The difference between before and after at the Cahokia Mounds site surprised me

I visited Cahokia Mounds back in 2016 and then again last month. The biggest change was how much more they could see with ground-penetrating radar. They found like 40 new structures and a whole new plaza area that was completely invisible before. The old maps from the 90s showed maybe half of what's actually there. Has anyone else seen a site change that much with new tech in just a few years?

2 comments

2 Comments

charles_kelly433d ago

...and it makes you wonder how much more is still hiding under our feet that we just can't see yet. The Cahokia stuff is wild because those mounds have been walked on for centuries, but the real story was underground the whole time. Ground radar is basically giving us a whole new chapter of history we never knew existed.

tara_jones943d ago

Oh man, @charles_kelly43 you're totally right about the ground radar stuff being a game changer, but I gotta gently push back on one thing. The Cahokia mounds actually weren't just walked on for centuries without people knowing - settlers and locals always knew there was something under there because the mounds themselves are obviously man-made, they just didn't realize how big and complex the city was. That's the wild part, the mounds are the tip of the iceberg but people assumed they were just burial spots or fortifications, not the remains of a whole urban center with neighborhoods and plazas. Ground radar is finally showing us the full layout that's been hiding in plain sight.