What on Earth Happened to the Vanished Native American Civilization?

What Doomed a Sprawling City Near St. Louis 1,000 Years Ago?

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Around 1300 AD, Cahokia did not collapse because of a man-made disaster (such as deforestation). There is no physical evidence for that hypothesis. It is merely a product of the prejudice that the native people must have done something wrong. On the contrary, disasters like landslides and floods caused by deforestation were brought about by the white settlers who later moved into the region. Cahokia’s decline was due to the Little Ice Age that struck at the time, along with political and cultural causes. The people who lived in Cahokia were not wiped out. They simply changed their way of life, dispersing to live in scattered settlements.