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Native America
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00:01America more than 500 years ago a hundred million people live in some of
00:09the greatest civilizations on earth connected by social networks spanning
00:14continents they build monumental cities and in some as a sacred ritual they
00:24perform human sacrifice human beings have to make blood offerings so that the
00:32gods then will release into the world the powers to recreate life one of the
00:38biggest cities is in the middle of the United States barely mentioned in
00:44textbooks its true name is lost to history
00:50today it's called Cahokia Cahokia would have been inhabited with thousands of
00:56people all coming here to live in this one large city Cahokia boasts one of the
01:02biggest pyramids in the world and it's built with an eye to the sky
01:10these buildings are almost all celestially aligned and so the question becomes why
01:19across two continents people share a belief that their lives are intimately
01:25connected to the heavens you build a mound to get closer to the Creator that's
01:31what's sacred we come from the stars we are honorary guests on this planet and we
01:38are guardians of life on this planet over thousands of years Native Americans
01:45invent unique systems of math writing science and spirituality and build their
01:52beliefs into their cities people believe that they have achieved a kind of replica of
01:58what the gods wanted on earth at the intersection of modern scholarship and native
02:05knowledge is a new vision of America and the people who built it
02:12knowledge is a new vision of America this is Native America
02:30just outside St. Louis on the banks of the Mississippi is a giant hill it doesn't appear to be that
02:40unusual
02:42except that this is one of the flattest areas in North America so what's this mound doing here
02:59the Choctaw people have some answers their ancestors are mound builders this were built a long time ago by a
03:12whole bunch of people whose blood runs through my veins now and that's a that's a that is a powerful
03:18thing to feel that
03:26energy
03:27it is a place where people have a sense of a beam people have a sense of a belonging where
03:33somebody came from
03:34it's a portal to look into the past
03:42it's a portal to look into the past
03:43a thousand years ago
03:45native Americans
03:46native Americans pile earth by the basket load to construct one of the largest mounds in the world
03:53it towers over ten stories high
03:58its base covers an area larger than ten football fields
04:04and its flanked by over a hundred other mounds
04:10they are part of a bustling city
04:13with temples and palaces
04:17markets and plazas
04:20sports fields and thousands of homes
04:28in the year eleven hundred thirty thousand people live here
04:33that's more than London at the time
04:41this is Cahokia
04:46Cahokia would have been an ancient New York City
04:49it would have been fully inhabited with thousands of people
04:51potentially speaking different dialects or different languages
04:58it's as big as most other early city complexes anywhere in the world
05:03from China to Egypt to South America
05:13who built Cahokia is a mystery
05:19but other mound building cultures like the Choctaw
05:23believe mounds have a spiritual power connected to the sky
05:29the mounds were built so that we could be closer
05:32to the Creator
05:34it's that connection with the Creator
05:36who strived for the sky
05:38we get some data points over in this region
05:43new research is revealing Cahokia's sky connection
05:47is built right into the city
05:49that line there is the end of it
05:52these buildings are almost all celestially aligned
05:58and there are even more connections to the sky
06:02a large ring of cedar posts
06:04similar to England's Stonehenge
06:07human sacrifices carefully timed to a celestial event
06:13and sculptures of goddesses evoking ancient legends of the sky
06:22the mystery of Cahokia
06:24is part of something much larger going on across the Americas
06:29from the very origins of Native America
06:33over 10,000 years ago
06:35peoples across both continents are fixated on the sky
06:43the Maya
06:44the Maya
06:45the Inca
06:45the Aztec
06:47all build cities inspired by
06:50aligned to
06:52and synchronized with the cosmos
06:56why go to such lengths to build cities of the sky?
