Speaker 1: So true story. Four hundred years before crystal Ball Cologne
Speaker 1: reached what he thought was India, I.
Speaker 2: Mean Christopher Columbus.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, crystal Ball, before he did reach this, for
Speaker 1: centuries and centuries, there was a city with a population
Speaker 1: similar in size to London right here in North America.
Speaker 3: Say what, that's right, Kahokia, not to be confused with
Speaker 3: the Kloika.
Speaker 2: That's different, Yes.
Speaker 1: Very very different, very different things. And that's our classic
Speaker 1: episode for this evening, folks. Once upon a time, Kuika
Speaker 1: was a enormously prosperous city, the largest of its sort
Speaker 1: north of Mexico on this continent. And do you guys
Speaker 1: remember this episode?
Speaker 3: Well, I just remember that people seem to have abandoned
Speaker 3: it and we're not really sure why.
Speaker 4: It feels very mysterious to me, Like the entire episode
Speaker 4: is one big mystery.
Speaker 1: It's very Krakatoa thirteen fifty CE. This metropolis was largely abandoned.
Speaker 1: What happened?
Speaker 5: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 5: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 5: learn this stuff. They don't want you to know. A
Speaker 5: production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works?
Speaker 4: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 4: my name is Nolan.
Speaker 1: They call me Ben. We are joined with our guest
Speaker 1: super producer Tari So reach out and say hi. Most importantly,
Speaker 1: you are you. You are here, and that makes this
Speaker 1: stuff they don't want you to know, a bit of
Speaker 1: a history episode for us. You guys, we have in
Speaker 1: the past explored lost civilizations, and we've explored lost cities
Speaker 1: spoiler alert by the way, there are tons and tons
Speaker 1: of them around spoiler alert.
Speaker 2: We've spoiled Lost and gotten yelled at about it.
Speaker 1: It's true, that's true.
Speaker 2: That's the thing that happened.
Speaker 1: I think Loss spoils itself at the edge. I don't
Speaker 1: want to throw pot shots at it. But it's a
Speaker 1: great show.
Speaker 4: It really is. But then they remade it into a
Speaker 4: more fun version and now it's called The Good Place.
Speaker 3: You know, you're right, man, never thought about that connection,
Speaker 3: but it is kind of Not only is it more fun, it's.
Speaker 2: Just like a better show. It knows where it's going.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yes.
Speaker 1: But they do still wrestle with some of the same
Speaker 1: philosophical quandaries at the time. I think that's an excellent comparison.
Speaker 1: One thing that the good Place does not have that
Speaker 1: Lost does have. It is a collection of inexplicable ruins.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? We all look. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: spoil it because it's one of the coolest parts. Spoiler
Speaker 1: countdown three, two, one, the foot, where's the body? Why?
Speaker 1: Why are there only four toes?
Speaker 2: Spoiler alert You never find out.
Speaker 1: They will never tell you. But but it turns out
Speaker 1: that they're cleaving the show careers of Lost, or cleaving
Speaker 1: closer to the truth than you might imagine. The US
Speaker 1: is often explained in the following way. In comparison to Europe.
Speaker 1: They'll say, in Europe, two hundred miles is a long way.
Speaker 1: In the US, two hundred years is a long time.
Speaker 1: And we often think about this country in terms of
Speaker 1: the beginning of migration across the ocean, right, So we
Speaker 1: don't think of all the people who crossed over the
Speaker 1: Bearing straight in ancient times. We don't think of the
Speaker 1: pre Columbian cultures that rose and fell. We think of
Speaker 1: you know, crystal Ball Colombo selling the Ocean blue.
Speaker 4: He sold the Ocean blue. I completely agree.
Speaker 3: Crystal Ball Colombo, Crystal bal columb Okay, hmm.
Speaker 2: I was like, I am not aware of this pronunciation.
Speaker 4: I like it.
Speaker 1: It's it's a new series that Damon Lindtoff and I
Speaker 1: and jj Abrams are working on.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And he's just a detective and he's going around
Speaker 4: looking at land. He's like a he's a purveyor of land.
Speaker 3: He looks at the land and he turns and walks away,
Speaker 3: and then he says, actually more to this land than
Speaker 3: meets the eye.
Speaker 4: My wife and what Yeah, it's your wife and a
Speaker 4: bunch of native people.
Speaker 1: Right right in this in this idea, of course, Crystabal
Speaker 1: Colombo is solving the crimes that he himself commits.
Speaker 4: There we go easy.
Speaker 1: It's it's essentially memento comparisons have been made. But right,
Speaker 1: it would be it would be apt for this fictional
Speaker 1: character to look at the land, turn around and come
Speaker 1: back and say, actually, there's a lot more to it,
Speaker 1: to your example, Noel, Because for a long long time,
Speaker 1: we we were sold a myth in this country, we
Speaker 1: being the people of what we call the United States,
Speaker 1: we were told that there was this vast, sparsely populated
Speaker 1: continent rich in all sorts of resources. You want timber boom,
Speaker 1: you want salmon boom.
Speaker 4: All you have to do is go out there in
Speaker 4: the frontier and capture it. It's waiting for you.
