Archaeologists explore a rural field in Kansas, and a lost city emerges | Hacker News Reader

Archaeologists explore a rural field in Kansas, and a lost city emerges

latimes.com

116 pointsJerry238 comments

I visited the Cahokia museum in East St. Louis and although there’s still not much to see since most of it has not been excavated yet, it’s still fascinating there was such a vast Native American city in the Midwest. For centuries, no one had any idea it was even there, and if you’d told Americans a century ago, they probably wouldn’t have believed it was possible. Now this new discovery is a city almost as big with over 20,000 people, which contradicts how we thought the plains had only nomadic tribes chasing the buffalo. For perspective on how advanced some of these Native American cities were, I recommend you visit the ruins of Teotihuacan since half of it has been excavated.

*edit typo

Heck, as far as I can tell, even now, a lot of people who live within a few miles of the place don't really know it was there.

I don't know that it's quite accurate to say that it wasn't recognized as a major site for centuries. European settlers pretty much immediately recognized the area as evidence of a large civilization. They just didn't believe anyone related to Plains Indians were capable of monumental architecture, so they instead cooked up legends about the "mound builders" that typically insinuated that they were built by a European culture - one of the lost tribes of Israel is a popular suspect - that had since disappeared.

> one of the lost tribes of Israel is a popular suspect

As far as I know, this idea is a creation of the Mormon church, which believes (based on their foundational holy text) that all native Americans are descended from a lost tribe of Israel, and which has spent significant resources sending archeologists around North America to prove this theory. (It turns out that if you lead with your conclusions, it is hard to do science. Some of the investigations of physical evidence are alright, but the reasoning and conclusions drawn from them are farcical.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeology_and_the_Book_of_Mo...

The Lost Tribe folklore was already almost 2 centuries old by the time Smith produced the Book of Mormon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Lost_Tribes#Native_America...

Aha, fair enough. The Mormons have put a lot more work into trying to defend/substantiate this theory than its other adherents have, from what I can tell searching around the web.

it's also not unreasonable to assume that the prevalence of these myths was itself a major contributing substrate of the theology dreamed up by Joseph Smith.

I read this book some years ago: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B002FQOHTW

It was really good. But to your point, I'd say: don't assume that Europeans didn't believe the Plains Indians were incapable of the monumental architecture so much as a good many of the settlers actively wanted that knowledge suppressed, primarily for their own economic reasons (if it was on your farm land you made a living on, what would you do?)

A good portion of the potential sites were deliberately destroyed. Especially in the modern era. Huge battles about strip malls, highways, parking lots and other construction. People knew to some degree what was there and the fact that it was there was inconvenient to the other narrative: the rise of America and its glory. So artifacts were destroyed and sites suppressed.

I wonder how much of this is due to the post apocalyptic nature of our first direct interactions with natives. Something like 90% of the population had been wiped out, so it's little wonder that there were roaving bands of nomads where there were once cities. Society had broken down in a way that arguably hadn't been seen since the bronze age collapse.

It's very plausible.

Perhaps Native American cities were in a uniquely bad spot. On the one hand, plagues spread more in cities than among nomads. But on the other hand their ancestors had not lived for millennia with such germs; especially not the particular ones which the Europeans brought.

And maybe even the Bronze Age collapse was similar. Lots of cities then would have been populated by people whose ancestors had been nomads a few centuries ago. As the size and number of such cities grew, you could imagine some critical point is reached where devastating plagues recur.

That's absolutely what happened with the nations up and down the Atlantic coast, which was densely populated before (post-Viking) European contact.

Cahokia, though, was abandoned 250 years before that, in the early 1300s.

I wonder if any research has been done that may have connected to global rise of the Bubonic plague with this collapse. The Black Death came in multiple waves throughout late medieval Europe, but originated somewhere in Asia. perhaps there was a connection through an avian carrier route or a presently unknown cross-bering strait trade or migration.

I want a second the recommendation to visit Teotihuacán, but also add that really not anywhere close to half of it has been excavated yet. The impressive ceremonial core of the city, with its pyramids and dramatic Avenue of the Dead, along with a couple of nearby apartment compounds, only represents perhaps 10% of the entire city. the main reason the rest has not been excavated is that it is underneath the modern-era towns of San Juan and San Martin lying to either side of the ceremonial center.

Ah, interesting. I wonder if they could tunnel to some of it eventually, or acquire more of the property. I’d take my kids and grandkids someday!

If anyone from the LA Times is listening, even though I am accessing the website through our US VPN, I'm still fully protected by the GDPR.

The geographic block is futile and ineffective as a liability protection.