07:06some answers can be found in the ultimate celestial city
07:14it's located just outside Mexico City
07:18the name of its builders is lost to history
07:23the Aztec discover it as a rune
07:26and name it Teotihuacan
07:30the place where the gods were born
07:40at its height between the first and fifth centuries
07:43about a thousand years before Cahokia
07:48Teotihuacan has a population of 125,000 people
07:54it covers eight square miles
07:56an area larger than the walled city of Rome
08:01at the heart of the city
08:03is one of the largest structures in the ancient world
08:08its base is the size of 10 football fields
08:12as large as the Egyptian pyramid of Giza
08:18the Aztecs called it the Sun Pyramid
08:23the Sun Pyramid is the largest mound in Teotihuacan
08:29the ceremonies that would have taken place
08:32associated with the Sun Pyramid
08:34would have been quite spectacular
08:37archaeologist Nawa Sugiyama is excavating an observation platform
08:44thousands of people would make pilgrimages here
08:47from these platforms
08:50the most powerful Teotihuacanos
08:52would oversee ceremonies associated with the Sun Pyramid
08:57this platform would have been overlooking a large plaza
09:01where a lot of people would have been able to come in
09:04and conduct rituals
09:08Nawa estimates within a single generation
09:11workers moved nearly a million cubic meters of stone
09:15to build the Sun Pyramid
09:17the reason that people would have agreed to build such a large monument
09:22is because they themselves believed in what the building represented
09:28what do the pyramids represent?
09:32Nawa works closely with historian of religion
09:36David Carrasco
09:37they hike down the city's central road
09:41the Avenue of the Dead
09:43to Teotihuacan's second largest monument
09:46the Pyramid of the Moon
09:47the view at the end is worth it
09:57Teotihuacan has two of the greatest pyramids of the world
10:01well, if you look at them
10:02you'll notice that they're very similar to the mountains
10:05around this ceremonial city
10:08in fact, they are human-made mountains
10:12the names of these man-made mountains
10:15the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon
10:18suggest a connection to the sky
10:24long before Cahokia
10:26or Teotihuacan
10:28as early as 11,000 BCE
10:31deep in the Amazon
10:33Native Americans are observing the cycles of the Sun
10:38their earliest art painted on a cliff face
10:41is one of the oldest calendars in the world
10:46they record the different positions of the sunset throughout the year
10:51from its furthest north, the summer solstice
10:55to its furthest south, the winter solstice
11:01people discovered the calendar
11:03they discovered the repetition of the cycles
11:06and they began throughout the Americas
11:08to measure some of their own human lives
11:12and their ceremonies on the passage of the sky
11:18just as the earliest Native Americans
11:20transform a cliff face into a calendar
11:24the people of Teotihuacan
11:26build a calendar into the very design of their city
11:30everything from the orientation of the Sun Pyramid
11:33to even the measurement of the buildings itself
11:36they're referencing specific astronomical alignments
11:4352 days after the summer solstice
11:47the Sun sets on the Sun Pyramid's east-west axis
11:53it sets along this axis again
11:56260 days later
11:58the numbers 52 and 260 are sacred in Mesoamerica
12:07their calendar system is built around the solar year of 365 days
12:13and a ritual year of 260 days
12:17a number they associate with human pregnancy
12:21the first day of these calendars
12:24synchronize every 52 years
12:27marking a complete cycle
12:30on this day
12:32the Teotihuacanos perform a ceremony
12:35to reenact the creation of the world
12:38at the beginning of time when all was in darkness
12:41the deities themselves gathered here in this place
12:44and around a great fire
12:46they made sacrifices of themselves
12:49and in making these sacrifices
12:51they created a new cosmic era
12:54to mark this moment of creation
12:58Teotihuacanos conduct the new fire ceremony
13:01at the base of the Sun Pyramid
13:07the Aztec describe their own version of this ceremony
13:11in one of their few surviving books
13:24in the end of the year
13:26the modern nation
13:33single ritual
13:36английism
13:38in the last year
13:40the Keim
13:40the žena
14:05All fires in all the land would be lit from the single fire from the Sun Pyramid.
14:14The fire ceremony resets the calendar cycle and renews the world.
14:24These were sky watchers, these were people who were very observant and what they came
14:30to feel was that they could actually build buildings, carry out rituals which would be
14:34almost exact replicas of what they saw in the surrounding hills as well as in the patterns
14:40of the sky above.