Speaker 1: Right right, manifest that destiny. For centuries, the history of
Speaker 1: North America was largely ignored or actively suppressed by European
Speaker 1: powers exploring and colonizing the continent. Nations on the eastern
Speaker 1: side of the Atlantic overwhelmingly depicted North America this way,
Speaker 1: a land of exoticism and opportunity, and they ardently and
Speaker 1: purposely suppressed the fact that this continent was already home
Speaker 1: to a massive assortment of sophisticated, pre existing cultures who
Speaker 1: would have been just fine without European intervention and all
Speaker 1: the disease and degradation that it brought along with it. So,
Speaker 1: if this myth of empty North America is indeed false,
Speaker 1: what do we know about it? Like, what are the facts?
Speaker 4: Oh sure? I mean, prior to any Europeans showing up
Speaker 4: on North American land, there were one hundred and twelve
Speaker 4: million people already living somewhere on the continent. And you know,
Speaker 4: lower estimates do range to as little as eight million
Speaker 4: people from that one hundred and twelve million, So there
Speaker 4: is a range because it's not known the exact number
Speaker 4: of people. There's no census, there's no any way of
Speaker 4: telling how many different peoples. You can you can tell
Speaker 4: how many different well, at least close to however, many
Speaker 4: different cultures essentially exist just from finding things, but knowing
Speaker 4: the exact number of people is very, very difficult.
Speaker 1: Right right. The one thing we do know is that
Speaker 1: there were millions of people, yes, and they weren't all
Speaker 1: just sort of strolling around so as many one hundred
Speaker 1: and twelve million people of fourteen ninety two, but by
Speaker 1: sixteen fifty that population had already plummeted to less than
Speaker 1: six million. The people living at the height of pre
Speaker 1: European history had extensive trade networks, They had rich cultural lives,
Speaker 1: they had cities, they had internal and external warfare, conflict cooperation,
Speaker 1: all the things that Europe was doing. And they had
Speaker 1: dense urban areas, which is something that may surprise a
Speaker 1: lot of people listening right. Normally, when you think of
Speaker 1: pre European populations, we think of people living a perhaps
Speaker 1: nomadic existence in some areas of the continent. We think
Speaker 1: of complex cave dwellings, perhaps, but we don't think of
Speaker 1: a London, you know, or we don't think of a Berlin.
Speaker 4: So at least, yeah, an early version of that with
Speaker 4: structures and highly organized societ existing within these structures.
Speaker 1: So we would like to introduce you to one of
Speaker 1: the largest known pre European cities in the on the
Speaker 1: continent at the time, a place called Kahokia.
Speaker 3: So in its prime, about four centuries before our boy
Speaker 3: Colombo stumbled onto the Western hemisphere, walked away, and then
Speaker 3: decided to come back.
Speaker 2: And you know, dig a little deeper.
Speaker 3: Kahokia was a prosperous pre American city with a population
Speaker 3: very similar to London. Archaeological data showed that agricultural settlements
Speaker 3: first appear in the area around four hundred a d.
Speaker 3: And then in ten fifty AD you had a boom
Speaker 3: population boom at Cokiya, which became a major political and
Speaker 3: cultural center, with the population booming into the tens of thousands.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know, when you think about something like this,
Speaker 4: it's hard to imagine that it could exist anywhere near
Speaker 4: current civilization, righty, Oh, that must be out in the
Speaker 4: middle of nowhere somewhere, right, because we would know all
Speaker 4: about that. We would people in the United States would
Speaker 4: travel there to explore the remains or something, right, sure,
Speaker 4: But no it was located very close to present day
Speaker 4: Saint Louis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's about eight miles out of Saint Louis. It's
Speaker 1: located in southern Illinois. This was, by all measures that
Speaker 1: we can find, the largest North American city north of Mexico.
Speaker 1: At the time. It had been built by a group
Speaker 1: of people known as the Mississippians. These were native people
Speaker 1: who occupied a large swath of the present day southeastern
Speaker 1: US from the Mississippi River to the shores of the Atlantic.
Speaker 1: This city, Gohokia, was sophisticated, it was cosmopolitan, but today
Speaker 1: its history is virtually unknown, not to just most of
Speaker 1: the current US residents, but even two people who live
Speaker 1: in the area, present day residents of Illinois, Illinoisians. Illinoisians.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I hope that's not Illinoising. Oh wow, not
Speaker 1: worth it.
Speaker 4: Just throw us in the trash.
Speaker 1: It's this is one of those stories that was bypassed
Speaker 1: in favor of that dominant narrative that we see reinforced
Speaker 1: in literature, we see reinforced in in cinema. Yeah right,
Speaker 1: And it's the idea that the people who lived here
Speaker 1: before Europeans ever arrived were somehow less learned, which is
Speaker 1: clearly not the case. And there's a guy named Thomas Emerson,
Speaker 1: a professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois, who
Speaker 1: had an interesting quote. A lot of the world, he says,
Speaker 1: is still relating in terms of cowboys and you know,
Speaker 1: quote unquote Indians with feathers and teepees and whatnot. But
Speaker 1: in a D one thousand, from the beginning Cochy, it
Speaker 1: was laid out to a specific plan. It doesn't grow
Speaker 1: into a plan. It starts at as a plan with
Speaker 1: a purpose. They created the most massive earthen mounds in
Speaker 1: North America. Where does that come from? This is a
Speaker 1: good question, It's a really good question. And weirdly enough,
Speaker 1: we're looking for cities to compare this to. Well. Hear
Speaker 1: that it bore some similarities to London, right, but in
Speaker 1: some ways it was like Manhattan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 3: It was home to multiple groups of people from across
Speaker 3: the lands of the Mississippians. Groups included the Natchez, the Pensacola,
Speaker 3: the Choctaw, the Ofo my personal favorite, I don't know
Speaker 3: because I've never really heard the name before, and I
Speaker 3: like saying Opho.
