24
Just got back from the Cahokia Mounds and I'm honestly frustrated
I drove down to Collinsville, Illinois last weekend to finally see the Monk's Mound in person. Nobody talks about how much of the original site is just gone now, buried under a highway and a golf course. The interpretive signs gloss over how many smaller mounds were flattened for development in the 1800s. Are there any other major Native American sites that got this badly trashed before anyone thought to protect them?
2 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In2 Comments
patricianguyen29d ago
Nobody talks about how much of the original site is just gone now" - yeah, that hit me hard when I finally went there too. It got me thinking about Poverty Point in Louisiana, which is one of those places that somehow survived mostly intact just because nobody bothered to build much on top of it back then. But then you've got something like the Serpent Mound in Ohio, which has been restored and rebuilt so many times it's basically a historical guess at this point. Honestly, most of the big earthen mounds east of the Mississippi got plowed under for farmland before anyone even thought to write down where they were. Makes you wonder what we'd find if they ever decided to dig up some of those golf courses.
3
harris.emma29d ago
ugh, that's wild to think about. it's like we don't even notice how much stuff just gets erased over time, kinda like how old neighborhood landmarks vanish without a trace.
6