Rise of Cahokia, the largest city of Mississippian North America
- Date
- c. 1050 CE
- Category
- Social & demographic
- Region
- North America (Illinois)
- Era
- Post-Classical / Medieval
- Significance
Around 1050 CE the settlement at Cahokia, across the Mississippi River from modern St. Louis, expanded dramatically into the largest urban centre of pre-Columbian North America north of Mexico.
At its height between roughly 1050 and 1150 it covered about six square miles, contained some 120 earthen mounds, and housed an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 people, with many more in surrounding towns. Its centrepiece, Monks Mound, was raised in stages into the largest prehistoric earthwork in the Americas, about 30 metres tall, topped by a great timber building overlooking a vast plaza. Cahokia was the political and ceremonial focus of the Mississippian culture, whose maize-based chiefdoms, platform-mound towns and shared religious iconography spread across much of the central and southeastern present-day United States. A planned woodhenge of timber posts tracked the solar calendar. The city declined and was abandoned by about 1350 amid environmental stress and political fragmentation, but it demonstrates the scale of indigenous urbanism in North America and is recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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Empires active in c. 1050 CE
- Abbasid Caliphate750 CE – 1258 CE
- Song Dynasty960 CE – 1279 CE
- Byzantine Empire330 CE – 1453 CE
- Kanem-Bornu Empire700 CE – 1900 CE
- Toltec State (Tula)950 CE – 1168 CE
- Fatimid Caliphate909 CE – 1171 CE
Related social & demographic events
- Banu Hilal Migration Arabises the Maghrebc. 1050 onward (11th century)
- The Black Death sweeps Europe, North Africa and the Middle East1347–1351 CE
- Zanj Rebellion against the Abbasid Caliphate869-883 CE
- Collapse of the Classic Maya lowland city-statesc. 800–900 CE
- Siege of Kaffa and the spread of the Black Death along Mongol trade routes1346–1347 CE
- The Columbian Exchange and the demographic collapse of Indigenous AmericaFrom 1493 (16th century)
Further reading
The wider story
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
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