Speaker 2: It's fun.
Speaker 3: Archaeologists conducting strontium tests on the teeth of buried remains.
Speaker 3: Have found that a third of the population was not
Speaker 3: from Gokia but somewhere else. And this is according to Emerson,
Speaker 3: who is the director of the Illinois State Archaeological Survey.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we know that the residents of this city, the
Speaker 1: people who lived in the city center and the people
Speaker 1: who lived on the outskirts, they did city people things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have forensic traces, archaeological evidence really of their farming, trading,
Speaker 1: and hunting efforts. And we know that they also had
Speaker 1: urban planners. And these urban planners used astronomical alignments to
Speaker 1: lay out a low scale metropolis that ranged, as you said, Matt,
Speaker 1: from ten to twenty thousand people. And they planned it
Speaker 1: again from the beginning. The cities between six and nine
Speaker 1: square miles in area. Inside its borders. As close as
Speaker 1: we can estimate, they're about one hundred and twenty earthen mounds.
Speaker 1: And one thing we know for sure is the mound
Speaker 1: building technology was pretty demanding. This was backbreaking work. We're
Speaker 1: talking about stacking. We're digging first off, digging, hauling and stacking.
Speaker 4: Because these mounds are underground dwellings or structures. Essentially, it's
Speaker 4: like a place to go into. Right, it's a when
Speaker 4: you imagine it, I guess in your head, I think
Speaker 4: it is ben because of the growing up I guess
Speaker 4: being shaped sometimes by these European ideas of what the
Speaker 4: United States is. You don't even have a real understanding
Speaker 4: of what a mound is when we're talking about them,
Speaker 4: you know, like and just talking about how difficult it
Speaker 4: is to create a single dwelling place or a building
Speaker 4: that would be used for any kind of function, Like
Speaker 4: it's You're absolutely right, how difficult that would be.
Speaker 1: A lot of these are tombs as well, and by hand.
Speaker 1: This community stacked fifty five million cubic feet of earth
Speaker 1: and oh they as far as we know, they did
Speaker 1: it just using woven baskets to transport it. The largest mound,
Speaker 1: which is later called the Monks Mound after the French
Speaker 1: trap is too tended to it in the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: was the site of a sizeable building where the city's
Speaker 1: political and spiritual leaders met. It was surrounded by a
Speaker 1: wooden palisade almost two miles in circumference. The town center
Speaker 1: was where residents, pilgrims, and leaders worshiped and held ceremonies
Speaker 1: which will be very important later on. Right now, if
Speaker 1: we picture the city, think of it the way that
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of modern cities are there's a
Speaker 1: downtown area and a lot of people will travel there
Speaker 1: for work, for leisure lisiu or you know, maybe to
Speaker 1: attend certain events, cultural events.
Speaker 4: But just in a short term essentially.
Speaker 1: Right, they won't live there, you know. So this city
Speaker 1: is no different. Most of the Mississippians live on the
Speaker 1: other side of this palisade in these single room homes
Speaker 1: you were talking about, Matt the rectangular they're about fifteen
Speaker 1: feet long, twelve feet wide. We know this based on
Speaker 1: what we were able to to dig up that wooden
Speaker 1: post walls covered with mats, thatched roofs. Far from being
Speaker 1: a collection of villages or campsites, they were linked with
Speaker 1: their own network of courtyards and pathways, kind of the
Speaker 1: way streets are laid out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know there would be physical connections like
Speaker 4: you're saying, that actually connect everything together. The different individual
Speaker 4: homes have that feeling. It's again so uncharacteristic of the
Speaker 4: way sometimes it's depicted, or a way maybe we imagine
Speaker 4: in our minds of what a Native American city could
Speaker 4: be like.
Speaker 1: So we've laid out a bit of the architecture, we've
Speaker 1: laid out a bit of this street planning, we've learned
Speaker 1: a little bit about the inhabitants. This leads us to
Speaker 1: the next question. Where is Kahokia now? Nowadays? There's nothing.
Speaker 1: There's a series of mounds right.
Speaker 4: Yep, and there's a I mean, that's about it. There's
Speaker 4: some ruins and maybe a little bit of evidence left
Speaker 4: that there was human activity that occurred in and around
Speaker 4: these mounds.
Speaker 1: Because you see the metropolis of Cohokia, thousands and thousands
Speaker 1: of people, as near as we can tell one day,
Speaker 1: disappeared by thirteen fifty, was largely abandoned by its people,
Speaker 1: and even today in twenty nineteen, no one knows why.