How would you expect to impose any injunctions or damages on the LA Times for disregarding an EU law?

In other words, to what court will you take your case? A US court won't hold a US company to account for breaking a non-US law. A European court has no jurisdiction to impose any penalties on a non-European company.

Does the LA Times have EU offices? How are you tying the two together otherwise?

We could ask Kim Dotcom for some advice ?

> A European court has no jurisdiction to impose any penalties on a non-European company.

In theory can’t an european court request the US gov. To hand over the CEO for illegal activities ?

Not that this case would go these lengths and I have not idea of any merit of OP’s point.

yeah - exactly that. Or just arrest them any time they visit, really.

What illegal activities? Tracking users is not illegal in the US, nor is blocking access. You could make wearing purple illegal again and ask the US to extradite folks for it, but we wouldn’t do it so you wouldn’t bother asking.

Maybe they could, but I can’t imagine the US government could legally extradict. It would be absurd for the US to allow the EU (or the other way around, for that matter) to dictate what Americans or American companies can do in America (assuming the companies have no EU presence).

I don't think the situation is as simple as you make it out to be. Due to the geoblock, latimes.com clearly does not offer its services to people in the EU in the sense of Article 3.2(a) of the GDPR. Now, Article 3.2(b) states that the GDPR would still apply if they track your behavior while you are located in the EU. Since you are using a VPN it could be argued that, from the perspective of latimes.com, your behavior takes place in the US and not the EU and that therefore the GDPR does not apply.

> If anyone from the LA Times is listening, even though I am accessing the website through our US VPN, I'm still fully protected by the GDPR.

Cite?

French explorers arrived a century later but found nothing. Disease likely wiped out Etzanoa, leaving it to recede into legend.

That is such a sad thing. While a hundred years might seem like a "long time" it really isn't. Imagine some city in 1920 (like say New York) with its population 5 million souls, was now an empty ruin.

Certainly archaeology could demonstrate disease if human remains were found. But like all things that outlive us, we forget that cities aren't permanent. Perhaps they moved on because the grass was greener elsewhere (there was a 'Little Ice Age' in 1650), or maybe political strife split their loyalties.

What will become of a hundred thousand towns across the world as the temperatures rise and their water dries up?

I live about an hour away and I’ve been down there recently to look for artifacts. No luck. It’s surprisingly difficult to learn where exactly where to look for them.

I have to ask since you are the only other Kansan I have encountered on HN.

What do you do and how did you end up there?

I get down on the Walnut river a little down stream from Etzanoa. Watching YouTube clips of artifact hunting says on the sand bars and banks after a rain is best.

Please don't go collecting artifacts like that; leave it to the pros.

Being able to collect detailed records of archaeological finds, including things like soil stratigraphy that require very specialized knowledge, is an important part of preserving the heritage associated with these artifacts. An artifact that's been stripped of its provenance has been stripped of almost all its scientific value.

It's also potentially illegal - always on state and federal lands, and even on private land you need to get the owner's permission. (http://www.kshs.org/p/kansas-antiquities-act-statute/14587)

Genuinely curious, how do archaeologists catalogue items found in sand bars? Through correlation with upstream sites? I can't imagine stratigraphy would be terribly helpful.

Cool.

And pronounced "Ar-KAN-zes" City for some reason.

It's in Kansas, not Arkansas.

Tradition says the English and French pronounced the same Native tribe differently. Through Wichita, the river is the "ar-Kansas River," but through Little Rock, it's the "Arkansaw." (I see some others say there are potentially two Sioux words at issue)

https://www.businessinsider.com/why-we-pronounce-kansas-and-...

Does someone have a non region-locked link?

https://outline.com/Adhn2h

Lots of news websites seem to think they can't function without tracking readers. I wonder how they got by when street corner newsstand were the only way to get views.

I wonder how they got by when street corner newsstand were the only way to get views.

They got by because people paid them money to buy the newspaper.

How about the free newspapers in the underground? They serve ads but don’t track you.

Not really, newspapers made most of their money from advertising. You still see people handing out free newspapers in cities, but the advertising is worth more when someone pays for the paper as it’s assumed someone is going to read it vs using it as a free stack of paper.

EX: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Express_(Washington,_D.C._ne...

Well here's the fantastic thing about newspapers and newspaper websites - you have the option of not buying them, and not visiting them. It's much nicer for the rest of us if you exercise those rights rather than complaining.

https://www.choice.com.au/electronics-and-technology/interne...

Here's a good, fairly non-technical guide on things you can do to avoid geoblocking. It's targeted at Australian shoppers but would also be relevant to Europeans wanting to access international websites.

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