does not seem to know much about Cahokia even if he is listed as a "science" writer.
Most sources of information about Cahokia do not say that it was the city of a specific, single tribal nation. It apparently began as a ceremonial center that drew people from a variety of Native American ethnic identities.
I've often wondered if there was a Mesoamerican influence on the Mississippian Culture due to similarities in the structure and use of the mounds at Cahokia to the shape and ceremonial use of pyramids in Mesoamerica. The Maya used stones because that's what was available there. On the plains of what is modern Illinois, soil was the available resource for building. The tops of the mounds were flat with evidence of a ceremonial leader, i.e. a priest, living there.
The cultures of Mesoamerica had traders who travelled far. The Maya traders sailed along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. The Mississippi River empties into the Gulf. The Mississippian Culture was spread along the Gulf Coast and tributaries of the Mississippi River. Ideas in architecture, religious customs, political structures, etc. get spread through trade.
Since maize was first developed and cultivated as a domestic crop in Mesoamerica and eventually spread both north and south of Mesoamerica, there must have been some interchange between cultures near Mesoamerica that then spread to other societies that neighbored the societies to which maize had spread, like stepping stones.
More direct trade along water routes by traders would also have spread maize cultivation, allowing an agricultural basis for larger settled communities to develop. Maize had a religious significance in both Mesoamerica and societies to the north where maize cultivation spread, so more than just the maize seeds got passed along from one culture into another.
I am not suggesting that Cahokia was a colony of the Maya or of any other society. But I do think that ideas that were incorporated into the Mississippian Culture were spread through direct and intermediary contact. In locations where the ideas had spread, they would have been adopted and blended into already existing societies far from the origin centers of those ideas, creating a new culture that combined local and distant customs.
Cultural exchange through direct and intermediary trade occurred many times in many places in human history. Consider how the trade in spices and silk influenced European cultures through intermediary trade with India and China via overland and water routes. In southern Europe, the Italian peninsula ports devoped financially from that trade. That financial growth helped arts to flourish. As far away as Britain and other northern European nations, the trade products from eastern and southeastern Asia became social division markers. The wealthy and titled people wore silk and had foods prepared with "exotic" spices. Sumptuary laws included silk as a fabric that was forbidden to be worn by unauthorized people, along with certain furs and clothing styles.
I have not read about Mesoamerican influence on the Mississippian Culture that Cahokia was part of. There is only mention that maize agriculture spread throughout North America in climates where it could be grown. But it spread somehow. I would like to see studies about that spread of both maize and cultural ideas.
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