Speaker 4: And we're going to find out, at least what we
Speaker 4: know at this point. After a quick word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, let's say, let's talk about what
Speaker 4: we know. It wasn't that caused the disappearance of all
Speaker 4: the humans at Hokia, not the usual suspects, things like
Speaker 4: war or maybe a disease that came through, because some
Speaker 4: Europeans came through. Because we're talking thirteen fifty before fourteen
Speaker 4: ninety two, right before some of the early early early landings,
Speaker 4: So we don't we know, it's not that and European
Speaker 4: Conquest doesn't have anything with it. Nobody came through, like
Speaker 4: you know, Hernando de Soto, because this guy was probably
Speaker 4: the first person to actually make it to Kokia, right,
Speaker 4: and he didn't arrive until fifteen forty that's crazy, almost
Speaker 4: two hundred years after it had just been you know, disappeared.
Speaker 2: He looks like he snoozed and he losed I guess.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, it's true. By the time De Soto and Co.
Speaker 1: Would have which is another show that we're pitching on,
Speaker 1: this DeSoto and yeah, yeah, we're doing a shared universe
Speaker 1: of European explorers and we're we're adapting, we're adapting it
Speaker 1: to modern tastes. So we've got our detective show. M hmm,
Speaker 1: Crystal Ball, Colombo, De Soto and Co.
Speaker 4: Is what is that?
Speaker 3: Just like a buddy comedy, I want to say, yeah,
Speaker 3: and Co being like maybe his faithful man servants.
Speaker 1: There we go, tell us who should play these roles?
Speaker 1: By the way, you know, there's a lot of talent
Speaker 1: out there.
Speaker 2: I think Matt Barry would make a really good DeSoto.
Speaker 1: Oh, yes, I could see that.
Speaker 2: Who could be? Who could be? Faithful man servants?
Speaker 1: M Well, let's let's give this the time it deserves.
Speaker 1: Let's speak about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's let it marinate a little bit more, and
Speaker 2: let's make some T shirts.
Speaker 1: And let's make some T shirts. Yes, yes, surely Matt
Speaker 1: Barry will be fine with that.
Speaker 2: I want Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now I'm now I'm wondering, who's like a hot TV actor?
Speaker 2: Now, I don't people like that show scandal a lot?
Speaker 2: Who's in that? I don't know either.
Speaker 4: I don't watch TV anymore.
Speaker 1: Let us know.
Speaker 2: Let us know who is on TV?
Speaker 1: Who is on who is on TV? Today? And would
Speaker 1: they be a good co for DeSoto and Co. It's strange, though,
Speaker 1: because he would have seen this empire in decline. He
Speaker 1: would not have seen the glory days, the vast parades right,
Speaker 1: the grand ceremonies, the hunting parties. He would have instead
Speaker 1: seen ruins and mounds. Many of the civilization's villages, the
Speaker 1: Mississippians were established near trade routes or sources of water
Speaker 1: and food, but Kahokia, like Atlanta, was different. It had
Speaker 1: plenty of resources, but it was not built on ideal land.
Speaker 1: What we mean when we say Kokia was similar to
Speaker 1: Atlanta is the following picture. In your country or your
Speaker 1: neck of the global woods, the biggest cities, the biggest
Speaker 1: cities in your area. In many cases, if you're talking
Speaker 1: about the biggest cities in the country, they will be
Speaker 1: built along sources of water. You know they'll be There
Speaker 1: will be a city by the bay, there will be
Speaker 1: a city by right, things like that, a city by
Speaker 1: a gigantic lake or coast or a coast exactly. And
Speaker 1: in the case of Atlanta, there is a river called
Speaker 1: the Chattahoochee that is in the area. But our real transports,
Speaker 1: our real sources of transit are man made. The world's
Speaker 1: busiest airport, that's a river of people and goods. We
Speaker 1: still have train lines those for a long time replace
Speaker 1: the role of rivers. Kahokia did have a ton of resources, timber, fish,
Speaker 1: that all that jazz, thanks to their position around these
Speaker 1: two rivers in their area. But they were built on
Speaker 1: land that was prone to flooding, which makes us wonder
Speaker 1: why build something there at all, much less a teeming metropolis.
Speaker 4: Well, there seems to be at least somewhat of an explanation,
Speaker 4: and it has to do with being able to travel
Speaker 4: from various places easily, especially if you were to get
Speaker 4: on the water to travel to this place, almost as
Speaker 4: if it was meant to be a place to go
Speaker 4: in the same way that the downtown was set up,
Speaker 4: almost like something that you temporarily go to and then
Speaker 4: leave and go back home. Like the entire city. Was
Speaker 4: that almost a pilgrimage city where all the Mississippians could
Speaker 4: gather for big events.
Speaker 1: A destination. Yeah right, yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right. So
Speaker 1: according to Emerson, again, it may have been a good
Speaker 1: area to explore, but not so good to live in
Speaker 1: because you know, flooding.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, no, nobody likes that.
Speaker 1: So something changed around a D one thousand. According to
Speaker 1: Emerson's that boom we mentioned earlier, it becomes this major
Speaker 1: city center. But most of the change doesn't have to
Speaker 1: do with the economy, at least according to the experts. Now,
Speaker 1: most of it has to do with what we could
Speaker 1: in general call religion. So we don't know a lot
Speaker 1: of the specifics, but we do know that the city
Speaker 1: may have been built primarily for these sacred gatherings and ceremonies.
