(In Pics) The Lost Cultures of Pre-Columbian North America

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In Fourteen Hundred and Ninety Two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue and the world, for better or for worse, was changed forever. Massive transfers of wealth began from the Americas to Europe, populations of American cultures were decimated by plagues against which they had no immunity, and everyone suddenly got really into shipbuilding.

For centuries following Europe making contact with the Americas, the established narrative was the chauvinist, imperial line of cultured Europeans bringing civilization to the savages of the New World. This may have suited the Europeans, but we now know it simply wasn’t true.

Instead Columbus and those who followed found a land filled with not only extant cultures, but a rich history of older civilizations, now lost. Evidence of their existence can be found in the landscape of the Americas to this day, dotting the landscape.

Everyone knows of the Aztecs and the Inca, but they were just the lasty in a long line of cultures. Here are seven such cultures in North America which came before them, in pictures.

1. Cahokia

*In Southern Illinois, situated along the Mississippi River in Collinsville, an ancient settlement that we call* *Cahokia* rose to great power between 800-1200 AD. The massive complex once contained as many as 40,000 people and spread across nearly 4,000 acres (1,600 hectares). The most notable features of the site are hand-made earthen mounds which held temples, political buildings, and burial pits. Cahokia Mounds are a testament to the highly organized culture of the early Mississippian people who built the largest city in pre-Columbian North America (*Kent* */ Adobe Stock)*

2. Hopewell

*Cahokia not ancient enough for you? Try the Hopewell tradition, a trading network of Native American cultures interlinked and centered around the entirety of the eastern* *United States*, from the great lakes to what is now the Florida panhandle. These people used rivers to travel amongst themselves for roughly six centuries from 100 BC, and developed a sophisticated interconnected and interdependent network. They also built giant mounds, and we don’t know why (Rdikeman / *CC BY-SA 3.0*)

3. Serpent Geoglyph

*The eastern United States was not empty before the Hopewell tradition however, and the peoples who came before had been altering the landscape for centuries. One of the most stunning examples is the* *Serpent Geoglyph* alongside the Great Ohio River. The head of the snake is consuming an egg-shaped mound which may be an egg, a sun, or the remains of some kind of focal ceremonial platform. The geoglyph may have been made as early as 800 BC, possibly by the Adana culture, but it remains an enigma (Timothy Price / *CC BY 2.5*)

4. Chaco Canyon Puebloans

Over in the west, in what is now New Mexico, the Puebloans of Chaco Canyon flourished. Here they built a major trade hub, the remains of which attest of their reach: the buildings are some of the largest ever constructed in pre-Columbian United States, and there is evidence that the construction materials were gathered from great distances. The Puebloans also seemed to have an odd fixation with *polydactyly, with those having an extra finger or toe being favored by the gods (National Park Service /* *United States*)

5. Poverty Point Culture

*Probably the second true culture to arise in North America, the* *Bronze Age* Poverty Point culture along the Mississippi River was truly ancient, thriving from 1750 BC for about 400 years. Its people lived in villages which hugged the banks of the river for about 100 miles (160 km), centered around an enormous plaza of concentric rings of ditches. The site also includes an enormous earthen pyramid (US Army Corps of Engineers / *Public Domain*)

6. Watson Brake

*The Poverty Point earthworks are the second oldest, but the first large-scale earthworks are an astonishing 1,900 years older. Dating to around 3500 BC, the Watson Brake complex is older than* *Stonehenge* *or the Egyptian* *pyramids*. Its very existence has thrown our understanding of cultural development in the United States into confusion, as it has to have been constructed by a hunter gatherer society without complex social organization or trade networks. It could be the very thing that drove the emergence of society in North America (Herb Roe / *CC BY-SA 4.0*)

7. The Dorset People

From the oldest culture to one of the most enduring, the Dorset People thrived in the sub-Arctic regions of Canada from 500 BC to possibly as late as 1500 AD. They were here when Darius the Great ruled Persia, and they may have still been here when *Henry VIII* *ruled England. Surprisingly, they were completely distinct from both contemporary and following cultures in the same area, producing beautiful carvings from whale and walrus ivory (dalbera /* *CC BY 2.0*)

Top Image: Cliff Palace Overlook in Mesa Verde National Park, United States. Source: Stephen / Adobe Stock.

By Joseph Green

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Joseph Green

Joseph Green is editor for Historic Mysteries, which combines his background in English Literature with a lifelong fascination for the strange and the unexplained. Read More