Monks Mound, Cahokia
The National Park Service calls Monks Mound, built around 900 CE, the “largest indigenous structure north of Mexico.” The mound’s base was 291 by 236 meters (954.7 by 774.3 feet). This means the base is larger than the Great Pyramid of Khufu in Egypt. But unlike its minimalist, smooth-sided Egyptian relative, it had four terraces as it climbed toward the sky. Monks Mound was an organic earthen mound, unlike their stone-built Egyptian cousins.
Each tier was slightly smaller than the one beneath it. It was the original Community Center; it was a foundational platform for public buildings, burial mounds. Some of the terraces had gardens. Despite the name, there were no monks living on the mound in Cahokia’s heyday. The name refers to the Trappist monks who lived near it in the 1800s. Remarkably, Monks Mound was the tallest man-made structure in the United States until 1867.