Speaker 1: What do we mean when we say sacred gatherings and ceremonies,
Speaker 1: we don't mean it's all pretty.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, archaeological work has also uncovered a mound containing mass burials.
Speaker 3: While the extent of this is still being debated, it
Speaker 3: appears that the Mississippians may have conducted a little bit
Speaker 3: of light ritual human sacrifice, just a touch a dash
Speaker 3: of human sacrifice. And that is judging by what appears
Speaker 3: to be Okay, it's not so light. Hundreds of people,
Speaker 3: mostly young women, buried in these mass graves. Some of
Speaker 3: them were likely strangled, others possibly were bled out. Four
Speaker 3: men were found with their heads and hands cut off.
Speaker 3: Another burial pit, mostly males, had been clubbed to death,
Speaker 3: and researchers have found no specific evidence of any kind
Speaker 3: of influence of warfare or invasion from outsiders.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's that's rough. And that's again
Speaker 4: why Ben was saying something we could consider religion. Right,
Speaker 4: It's not necessarily a belief that was held by everyone,
Speaker 4: but there was at least a group of people at
Speaker 4: that Ciny center that was killing people.
Speaker 1: Well into Nole's point there, it is crucial that we
Speaker 1: recognize these were not nothing indicates that these were prisoners
Speaker 1: of war.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know what I mean, like the hands, the
Speaker 4: guys with their hands cut off and right and all that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, nothing indicates that would be a situation similar to
Speaker 1: Apocalypto or as Mesoamerican civilization is portrayed Apocalypto. Do you
Speaker 1: guys remember that movie?
Speaker 3: I remember it existed, I did not see it. I
Speaker 3: think I already written off Mel Gibson at that point.
Speaker 2: Oh, hadn't already had some weird racist outburst by then?
Speaker 1: Let's see, I can't remember.
Speaker 2: It's hard to keep track.
Speaker 1: Which is sad?
Speaker 4: Right he has he made a comeback.
Speaker 1: I don't think so. No, I think he's just because
Speaker 1: he is.
Speaker 2: He still canceled.
Speaker 1: I believe so, man, I believe so. He called some
Speaker 1: he called some law enforcements some terrible things. He's pretty
Speaker 1: virulently anti Semitic.
Speaker 2: Does that mean Passion of the Christ is canceled too?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I still you know that's Have you
Speaker 1: guys seen it now?
Speaker 4: I know I never wanted to.
Speaker 1: I watched the Satan shows up, so I watched the
Speaker 1: Satan clips predictably, but I haven't seen the whole thing.
Speaker 1: And uh me and my ex used to sit around
Speaker 1: and we'd have the DVD. This is back when DVD's
Speaker 1: were a thing, and then we would always ask ourselves,
Speaker 1: is tonight the night? You know, we were making dinner,
Speaker 1: we want to watch him? Is this the night? Where
Speaker 1: we watched Passion in the Christ not exactly a date film,
Speaker 1: And we went for years asking ourselves if tonight was
Speaker 1: the night? Eventually we had planned we said, you know what,
Speaker 1: we're never going to watch this. We're going to get
Speaker 1: a bunch of stickers that say is tonight the night,
Speaker 1: and then we're going to go to Best Buy and
Speaker 1: we're going to stick them on Passion of the Christ ds.
Speaker 1: Pretty funny, I mean, is tonight the night? Is a
Speaker 1: great sticker to put on stuff?
Speaker 3: But you just specifically sought out the Satan scenes on YouTube. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you didn't see the bludgeoning or the meaning or the anything.
Speaker 1: I wanted to see how they handled infernal powers and
Speaker 1: it was pretty spooky.
Speaker 2: Isn't he just kind of like a grizzled old man.
Speaker 1: It's if I remember correctly, it's a very very pale, hairless,
Speaker 1: feminine looking That's pretty cool. I like that look for
Speaker 1: the old devil spooky, spooky stuff. But Mel Gibson aside.
Speaker 1: In Apocalypso you will see depictions of hunting parties gathering
Speaker 1: people from different tribes outside of the city center, abducting
Speaker 1: them and using them as victims of you know, in
Speaker 1: a ritual sacrifice. This appears to be a situation where
Speaker 1: in the government of the city was sacrificing its own people,
Speaker 1: which you know, without it's tricky for us to ascribe
Speaker 1: the motives there because we don't know why they were
Speaker 1: doing it. You know, we don't know if it was
Speaker 1: tied to maybe a seasonal or a turn of the seasons,
Speaker 1: or a harvest cycle. We don't know if it was
Speaker 1: meant to be an appeasement to some sort of divine force.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're sacrificing people to the river, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, I just made that up.
Speaker 4: I don't know. Well, yeah, again, like you could, you
Speaker 4: could feasibly imagine that it would be to prevent the
Speaker 4: rivers from flooding again, right from the land from flooding.
Speaker 4: I can totally imagine. That. Doesn't mean it is real
Speaker 4: or actually happened, but I can I can see why
Speaker 4: you would want to do that or go to those
Speaker 4: lengths to prevent a mass so flood from occurring.
