### id250524323 Cahokia fell when its people left > Eventually, Cahokians simply chose to leave their city behind, seemingly impelled by a mix of environmental and human factors such a changing climate that crippled agriculture, roiling violence or disastrous flooding. By 1400, the plazas and mounds lay quiet. > > When Europeans first encountered the remarkable mounds at Cahokia, they saw a lost civilisation, explains Newitz in Four Lost Cities. They wondered if some faraway people had built Cahokia, then disappeared, taking with them the brilliant culture and sophistication that had once thrived in the soil of the Mississippi bottomland, where the earth is enriched by riverine floods. > > But the people of Cahokia, of course, didn't disappear. They simply left, and with them Cahokia's influence wove outward to far-flung places, where some of their most beloved pastimes are cherished to this - [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01fmsp60q2gm2km561d82t6ndt) - [[The US Lost, Ancient Megacity by Jen Rose Smith#id250524323 Cahokia fell when its people left|View in Vault]]