Lost Empires

The Mississippian culture is pretty interesting and not that well known. There is evidence based on traded goods and in particular artifacts from a sport they played that they had trade links over much of the continent and possibly control over a sizable portion of it.

The thing that really grinds my gears is how most of the mounds they built in and around St Louis were looted and used for backfill and building materials as St Louis grew. At one point St Louis was known as 'Mound City' but now only a few mounds remain at Cahokia Mounds (which is actually in Collinsville, IL and not Cahokia).
 
Also those huge settlements in the Amazon rain forests, which nobody knows anything about. They've only been discovered due to aerial or satellite imagery...
 
Some of these wouldn't qualify as empires, nations might be a better description

Nubians/kush especially the cultures predating Egypt
Scythians
Anasazi of the American southwest
Iroquois Confederacy
Cahokia / Mississippian civilization
"Poverty Point" culture of Louisiana. Considered to be the first "city" in N. America
 
European settlers/explorers/clergy can be blamed for their ignorance when it comes to preserving the ancient ruins of cultures that arose before they arrived in those areas, no doubt.
Any light anyone can shine on the Great Zimbabwe culture? Indus Valley culture? Nazca?
Who in your opinion built the Stonehenge?
 
daft said:
Who in your opinion built the Stonehenge?
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Well - various people in Wiltshire between the Mesolithic and Bronze Age. I don't think there's much mystery about that. The difficulties with Stonehenge are simply that it's a very complex site that went through phases of construction and use over a period of thousands of years, and it's hard to unravel precisely what was there at different times, how people used it, and why.
 
I've always been partial to the Kingdom of Kongo myself. I believe the only reason we don't know more about it is because most of the Portuguese documents haven't been studied, which means that, unlike most examples of "lost empires," we have a decent chance of learning a great deal more about it.
 
Plotinus said:
Well - various people in Wiltshire between the Mesolithic and Bronze Age. I don't think there's much mystery about that. The difficulties with Stonehenge are simply that it's a very complex site that went through phases of construction and use over a period of thousands of years, and it's hard to unravel precisely what was there at different times, how people used it, and why.
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While this is the main bulk of important and unanswered questions around sites such as Stonehenge, it is also important evidence. The simple fact of its longevity and the effort invested in it proves that Stonehenge is an embodiment (for lack of a better word, coffee isn't kicking in) of some form of knowledge, that the people of the time deemed important enough to preserve in such a monumental way. This would also suggest that the society/ies that built and used Stonehenge were not only large and complex, but also relatively stable, as in - it took dozens of generations and unknown wars and conquests for them to forget what the big rocks are for.
 
Or perhaps numerous people saw big rocks, concluded that they were important, but came up with different ideas of what they were for? There are plenty of examples of the same - I quite like the stories from Iron Age Greece of communities rediscovering Bronze Age graveyards and venerating them as if they were their own ancestors, as if to say 'we have always been here'. The catch was that they often gave ancestor-worship at any old ruin - including ditches and bridges - and even one 'tumulus' called the 'Mound of Pelops' - which, when actually excavated relatively recently, turned out to be an entirely natural formation with nobody buried in it at all.
 
These are indeed very good and easily demonstrable points, with sites such as the pyramids, Tiwanaku, etc., but the initial impetus to their construction still stands as a testimony of the importance of... whatever they were conceived for.
 
Flying Pig said:
Or perhaps numerous people saw big rocks, concluded that they were important, but came up with different ideas of what they were for? There are plenty of examples of the same - I quite like the stories from Iron Age Greece of communities rediscovering Bronze Age graveyards and venerating them as if they were their own ancestors, as if to say 'we have always been here'. The catch was that they often gave ancestor-worship at any old ruin - including ditches and bridges - and even one 'tumulus' called the 'Mound of Pelops' - which, when actually excavated relatively recently, turned out to be an entirely natural formation with nobody buried in it at all.
Click to expand...

A similar example is that in Britain, anglo-saxon graveyards often appear in and around what would have been abandoned roman ruins. Not just Temples or or other spiritually significant places, but villas and other kinds of settlements.