Speaker 1: There's another I think you pointed out earlier in that
Speaker 1: these people did not all die in the same manner.
Speaker 1: So there's another archaeologist, a guy named William I. Isminger,
Speaker 1: who is the assistant manager at the Kokuia Mounds, who
Speaker 1: posits that there must have, if not involved in sacrifice,
Speaker 1: there must have been some sort of external threat, whether
Speaker 1: it was from a local source or whether it was
Speaker 1: from something very far away. Because the city was raised
Speaker 1: and rebuilt four times between eleven seventy five and twelve
Speaker 1: seventy five. So imagine the city, the biggest city close
Speaker 1: to you as you're listening. Imagine that city collapsing and
Speaker 1: being rebuilt four times over one hundred years. We don't
Speaker 1: have a ton of cities like that here in the US.
Speaker 1: We do have Atlanta, which was burned to the ground,
Speaker 1: but that happened once.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 4: I don't want to keep harving on this, but is
Speaker 4: it I just wonder if you guys think it's possible
Speaker 4: that it was some kind of massive flooding though would occur,
Speaker 4: because I can imagine that happening four times in one
Speaker 4: hundred years, where the entire area of floods and you
Speaker 4: have to rebuild everything. I mean, I can imagine it.
Speaker 1: It's a good hypothesis, you know, because Asminger is not
Speaker 1: definitive on his opinion on the mysterious collapse of Kahokia.
Speaker 1: He says, maybe they were never attacked, but there was
Speaker 1: a threat there, and then leaders felt the need to
Speaker 1: expend a tremendous amount of time, labor, and material to
Speaker 1: protect this central ceremonial area, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And then, as we said, after reaching its population height
Speaker 1: ten to twenty thousand people, in about eleven hundred, the
Speaker 1: population shrinks and by thirteen fifty it's gone kaiser SoSE style,
Speaker 1: did they sauce Land's resources? Were they victims of social
Speaker 1: upheaval where they finally attacked? Where their droughts? Was their
Speaker 1: climate change? Or to your point, Matt, did the waters rise?
Speaker 4: We'll find out after a quick word from our sponsor.
Speaker 2: Did the waters rise one time too many? That's the question.
Speaker 3: So to uncover the clues to the city's fate, a
Speaker 3: research team led by the University of Wisconsin Madison geographers
Speaker 3: Samuel Munoz and Jack Williams performed laser diffraction particle size
Speaker 3: analysis on sediment samples from Horsesoe Lake and Oxbow Lake
Speaker 3: near Kahoka, and that is just a shape of a
Speaker 3: type of lake. The samples yielded evidence of eight different
Speaker 3: separate flood events over the past two thousand years. Drought,
Speaker 3: over exploitation of these resources, and human conflict of all
Speaker 3: been thrown in the mix as far as reasons are
Speaker 3: concerned behind the end of Gohoikia, But an earlier study
Speaker 3: of sediments from Horseshoe Lake suggested that major flooding had
Speaker 3: occurred in the area around twelve hundred.
Speaker 1: So that would be right around right after the peak population.
Speaker 4: Yeah, ooh, okay, okay. Now now I'm getting a bigger
Speaker 4: picture about just getting the peak of population and then
Speaker 4: something coming by and it being that much more catastrophic.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The team analyzed sediments from another lake that was
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty miles or for the rest of
Speaker 1: the world, one hundred and ninety kilometers downstream of Horseshoe Lake,
Speaker 1: and they found that there was conformation of some sort
Speaker 1: of catastrophic flood. The Mississippi River rose more than ten
Speaker 1: meters that's thirty three feet, and they believe it played
Speaker 1: a critical role in the total abandonment of Cohokia within
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty years. This kind of stuff is
Speaker 1: happening in the modern day, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: on monsoon planes. There are people who are continually building
Speaker 1: their houses, rebuilding them, evacuating when the waters rise. But
Speaker 1: although that is a very strong set of clues, it's
Speaker 1: not a definitive thing, you know what I mean. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: But we have to say, for all intents and purposes,
Speaker 1: at this point, the mystery remains unsolved, and the strongest
Speaker 1: indicator is probably flooding, that the city became flooded one
Speaker 1: too many times. But whatever the case, Gohokio was largely
Speaker 1: ignored by Europeans and later Americans because it didn't jibe
Speaker 1: with that official narrative. It was physical proof of a sophisticated, rich,
Speaker 1: dense urban culture existing for centuries before the arrival of Europeans,
Speaker 1: and its existence was something that a lot of Europeans
Speaker 1: didn't want people to know. And as a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: when Europeans came, a lot of native people didn't know
Speaker 1: what was going on. They would say, hey, what's that?
Speaker 1: What is that? Gigantic, massive series of Mounds, and they
Speaker 1: would shrug and say, I don't know, it's always been there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is ghosts of the past. Essentially, you guys.
Speaker 3: Can interuper one second, ask a really important question. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Almond Joy or Mounds?
Speaker 1: Which one do? They both have? Coconut?
Speaker 2: No coconut? What about you? I prefer Almond Joy. I
Speaker 2: like to have a little crunch in my coconut chocolate bar.
Speaker 2: What's the difference Mounds? Well, there's the song.
Speaker 3: It's sometimes you feel like a nuts, sometimes you don't.
