Step inside the lost Native American city that rivalled medieval London

Archaeology reveals that a millennium ago, North America was home to thriving urban centres as large and sophisticated as those of medieval Europe. But how and why did these rise, flourish and decline?



James Osborne
Published: November 29, 2025 at 11:20 AM

A thousand years ago, the land that is now the United States looked very different from the version many might imagine. Instead of a sparsely populated wilderness dotted with small villages, much of North America was home to dense agricultural regions and large urban centres, with cities as complex and politically powerful as those of medieval Europe.

This picture has long been obscured by the absence of preserved stone ruins, and has created an inaccurate perception of what the Native Nations of the United States looked like a millennium ago. But, thanks to the work of archaeology, anthropology and Indigenous oral history, the reality is gradually emerging.

These places weren’t anomalies. They sat at the heart of political systems, trade routes and agricultural networks that shaped life across the continent.

So why, when Europeans arrived centuries later, had these cities vanished?



More:
https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/native-american-city-cahokia-rivalled-london/

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Lost cities #8: mystery of Cahokia – why did North America's largest city vanish?

Long before Columbus reached the Americas, Cahokia was the biggest, most cosmopolitan city north of Mexico. Yet by 1350 it had been deserted by its native inhabitants the Mississippians – and no one is sure why



In its prime, about four centuries before Columbus stumbled on to the western hemisphere, Cahokia was a prosperous pre-American city with a population similar to London’s.

Located in southern Illinois, eight miles from present-day St Louis, it was probably the largest North American city north of Mexico at that time. It had been built by the Mississippians, a group of Native Americans who occupied much of the present-day south-eastern United States, from the Mississippi river to the shores of the Atlantic.

Cahokia was a sophisticated and cosmopolitan city for its time. Yet its history is virtually unknown by most Americans and present-day Illinoisans. It is one of many stories that have been bypassed in favour of the shopworn narrative – reinforced in literature and a century of American cinema – of Native Americans as backward and primitive.

“A lot of the world is still relating in terms of cowboys and Indians, and feathers and teepees,” says Thomas Emerson, professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois. “But in AD1000, from the beginning, [a city is] laid on a specific plan. It doesn’t grow into a plan, it starts as a plan. And they created the most massive earthen mound in North America. Where does that come from?”

Its mix of people made Cahokia like an early-day Manhattan, drawing residents from throughout the Mississippian-controlled region: the Natchez, the Pensacola, the Choctaw, the Ofo. Archaeologists conducting strontium tests on the teeth of buried remains have found a third of the population was “not from Cahokia, but somewhere else”, according to Emerson, who is director of the Illinois State Archaeological Survey. “And that’s throughout the entire sequence [of Cahokia’s existence.]”

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/aug/17/lost-cities-8-mystery-ahokia-illinois-mississippians-native-americans-vanish