14:42The rulers of Teotihuacan designed the city to mirror the world around them and the heavens
14:49above.
14:52On this sacred stage, they orchestrate rituals connecting human life to the cosmos.
15:01These ceremonies attract thousands of people from hundreds of miles away.
15:09Could pilgrimage and sky worship also explain the giant mounds of Cahokia 1,000 years later?
15:22Across the eastern United States and Canada, there are over 10,000 sacred mounds, some more
15:29ancient than the Egyptian pyramids.
15:33At one of these, Naniwaya, descendants of the people who built it, still gather today.
15:47Ian Thompson and Les Williston are members of the Choctaw Nation.
15:55They are on a pilgrimage to their ancestral mound deep in the Mississippi backcountry.
16:01The earth mounds come out of a long cultural continuity for Choctaw people and other southeastern
16:06tribes.
16:24In the 1840s, most of the Choctaw Nation and other tribes were forcibly moved from Mississippi
16:33to Oklahoma.
16:35Thousands died.
16:37Thousands died.
16:38That journey is known as the Trail of Tears.
16:48After more than 150 years in the hands of the state of Mississippi, the Choctaw recently regained control
16:56of their ancestral mound, Naniwaya.
16:59Naniwaya.
17:01Naniwaya.
17:01Naniwaya.
17:02Naniwaya.
17:10Naniwaya.
17:21Naniwaya.
17:23Naniwaya.
17:25Naniwaya.
17:26Shaman is a Choctaw elder.
17:29The mountains used to revere the sun.
17:36Every morning, the shaman or the holy man would raise his hand up and help the sun rise.
17:48And then at night, the shaman or medicine man came and they helped the sun lower itself
17:55down to the earth.
18:01Choctaw traditions link the mounds with the sky.
18:26The shaman or the holy man would raise his hand up and help the sun.
19:02Statues of this celestial goddess have been excavated at
19:06mound sites throughout the Mississippi region, including Cahokia.
19:12It's likely many of those mounds were inspired by the sky.
19:18But with 120 mounds, the entire city of Cahokia is designed around sky worship.
19:28I remember an early trip past Cahokia.
19:34My father was a truck driver, and occasionally as a little kid, six or seven, I would go with
19:39him and we would drive past it.
19:44I remember feeling like, wait a minute, like, what's this doing here?
19:48You know, what is this?
19:51That drive past the mounds sparked a career for archaeologist Tim Pocketot.
19:57His research suggests that Cahokia, like Teotihuacan, is laid out on a celestial blueprint.
20:06The mounds are positioned in various ways, you know, to reference something.
20:11It's not, they're not arbitrarily, randomly placed.
20:13They never just dump dirt.
20:17Tim and his team are looking for evidence of that celestial blueprint just west of Cahokia's
20:23largest mound.
20:25They use a gradiometer, an instrument that detects holes where posts once stood.
20:31I'm seeing very quiet readings, and then it jumps up again, so it could be consistent
20:36with post holes.
20:39The original posts have rotted away, but new ones have been erected in their place.
20:47They form a ring with one post in the middle.
20:51It's known as Woodhenge.
20:56Woodhenge is a large ring of sizable cedar posts.
21:02And if you look from across that post to the perimeter post, you can watch the sun on the
21:09horizon rise and set, and you'd know when the solstices were.
21:15Just like the sun disk paintings in the Amazon, Woodhenge is a solar calendar.
21:22It can be used to determine when to plant and harvest, and when to gather for ceremonies.
21:31This is a big ritual ground.
21:34Inside the circle is some kind of sacred space, and you'd go there for certain ceremonial events.
21:41Like the sun pyramid in Teotihuacan, the location of Woodhenge is precisely aligned.
21:48On the equinox, the sun rises to the east, directly in front of Monk's Mound, Cahokia's largest earthen pyramid.
22:00On a major event, let's say an autumn feast tied to the equinox, there'd be thousands of people on the
22:07move, coming in from all directions.
22:15Artifacts from Cahokia show just how far pilgrims traveled.
22:20This carved stone pipe was found 500 miles away.
