@Wondernature 4 April 2022 more from that month

Cahokia ...📍📍 This is how Cahokia might have looked like in the past. About four centuries before Columbus stumbled on to the western hemisphere, Cahokia was a prosperous pre-American city with a population similar to London’s. Located in southern Illinois, it was probably the largest North American city north of Mexico at that time. It had been built by the Mississippians, a group of Native Americans who occupied much of the present-day south-eastern United States, from the Mississippi river to the shores of the Atlantic. Cahokia was a sophisticated and cosmopolitan city for its time. Yet its history is virtually unknown by most Americans and present-day Illinoisans. The Native Americans at Cahokia farmed, traded and hunted. They were also early urban planners, who used astronomical alignments to lay out a low-scale metropolis of 10-20,000 people, featuring a town centre with broad public plazas and key buildings set atop vast, hand-built earthen mounds. The largest of these mounds was 100 feet tall and covered 14 acres – and still exists today. Having become a major population centre around AD1050, by 1350 it was largely abandoned by its people – and no one is sure why. Photo: Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site #photography #noisecash #randomthoughts