Monks Mound
How did a Native American society without draft animals, metal tools, or the wheel organize the labor to raise 22 million cubic feet of earth, basket by basket, into a stable 30-meter platform on soft floodplain soil — and why, at the height of its power, did the city built around it empty out?
c. 900-1200 CE, main construction c. 1050-1200 CE · Cahokia Mounds, near Collinsville, Illinois, United StatesAdded July 2026