22:25It depicts a player of an ancient Native American game called Chunky.
22:31In one hand, he holds a spear, which was thrown at a rolling stone desk.
22:39Hundreds of Chunky stones have been excavated throughout the United States.
22:45Cahokia-style Chunky stones start showing up hundreds of miles away.
22:50So the thought may be that you play against people, either you make friends or you resolve disputes instead of
22:58going to war, or you play Chunky.
23:00The Chunky stones and the rise of Cahokia date to 1100 to 1400, a time of unusual peace throughout the
23:09Mississippi region.
23:14People in cities like Cahokia and Teotihuacan use games, ceremonies, and sky beliefs to extend their influence across vast distances.
23:28In South America, it's the same strategy that will build one of the biggest empires on Earth, the Inca.
23:46In the 1400s, about 200 years after Cahokia's height, the Inca rule an empire of 12 million people in an
23:56area that encompasses six modern South American nations.
24:01Archaeologist Noah Corcoran Tadd believes the Inca create their vast empire by using a ceremonial network centered on the sun.
24:12In Peru, he finds evidence of this network, sacred markers the Inca called huacas.
24:21Huacas may be rock outcrops, they may be springs, but they may also be unusual things in the landscape.
24:31This is very difficult for Western mindset to get around, but it's a category of particularly charged places that form
24:39this wider sacred world of the Incas.
24:44Noah is using historic chronicles in GPS to map the huacas.
24:51They're leading him to the political capital of the Inca Empire, Cusco.
24:59Here, he finds the most sacred huacas, the Coricancha, the Temple of the Sun.
25:07The Coricancha is one of the most important buildings that we still have in Cusco today.
25:14It's located at the center of Inca Cusco.
25:20It's understood to be the primary temple of the Sun, Inti, who is the deified solar being.
25:38The��料 of the Sun, Inti, who is the deified solar being.
25:45The community of Minerva is in Cusco.
25:47The Vienna of the Sun is coming in the village of Cusco.
25:51The day of the Sun is coming in the village of the north.
25:52The city is coming in the village of Cusco.
25:54The Yank is coming in the village of the West and there is another village of the Uman.
25:561
25:582
26:034
26:055
26:28The Inca believed they were children of the sun god, Inci, who instructs them to build
26:35Cusco in the Coricancha.
26:44The foundation of these inner chambers still remain, but most of the temple was destroyed
26:50in the mid-1500s by the Spanish, who built a church on top of it.
26:57The Spanish destroy many other huacas as well, but left a record of where they may have been.
27:02The Spanish colonial sources talk about at least 328 huacas in the Cusco landscape, and
27:10they suggest that they were a single coherent system centered on the Coricancha in a series
27:16of up to 42 lines that radiated out of the Coricancha into the broader valley.
27:24To the Inca, the Temple of the Sun is the center of a spiritual universe that radiates out
27:31across the empire.
27:33The lines connecting the huacas form a ceremonial network called sekes.
27:53When I come to huaca, we activate the energy first with prayers and with intentions, and we
28:03send that energy through these sekes systems.
28:07Shamans like Puma continue an unbroken Inca spirituality worshiping at these huacas.
28:15They offer sacred coca leaves, candy to signify the sweetness of life, and one of their most
28:23holy ancient offerings, a stillborn llama fetus.
28:28The most important element in this offering is the llama fetus.
28:32It represents that which is yet to be born.
28:35We celebrate in our spirituality that we are constantly being reborn.
28:43The Inca pathway, the Kapahnyang, was marked by our Inca ancestors in order to lead people
28:52in the right way to service, to ceremony, and to communion.
29:05What we put in these offerings is elements that connect us to the sun, to the moon, and to
29:10Mother Earth.
29:18The Inca sacred landscape also has a practical side.
29:25Inca rulers enlist masses of laborers that turn portions of the seke system into a 25,000-mile
29:34road network.
29:40The Inca road stretches across six modern nations, from 15,000-foot peaks in the Andes to the depths
29:48of the Amazon rainforest, connected by stunning engineering like the world's earliest cable
29:56bridges.