(This is based on a vague memory from watching Time Team so don't put too much stock on it)
 
Flying Pig said:
Or perhaps numerous people saw big rocks, concluded that they were important, but came up with different ideas of what they were for? There are plenty of examples of the same - I quite like the stories from Iron Age Greece of communities rediscovering Bronze Age graveyards and venerating them as if they were their own ancestors, as if to say 'we have always been here'. The catch was that they often gave ancestor-worship at any old ruin - including ditches and bridges - and even one 'tumulus' called the 'Mound of Pelops' - which, when actually excavated relatively recently, turned out to be an entirely natural formation with nobody buried in it at all.
Click to expand...

Yes, and even at the time there may have been no single "meaning". A social event can mean quite different things to the different participants and viewers, and it's often a mistake to suppose that there is "a" meaning or significance that can be uncovered. Think of Clifford Geertz's Balinese cockfights!
 
What civilization built Tiwanaku? What happened to them?

Are there any differences between the 3 great Pyramids of Giza and other ancient Egyptian Pyramids?
 
daft said:
What civilization built Tiwanaku? What happened to them?
Click to expand...

Nobody really knows.

Are there any differences between the 3 great Pyramids of Giza and other ancient Egyptian Pyramids?
Click to expand...

Yes, they are much bigger than most other pyramids, well two of them are, at least. They are also true pyramids, unlike most of those built before them, which were stepped or had some odd angle breaks. Look up the bent pyramid.
 
Well its a horrid cliché but it's inevitable that we are drawn to our own history. There are baffling iron age mounds and stone circles near where I live. I'd just love to walk the sites with one of those people who lived there and see what they
think of what we've done with the place.

They just left so little of their culture... Or maybe they didn't and who we are now wouldn't be so alien to them.

(Oh and Avebury is soooo much better than Stonehenge!)
 
teccuk said:
(Oh and Avebury is soooo much better than Stonehenge!)
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Seconded. The way Stonehenge is contained, roped off, gift shop to your left... killed the experience, for me. Impressive assemblage of rocks, sure, but all a bit lifeless. Avebury still has a realness about it, a sense of place.
 
Traitorfish said:
Seconded. The way Stonehenge is contained, roped off, gift shop to your left... killed the experience, for me. Impressive assemblage of rocks, sure, but all a bit lifeless. Avebury still has a realness about it, a sense of place.
Click to expand...

And a pub in the middle of it!
 
Flying Pig said:
Or perhaps numerous people saw big rocks, concluded that they were important, but came up with different ideas of what they were for? There are plenty of examples of the same - I quite like the stories from Iron Age Greece of communities rediscovering Bronze Age graveyards and venerating them as if they were their own ancestors, as if to say 'we have always been here'. The catch was that they often gave ancestor-worship at any old ruin - including ditches and bridges - and even one 'tumulus' called the 'Mound of Pelops' - which, when actually excavated relatively recently, turned out to be an entirely natural formation with nobody buried in it at all.
Click to expand...
Reminds me of faerie forts.
 
hobbsyoyo said:
The Mississippian culture is pretty interesting and not that well known. There is evidence based on traded goods and in particular artifacts from a sport they played that they had trade links over much of the continent and possibly control over a sizable portion of it.

The thing that really grinds my gears is how most of the mounds they built in and around St Louis were looted and used for backfill and building materials as St Louis grew. At one point St Louis was known as 'Mound City' but now only a few mounds remain at Cahokia Mounds (which is actually in Collinsville, IL and not Cahokia).
Click to expand...

Apparently there were(was) still a native tribe which built mounds with temples constructed on top of them at the time of De Soto's expedition. They claimed to be direct descendants of the Mississippi (Mound) culture. Supposedly wiped out by disease brought over by the Spaniards.
Any chance of that being true?
 
Can anybody enlighten me about Harappan Culture(Indus Valley Culture), considered among ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt to be cradles of Civilization? Why did it(they) disappear? Did they leave any written texts? Their cities(ruins) indicate Harappans were brilliant city builders.
 
daft said:
Apparently there were(was) still a native tribe which built mounds with temples constructed on top of them at the time of De Soto's expedition. They claimed to be direct descendants of the Mississippi (Mound) culture. Supposedly wiped out by disease brought over by the Spaniards.
Any chance of that being true?
Click to expand...
Oh, yeah, there's no debate about it among historians. It was definitely a "post-Classical" phase of the culture- the chiefdoms don't seem to have been as expansive and the trade-networks were less extensive- but there's still a pretty complex monumental culture into the 16th century.

They weren't wiped out by disease, as such, their descendants still exist today in tribes like the Apalachee, but the chiefdoms and associated trade-networks pretty much came apart.
 
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