Cahokia Mounds is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the largest pre-Columbian settlement north of Mexico. At its peak around 1100 CE, over 20,000 people lived here — a population larger than contemporary London. Today the 2,200-acre site preserves about 80 mounds of varying sizes across an open landscape that still conveys the scale of what was once a metropolis.
The visitor center is the right place to start. A well-made introductory film covers the rise and mysterious decline of the Mississippian culture, and the museum displays trade goods, ceramics, and evidence of the city's remarkable reach — copper from Lake Superior, shells from the Gulf of Mexico. Allow two to three hours for the full site.
story: > When archaeologists excavated Mound 72 in the 1960s, they found the burial of a high-status individual lying on a bed of 20,000 shell beads — likely a chief or shaman. Around him were the remains of over 250 people, many of them young women, apparently sacrificed for the burial. The discovery confirmed that Cahokia's rulers commanded extraordinary power, though the reasons for the city's abandonment around 1350 remain one of archaeology's enduring mysteries.