Newark Earthworks Center's Blog: As the river rises: Cahokia's emergence and decline linked to Mississippi River flooding

This is a modeled map of Cahokia and present-day St. Louis
after the historic 1844 flood of the Mississippi River.
Image Courtesy of Samuel Munoz and ScienceDaily.

May, 4, 2015.

University of Wisconsin-Madison, in ScienceDaily, has written a brief summary article about recent research into the collapse of Cahokia, an American Indian city which began to decline
around 1200 A.D. and is currently an UNESCO World Heritage Site.

"Cahokia appears to have fractured and its people began to migrate to other parts of North America. By 1400, after the arid conditions that suppressed large floods and favored Cahokia's rise had passed, it was deserted.

While many factors likely contributed to Cahokia's decline -- from extreme events like droughts or floods, to the inherent instability archaeologists and anthropologists have documented in other chiefdom societies -- a major flooding event could have been the proverbial last straw."

-University of Wisconsin-Madison, ScienceDaily.

To read the full article, click here.

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Cahokia's emergence and decline coincided with shifts of flood frequency on the Mississippi River (PDF available)

Samuel E. Munoz, Kristine E. Gruley, Ashtin Massie, David A. Fike, Sissel Schroeder, and John W. Williams; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the Unites States of America, April 2015.