29:57It is the longest road network in the Americas until the U.S. interstate highway system is
30:04built in the 1950s.
30:09We tend to think of roads as a practical infrastructure, but they were much more than that as well.
30:17In many cases, they also move through sacred landscapes.
30:25It's drawing on this much longer tradition that understands humans as belonging into a much wider, complicated
30:32set of interrelationships with the natural world.
30:36The Inca seke system creates an infrastructure of roads, bridges, and beliefs that connects
30:44a vast empire.
30:48The Inca harnessed the spiritual power of the sun and concentrated in a city, Cusco.
31:02Is Cahokia also laid out to harness the power of celestial bodies?
31:11It looks good.
31:12To find out, archaeologists Melissa Baltus and Sarah Byrus are taking to the sky.
31:19We're really interested in a human-made feature that we think is located in this area here.
31:25So we're hoping to get some data points over in this region, just south of where we're
31:30standing now.
31:31To uncover Cahokia's urban plan, they're using a laser-based aerial mapping system called LIDAR.
31:39There's been a lot of modern building projects. The highway goes through here.
31:43So we're hoping that the LIDAR will actually show us the archaeological features
31:47and give us a totally new look at this ancient Native American city of Cahokia.
32:05LIDAR uses quick bursts of lasers fired from a drone to create a precise 3D map.
32:14Once processed, the LIDAR data can be used to peel back trees, modern development, and layers of time.
32:22Let's take a look at the data.
32:24Oh, wow. Look how clear that is.
32:27Okay, so we've got Monk's Mountain to the north.
32:29The LIDAR reveals the city is laid out with remarkable precision.
32:36Each mound follows along the exact same alignment to form a city grid.
32:42The grid is centered along a feature rediscovered only today, a roadway.
32:49This looks like a causeway running north, doesn't it?
32:53Maybe it's a little bit off north.
32:58Discovery of this long straight road leading to Cahokia's largest mound is bringing the city's precise alignment into focus.
33:08What about on the next one?
33:09Using the LIDAR data, we're able to determine that this is definitely a causeway made by human beings early on
33:16during Cahokia's formative years.
33:17And it aligns Cahokia to its city grid, which is 5 degrees offset of north.
33:24The LIDAR reveals the road and the entire city of Cahokia is aligned to 5 degrees off north.
33:34Often celestial cities are laid out on a north-south grid to align to the sun.
33:41Did the Cahokians make a mistake?
33:45Or is their city aligned to something else in the sky?
33:53Clues may lie with the most celebrated astronomers of the ancient world, the Maya.
34:01Maya cities flourished between the years 100 and 900, a period twice as long as the golden age of Rome.
34:12The Maya tracked the positions of many stars and planets with an accuracy within one day every 400 years.
34:22Their astronomical knowledge would not be matched in Europe until 1,000 years later, the time of Galileo.
34:35The Maya constructed cities and buildings that were in some way aligned to the sun.
34:42Pepe Juchim is Maya.
34:44He grew up among these ruins and is now a leading archaeologist in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and site director of
34:53Uxmal.
34:56The sun was the giver of life.
34:59It was the fundamental nourishment that regulated the life of the Maya.
35:05Here at Uxmal, one magnificent building stands out.
35:12The governor's palace is one of the most beautiful structures in this region because of its exquisite lines and finishes.
35:24This is a primary indicator that this was a very important place.
35:31Uxmal is built on the common north-south grid.
35:35But Uxmal's greatest king, Chaung Cha Koknau Uhau, builds the governor's palace twisted 15 degrees off this axis.
35:45For so many years, people had noticed that the governor's palace at Uxmal seemed a little bit out of whack.
35:54Art historian Mary Miller finds the reason why, written on the building's facade.
36:03The house of the governor is covered with thousands of glyphs, the Maya form of writing.
36:10Maya writing is one of the few full writing systems that ever evolved in the history of humanity.
36:18Maya writing contains more than 800 characters.
36:23Some are like letters, representing certain sounds.