Speaker 3: Almond Joy has gotten nuts. Mounds don't.
Speaker 2: Oh, they just happened to have lots of bodies with
Speaker 2: their hands and feed Come.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I got there, you got there, you
Speaker 1: got there. This also, this also inspires me. This has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with our episode, but it's a great question.
Speaker 1: Should favorite candy bar least favorite? What?
Speaker 4: And why?
Speaker 1: I think zero was.
Speaker 2: About to say zero, that's the worst one.
Speaker 1: It's the worst one. It's the worst candy bar.
Speaker 3: White chocolate is pretty garbage in general on its son,
Speaker 3: unless it's like used as an accent piece and another thing.
Speaker 1: Sure, sure why white chocolate shouldn't be just on its own,
Speaker 1: But also zero bars are somehow offensive to the palatine.
Speaker 1: It's so funny.
Speaker 2: I knew you were going to see bar.
Speaker 4: You know what's up man, I don't know that I've
Speaker 4: ever had one of those.
Speaker 1: Oh sweet summer child.
Speaker 2: Must be nice for you two have yet not been tainted.
Speaker 1: This explains why you're always so happy.
Speaker 4: I know. Hey, I'm just eating hundred grands all the time.
Speaker 3: Hundred grand is Now that's a top bar for me.
Speaker 3: Hunder Grand's the top bars, quality bar. Big fan of
Speaker 3: a what you might call it?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I remember those?
Speaker 3: Remember those had a coal commercial in the nineties too
Speaker 3: that did Yeah, kind of a claimation situation.
Speaker 1: Going on Tolboro and yes or no all day.
Speaker 2: I like Toberon. I like the way it snaps. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know what's but I like it dark chocolate
Speaker 2: to what is that? Is it toffee that's inside the.
Speaker 1: Little I think?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah so anyway, so yeah, yeah, let let us know.
Speaker 1: Also shout out to Netli Crunch. It's it's it's pretty.
Speaker 1: I think it's nostalgia that makes me like it.
Speaker 4: You know, are we changing the what we're gonna start
Speaker 4: doing on this show every week?
Speaker 1: Just talk.
Speaker 4: I'm enjoying this.
Speaker 1: This is a good This is a good question. Also,
Speaker 1: I have it on fairly solid authority that other countries
Speaker 1: are absolutely smashing the US out of the water in
Speaker 1: the candy bar game. No way, yes, way, Ted, all right,
Speaker 1: but but yes, going back, it's true. We've seen this
Speaker 1: time and time and time again. Long time listeners, you
Speaker 1: know that despite what our species propagates about itself in
Speaker 1: film and in literature, we're actually terrible at whole holding
Speaker 1: on to anything or remembering anything. We lose entire civilizations.
Speaker 1: We have no idea, We have no idea where why
Speaker 1: some civilizations just stopped. We can guess, we can make
Speaker 1: very good, educated guesses, but often we're coming to the
Speaker 1: game very very late, because our predecessors did not want
Speaker 1: to have the question answered. You know, we're talking about
Speaker 1: explorers on the African continent who, when they were explorers
Speaker 1: from Europe rather who would find these ornate ruins and
Speaker 1: then say something like, well, clearly some other Europeans been
Speaker 1: here before.
Speaker 4: Yeah, or there was some unknown race of humanity that
Speaker 4: came down from the stars or from inside the earth
Speaker 4: and created this.
Speaker 2: It's definitely lizard people.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean nine out of ten times you're looking
Speaker 1: at lizards.
Speaker 4: Yep, So let's jump to like, Okay, we've known humanity
Speaker 4: has known about these mounds for quite a while. We've
Speaker 4: known they have existed, these weird mounds. They're just out there.
Speaker 4: But it wasn't until the nineteen sixties, the nineteen sixties
Speaker 4: that the burial mounds there in the place of where
Speaker 4: Khokia was got protected status.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, that's correct. And before the nineteen sixties it
Speaker 1: was the site of a lot of heavy development. Many
Speaker 1: of the mounds were not all of them, but many
Speaker 1: were destroyed. They were leveled for farming, right or to
Speaker 1: become airfields. People built houses and highways on them. And
Speaker 1: currently you can go see this place. It's about eight
Speaker 1: miles out of Saint Louis. You can go visit this
Speaker 1: ancient loss city and explore conjecture for yourself about what
Speaker 1: led twenty thousand people to vanish from it, you know,
Speaker 1: in a very short time span.
Speaker 4: You can go to Kahokia dot org, which is c
Speaker 4: A h O K I A M O U N
Speaker 4: d S dot org if you want to learn more
Speaker 4: specifically about how to get there and.
Speaker 1: Everything, and this if this is for some of this,
Speaker 1: this is our first time hearing about this, this sounds amazing.
Speaker 1: A lost civilization in the heart of the United States.
Speaker 1: Who wouldn't want to learn more about this story, Who
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to lend a hand solving the mystery? It
Speaker 1: might be surprised. Currently about two hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 1: people visit this site every year. In comparison, about four
Speaker 1: million people visit the Gateway Arch in Saint Louis. So
Speaker 1: there's probably not going to be a line. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: should be okay, And that's that's the thing that leads
Speaker 1: us to another another topic we don't have time to
Speaker 1: explore on today's show. How many other things like this
Speaker 1: are out here. So Georgia, the state in which our
Speaker 1: podcast is base, has a rich pre Columbian history all
Speaker 1: its own. A lot of people aren't aware of it.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, the building in which we
Speaker 1: record this show sits atop an ancient sacred spring.
