The Collapse Of The Cahokian Civilization

The Collapse of Cahokia

Imagine an ancient world where the city is surrounded by mounds of earth, and one of those mounds is filled with corpses. These mounds are the Cahokia mounds, huge piles of dirt built up through generations of work. The reason behind the corpse-filled ‘Mound 72’ is most likely human sacrifice. However, the reasons behind the collapse of the Cahokian civilization are unknown. The civilization of Cahokia was a powerful and stable society. Cahokia was advanced enough that they had a strong government, excess food, and unfortunately a devastating impact on the natural environment around them. But their reign did not last forever, no matter how advanced they may have been. Cahokia’s collapse is still a mystery, but through

exploration and research some theories have become confidently reliable. The collapse of Cahokia was caused by multiple issues including climate change, environmental damage, and their response as a society to environmental issues.
Droughts combined with global cooling brought on hardship for the Cahokian civilization.

As a writer for the institute for American history stated in his essay on Cahokia, “In the late 1100s - 1200s, there were severe droughts, causing a lack of food. The cooling climate made it more difficult than ever to grow crops.” Cahokia existed around 1000 - 1400 AD, times which coincide with the droughts Pauketat writes about. Droughts cause plants to die, which can lead to a lack of food. These droughts would have harmed Cahokia after a period of time. Cahokia became powerful during a time of excellent climate, and their downfall coincided with a time of bad climate. This shows that Cahokia’s rise and fall was impacted by climate

change.
Another detriment to the Cahokian civilization was their overuse of their resources, which harmed the environment as well as themselves. While we do not have evidence that this was the main cause of Cahokia’s collapse, “A slow but irreversible overuse of the resource base by a too-large population is generally the best guess,” as stated by a journalist for the Illinois Periodical. As the Cahokian civilization grew, their effect on the environment grew as well. The people of Cahokia cut down many trees for firewood, which quickly became problematic. While trying to get enough wood for their fires so that they could keep cooking food and staying warm, the Cahokians ended up keeping themselves from harvesting as much food. When the hills eroded due to lack of trees, the Cahokian farmland below the hills became marshy and unsuitable for the Cahokian way of farming. This meant that the Cahokians were the cause of their own food shortage. The Cahokians wasted their natural resources and in doing so began their downfall.
The way that Cahokian society responded to the environmental problems they faced was ultimately what led to their inevitable downfall.

When the climate was changing and their environment was collapsing, the Cahokian civilization decided to create stronger leadership for themselves. This powerful new leadership of Cahokia was based in the center, with the rest of the communities radiating outward from it. “Yet, as the fetters apparently grew tighter about the members of the Cahokian polity, recent researchers have also documented the signs of disintegration,” explained Thomas Emerson of the University of Alabama. The hegemony of Cahokia brought them wealth, but it also dissatisfied the people. This controlling, elite government was not what the people wanted. Therefore the furthermost communities from the center, the rural population, developed their own independent way of government. This split between the rural and center communities was devastating to Cahokian civilization. “Another factor that may have played a role in the disintegration of the center was the inherent stability of the rural population organization.” Without people to govern, the center collapsed. But the rural community could not survive on its own either, so their way of life deteriorated. Thus the Cahokian civilization

collapsed.
Cahokia’s collapse was due to many problems, the major ones being climate change, environmental damage, and their response as a society to environmental issues. Climate change caused the Cahokians to have less food than they needed. Droughts and global cooling allowed fewer plants to prosper. The damage done to the environment by the Cahokians ended up damaging their civilization as well. The Cahokians cut down too many trees, and ended up with erosion problems that harmed their farms and crops. While dealing with all these problems, the Cahokians established an overbearing governmental system. But the people didn’t approve of this system, and their civilization split. This split ended up destroying Cahokia for good. In the end, human sacrifice was the least of Cahokia’s problems.