Ecocide flooding model debunked for Mississippian abandonment of Cahokia

“In a study published recently in the journal Geoarchaeology, Caitlin Rankin of the University of Illinois not only argues that the deforestation hypothesis is wrong, but also questions the very premise that Cahokia may have caused its own undoing with damaging environmental practices.

“Cahokia was the most densely populated area in North America prior to European contact,” she says. “Sometimes we think that big populations are the problem, but it’s not necessarily the population size. It’s how they’re managing and exploiting resources.”