have evidence of defensive structures (walls) and the mounds are arranged in a way that they were incorporated into the city design (for example, a large plaza is in front of the largest mound).

You won't get the impression just from Cahokia, of course, but other Mississippian sites are laid out very similarly, despite great distances (the second largest site is outside of Atlanta, the third largest is in Alabama). Native American cities, united by a common culture across a large distances and supported by agriculture with a need for city walls, moats, etc, are not the lifestyle reflected in cowboy and indian movies. I thought it was interesting and really cool, others may think otherwise.

I've always been surprised by the lack of attention paid to Mississipian civilization. To this day, I'd guess that not one in a hundred people know that North America had pre-Columbian urbanization. It's more or less completely overlooked in popular culture.

[Malthus]

A (maybe interesting) story is that for a long time I wouldn't trust anything I read about precolumbian societies being in any way sophisticated attributing the claims to political correctness. When I was a kid, I was visiting a fort where they used to hold native americans. The ranger giving us a tour was giving us a very primitive impression of the people before the white man: no wheel, no writing, hunter gatherers, etc. A couple got really upset by this and tried arguing with the guide, and were asked to leave. My father explained that they were kooks pushing a PC agenda and the ranger knew what he was talking about.

What really changed my perspective is I was visiting Mexico City and my driver kept telling me to visit the pyramids at Teotihuacan. I didn't want to because I knew they were primitive and all that, but eventually I gave in. My driver was actually a really smart guy--spoke four languages and knew the ruins and culture inside out. He gave me a tour that was a bit off the tourist path, and afterwards I couldn't really deny that it was an enormous and rather advanced city for the time -- one of the largest in the world (even if it didn't have the wheel).

Derspeiss is right that Cahokia doesn't compare to Teotihuacan, but then they weren't hunter gatherer primitives either.

To be fair, native american cultures varied widely in terms of social complexity and civilization. Some were indeed little more than hunter-gatherers, while others built huge cities. The odd part is how little known it is that North America had some of the latter type.

[alfred russel]

To be fair, native american cultures varied widely in terms of social complexity and civilization. Some were indeed little more than hunter-gatherers, while others built huge cities. The odd part is how little known it is that North America had some of the latter type.

Absolutely. And a lot of the latter type collapsed before heavy European colonization, reverting to hunter gatherers.

I don't forget that even the Aztecs and Incas were conquered relatively easily, and throughout the Americas, European languages dominate.