Cahokia, largest of the North American Native Mound Works

 

Monks Mound – highest native mound work in North America. 

Visiting this site left me with more questions than answers. First and foremost – in an age where ‘you must be a certified expert’ to voice an opinion, I wonder – what does ‘certification’ mean? I’ll suggest that it means you have been indoctrinated into the party-line of a field of study. This ‘indoctrination’ goes against the rules of the science and inquiry that I was taught, because it shuts down conversation rather than opening it up to new ideas and various perspectives.  Let’s examine the (current) prevailing theory (??) regarding Cahokia. 

‘Cahokia has deep religious significance to native cultures.’ This statement is made with no supporting proof. We’ll presume some contemporary person with indigenous roots has made this claim. I accept oral history; but, I’d like to see it cited.  Some people are buried here – presumably high stature leaders or priests. No evidence found of permanent living quarters around the mounds. 

‘comparable to the cathedrals of medieval Europe..’ ok – we know cathedrals served two purposes – provide spiritual tourist attractions for pilgrims to get at some of their travel money. Which came first – the travel or the cathedral?  The diversity of the materials used to create the ‘intricate, religiously significant art…..’ maybe the proprietors wanted to sell high quality goods to the tourists – Epcot?    

‘Trappist French Monks built a church on top the mound to …… assimilate native beliefs into Catholic culture’, ……. or did they just like the view, or the cool breeze afforded by getting off the hot lowland, or maybe the wind up top kept the bugs away?

‘Two mile long palisades enclosed the Holy Ceremonial Site, though no evidence has been found that it was attacked or defended’……..sounds like crowd control and timed entry to me. Gotta pay to get in, you just can’t walk up the mound.  Go to Mount Hope Estate and Winery Renaissance Faire for a model.  They have a fence that has never been attacked or defended.

‘Centuries of modification to the bastions along the fence indicate development of more precise measurement systems’……… or maybe they got tired of sagging palisade walls and determined that putting bastions (pillars) a bit closer together made stronger walls – like many a journeyman mason learns during his apprenticeship with block and brick. Long walls need braced with pillars here and there. 

Where is a discussion regarding the similarity, discounting available local materials, between these mounds and Aztec, Mayan, and Incan structures? We allow that trade systems brought small, light materials form these regions – how about IDEAS?

These questions and more may have been answered if the museum were open – but alas, it was closed for renovation like so many other National Park Service facilities we’ve tried to visit. 

Monks Mound – view west – St Louis Arch – Gateway to the West in distance

Monks Mound – view south – of another of the many mounds in the area

 

I think of dinosaurs that were just ‘big lizards’, until Robert Bakker came along and postulated that they were BIG chickens. 

I remember the “Mongolian Princess’ with her religiously significant, highly ornamented, mirrors, that maybe, maybe they were just signal mirrors  – so you didn’t get lost on the steppe and you had a lot of them because if you didn’t have one, and couldn’t signal, you died. I guess THAT had religious significance. 

Coprolite, petrified poop, indicated that the pooper had eaten human flesh, as did the butcher marks and pot scrapes on shattered human bones found in the same area. ‘NO! NO! This is just another racial slur perpetuated by white men against indigenous people.’  ‘Fake poop’ in todays parlance.  

Religion seems to be the raison default for artifacts that are not obvious knives, plows, butter churns, shoes, etc.  I think it demonstrates limited imagination and limited discussion, or simplification for tourist who really don’t want much understanding, we just want a good story and then get on to the next BIG thing. Or just too many people regurgitating the party line making money off of books, teaching gigs, speaking tours, and Discovery channel movies. Wouldn’t want our reputation or ability to earn a living impacted by competing ideas. That’s NOT scientific!

Yes. Perhaps I am overly sensitive due to some of our modern (?) issues like – how are we going to define what constitutes a woman (human, breast, vagina has always worked for me) – If I can even use the term ‘woman’ without starting a shit storm of nasty slurs pointed my direction.  In the end, science has never been open and objective. It has always required people of exceptional courage to evolve the knowledge base in a more correct, consistent, logical, and perhaps accurate direction.  So in the end, your truth is real. Don’t worry if it’s grounded or not in reality. (sounds like Gonzalez definition of being lost, but we’ll let that go for another day)