Connections between Mississippian culture and Mesoamerica?

[Queequeg]

A recent Facebook discussion got me interested in pre-contact Native Societies, and I've been reading a bit more on the Mississippian culture.  Most of the literature seems to suggest that there weren't substantial contacts between the Mississippian culture and Mesoamerica, but they shared the following;
Maize agriculture
Feathered serpent God
Human sacrifice on mounds
Ball games, including sacrifices and rituals
Hero twin myths

A lot of the art looks remarkably similar too:



I don't get how there would be cultural diffusion without large-scale contact or shared ancestry.  Really confused. 

[The Brain]

How is substantial contact defined? And what is the "no substantial contact" based on? Are there similarities that you would expect that are not present? Why is shared ancestry dismissed?

[derspiess]

Whatever contact, and there wasn't enough. Mesoamericans built all sorts of cool things for us to remember them by, and Mississippians didn't do shit.

[CountDeMoney]

Mesoamericans built all sorts of cool things for us to remember them by, and Mississippians didn't do shit.

  And still don't.  Well, Waffle Houses maybe.

[alfred russel]

Spellus, some of the things you mention are probably not indicative of very much. Maize agriculture is simply using an effective crop. I am not sure that the Mississippians practiced human sacrifice on mounds. Even if they did, their mounds are quite different than mesoamerican temples and human sacrifice was probably common in pre modern societies. The ball games seem to have been quite different.

I'll grant that the art has superficial similarities, but the societies were at dramatically different levels of sophistication and were separated by large distances and geographic obstacles. We don't have evidence of much contact, even though both societies existed into the historical period.

[Queequeg]

Spellus, some of the things you mention are probably not indicative of very much. Maize agriculture is simply using an effective crop. I am not sure that the Mississippians practiced human sacrifice on mounds. Even if they did, their mounds are quite different than mesoamerican temples and human sacrifice was probably common in pre modern societies. The ball games seem to have been quite different.

Granted, mounds seem to be pretty common-you'd find them in Sumeria, Egypt and China in around the same period in Eurasia's development as the Aztecs were at.

What about the hero twins, though? I'm also not totally convinced that the fact that the games were different means that it isn't proof of some type of contact-I don't think the Incas had these types of games (may be wrong). 

Also, what about the Hero Twin and Feathered Serpent myths? 

I suppose it is possible that the Nahuatl-who had origins in the Southwest-had some of these myths and practices.  Possible origin of the shared myths.  It'd be somewhat similar to the popularity of Eurasian storm-bulls, paternalistic lightning Gods, paternalistic life-trees and conflicts with serpents.   

[Razgovory]

It seems unlikely that two separate cultures would develop the same suite of crops independently.

[Queequeg]

Crops can travel over cultural boundaries such that one culture doesn't have any kind appreciation of where it came from originally.  I doubt that most Maori were cognizant of the Inca origins of the sweet potato. 

[CountDeMoney]

It seems unlikely that two separate cultures would develop the same suite of crops independently.

Why not?

[Tonitrus]

Cotton was used pretty widely and independently.

[Razgovory]

Well you were the one who brought up agriculture.  Since the Spanish heard about cultures on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers from their territories in Mexico I think it's safe to assume there was some knowledge.

[Razgovory]

It seems unlikely that two separate cultures would develop the same suite of crops independently.

Why not?

Cause agriculture has only been invented independently a handful of times.  Mostly it's borrowed from elsewhere.  For instance chickens, those tasty tasty birds, come from one place.  Indonesia.  Nobody else independently domesticated chickens, but they spread all over the world.  Why agriculture developed at all or how is not really that well understood.

[PDH]

This has always been one of the areas of discussion, and it is often one with a lot of overtones.

The pre-Olmec cultures saw the introduction of post-teosinte throughout Mesoamerica and into what is now the American Southwest by 2000 BCE.  However, the more modern maize didn't seem to hit the US proper until about 1500-2000 years ago.  What this means is that there was a long period of contact in the Southwest, but the ability to sustain agriculture further north and east didn't come about for a long time after that.

We do know there were long distance trade routes in the Americas, well before agriculture.  It is not a leap to imagine that the spread of maize, the diffusion of Mesoamerican myths, and the systems of agriculture spread due to this trade over centuries.  Add into this the warming cycle that coincides with the High Middle Ages and you have plenty of reason why the Mississippian Culture rose at the time it did.  There are enough cultural differences that seem grounded in the region to dismiss a simple grafting of southern cultural groups onto the people of the region.

That said, there does seem to be influence.  The alignment of mounds, some of the mythic structure, and the basic nature and spread of the crops used show this.  However, the contact seems to be secondary or based on trade routes, that seems the more likely than a grafting of southern groups or wholesale borrowing.

As far as I know, the introduction of the waffle culture was not significant in the Pre-Colombian period.

[derspiess]

Why agriculture developed at all or how is not really that well understood.

Easy. Agriculture developed because of beer.

[PDH]

Why agriculture developed at all or how is not really that well understood.

Some good theories do exist however.  The idea of cultural/biological co-evolution is quite promising when it comes to domestication by humans of plants and animals.  For instance, the studies of einkorn wheat (one of the earlier crops in the Middle East) show that scheduled rounds of gathering changes the plants in about 30-50 generations (potentially), meaning that in the years of harvesting more and more care needed to be taken by people to ensure a larger and larger harvest.  Eventually one gets horticulture at the very least.