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I grew up in the Philippines without ever seeing Black people around, much less knowing any. Only after I came to the United States as an international student in 1977 would I meet Black people for the first time.
Once found near present-day St. Louis in Illinois, Cahokia suddenly declined 600 years ago, and no one knows why.
Why was the ancient city of Cahokia abandoned? New clues rule out one theory. Glenn Hodges © Photograph by Ira Block, Nat Geo Image Collection Cahokia's central plaza is now part of a 2,200-acre historical site. About a thousand years ago, a city grew in the floodplain known as the American Bottom, just east of what is now St. Louis in Illinois. In a matter of decades, it became the continent’s largest population center north of Mexico, with perhaps 15,000 people in the city proper and twice as many people in surrounding areas. A couple centuries after its birth it went i...