Speaker 2: You guys heard about this, right, I thought you were
Speaker 2: going to say Indian burial ground.
Speaker 1: That would explain so much, right, Yeah, there's a there's
Speaker 1: a cistern hidden in the tower of the Pond City
Speaker 1: Market building and it still collects water from an ancient
Speaker 1: sacred spring that was driven underground. History is a palimpsest,
Speaker 1: which I think we've said before on the show. So
Speaker 1: a palump sest is palm sest is a weird thing,
Speaker 1: but a great comparison. Back when paper was much much
Speaker 1: more expensive and time consuming and rare, people wouldn't just
Speaker 1: throw away a sheet of paper if they needed to
Speaker 1: write something down. They would erase the previous information and
Speaker 1: right over it. But because of the way they wrote,
Speaker 1: we can still see what was there before because there
Speaker 1: are indentations in the paper, And that's a lot like
Speaker 1: studying history. We're not looking at the stuff written on top.
Speaker 1: We're digging deeper. That's what the show is all about.
Speaker 1: And the strangest thing is we never quite seem to
Speaker 1: get to the bottom.
Speaker 4: And we probably won't ever. We're gonna be making this
Speaker 4: show for the next two hundred years. This whole studio
Speaker 4: is gonna flood four times the next hundred years.
Speaker 3: Well, thankfully, it's all sort of like a mini Noah's
Speaker 3: Ark kind of situation. Yeah, keep you described it as
Speaker 3: the shipping continna, but it really is. It probably would
Speaker 3: just rise with the waters. Yeah, you can just continue
Speaker 3: podcasting atop the high seas.
Speaker 4: Tarry, Are you gonna be okay to just keep it
Speaker 4: rolling while all that's happening? Yeah, she's yeah, she says. Uh. Oh,
Speaker 4: she said, of course I got this.
Speaker 2: A big yes.
Speaker 1: Sorry. Is so cool, you guys. But she did not
Speaker 1: sign up for a catastrophic flood, right she could?
Speaker 4: Che can handle.
Speaker 1: I guess most people don't.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: There are very few people who are like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: can't wait, I'm so I'm so.
Speaker 4: Hype unless you live in Miami.
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, that's right, that's right, you have family there.
Speaker 1: We hope that you enjoyed this brief exploration of the
Speaker 1: mystery of Kohokia. As Matt said, you can visit their
Speaker 1: website for more information. And we would like to hear
Speaker 1: from you. What are the what are the forgotten monuments
Speaker 1: or ruins in your neck of the woods. We talked
Speaker 1: a little bit about what was built upon ancient sites
Speaker 1: here in Georgia. With just one example, I imagine there
Speaker 1: are hundreds, if not thousands, of even better, more explicit examples,
Speaker 1: and we want to know yours.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and have you ever been to Mississippian culture mound
Speaker 4: structure anywhere or a series of mounds anywhere. Have you
Speaker 4: been to some of the mounds in Georgia or just
Speaker 4: wherever you live? We want we want to know your
Speaker 4: experience and if you've heard anything else that we should
Speaker 4: learn about, or a whole maybe a whole nother podcast
Speaker 4: we should make about that specific culture or location. Please
Speaker 4: find us on Facebook or Instagram, where we are Conspiracy
Speaker 4: Stuff and Conspiracy Stuff Show. We're also on Twitter hanging
Speaker 4: out over there. But let's just, you know, everybody just
Speaker 4: try and be nice on Twitter. Okay, let's everybody be nice.
Speaker 4: Most of y'all are super.
Speaker 2: Cool people not being nice on Twitter, Matt, I've.
Speaker 4: Just noticed on Twitter lately there's been a lot of
Speaker 4: niceness really, just Twitter at large or our Twitter. It's
Speaker 4: just very opinionated, that's all I think. Okay, So if
Speaker 4: you don't want to do that stuff, find us on
Speaker 4: our Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy, where we
Speaker 4: have the best mods on the planet. Shout out to
Speaker 4: you guys.
Speaker 2: People get cranky on there sometimes too, but it's.
Speaker 4: Okay again, those mods hold us down. Let's see what
Speaker 4: else we got.
Speaker 3: You can check out me and Ben's Instagrammy's if you
Speaker 3: want to. I'm at Embryonic Insider. I'm at Ben Bolin, Matt,
Speaker 3: I believe you are at Kim Kardashian.
Speaker 1: Where is it, Kylie Jenner?
Speaker 4: I don't know what it is this week.
Speaker 2: You are at the Famous Egg.
Speaker 4: That's it. That's it. I'm an egg. Find me like
Speaker 4: my posts, heart them whatever you do on Instagram.
Speaker 1: And that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't
Speaker 1: wait to hear your thoughts. We try to be easy
Speaker 1: to find online.
Speaker 3: Find this at the handle Conspiracy Stuff, where we exist
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Speaker 3: Conspiracy Stuff.
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