36:28Others, like those on the governor's palace, represent entire words, names, or concepts.
36:37The repetition of one particular glyph is a clue to the building's orientation.
36:42There were dozens and dozens of these fantastic masks of Chaak the rain god piled up in great stacks across
36:52the house of the governor.
36:54Under each and every eye is this sign for Venus.
36:59The house of the governor contains close to 350 glyphs representing Venus.
37:05And Maya astronomer priests write an entire book to track Venus, the brightest body in the sky after the sun
37:15and moon.
37:16There are four surviving Maya books.
37:19And it is really quite striking that one is entirely devoted to the sequence of Venus.
37:27Mary stands in the doorway where an astronomer priest would observe its elaborate cycle on the horizon.
37:36Venus would line up once every eight years with maximum brightness, with the principal doorway of the house of the
37:43governor.
37:45The house of the governor is carefully positioned to align, not with the sun, but with Venus.
37:56This building was aligned from the very beginning to Venus.
38:02It's the harvest of perhaps a thousand years of knowledge about Venus.
38:07And imbuing Venus with this much meaning.
38:13But why Venus?
38:18Understanding the cycles of the sun helps guide agriculture.
38:22Why track other celestial bodies?
38:31To investigate, Mary travels deep into the jungles of Chiapas, Mexico, to the ruins of another Maya city, Bonampak.
38:52The Bonampak murals offer an extraordinary window into life at the end of the 8th century.
38:59Here we find kings and captives, victors, the vanquished, all arrayed across three rooms of a small painted structure.
39:11One mural records a scene of the ritual torture and sacrifice of prisoners of war.
39:16They were captured by the warriors of Bonampak's king, Yahao Chan Muwan.
39:24Mary photographs the mural with an infrared camera to reveal hidden details.
39:35What we see are captives.
39:39Some are still standing, kneeling.
39:45Others have had their fingernails ripped right out.
39:51Above the captives is a barely visible row of glyphs.
39:57The infrared camera enhances their outlines, which are then carefully painted to bring the mural back to life.
40:07It reveals symbols like those found on the governor's palace.
40:12Stars.
40:15The glyphs portray constellations.
40:20Above the scene of sacrifice, preside constellations.
40:25And it may very well be that this is how the constellations aligned on the morning of the sacrifice.
40:34Bonampak's ruler may have timed the execution of his captives to the appearance of these stars in the sky.
40:48One of the things we see at both Uxmal and at Bonampak is how the power of the stars underpinned
40:58the very notions of Maya statecraft.
41:03Maya leaders look to heavenly bodies like Venus to guide decisions of war, peace and ritual sacrifice.
41:13And a new discovery is revealing that Cahokia's leaders, hundreds of years later, are also looking to the sky to
41:21govern their city.
41:24I brought the field maps and then I brought a couple of other illustrations here.
41:30Tim Pocketot is meeting Chris Hedman, a physical anthropologist investigating Mound 72.
41:38In the center of the mound is where we start getting some of the sacrificial pits.
41:43Right.
41:45Mound 72 reveals Cahokian share a key ritual practice with the Maya.
41:52Human sacrifice.
41:57In the very center of Mound 72 is a mass burial containing 53 young women.
42:04All killed at the same time, all buried in the same place, all oriented in the same direction.
42:11In Bonampak, the Maya sacrifice prisoners of war.
42:16But here in Cahokia, this burial is nearly all women.
42:21The fact that they're all young, they're reproductive age women, is reflective of a focus on fertility.
42:28It seems much more tied to cosmologic beliefs, to some sort of religious event.
42:37To Chris and Tim, the burial, women, all facing the same direction, suggests a cosmic alignment.
42:48And native oral traditions connect women to the moon.
42:53The moon is tied mostly to women in the many native groups in the eastern woodlands.
42:59It's also tied to fertility and the earth and agriculture, so possibly then these women are connected or offered in
43:07some way to those powers.
43:12The moon has a monthly cycle, but also follows a longer pattern.
43:22Every 18 and a half years, it rises at its most northern position, and then two weeks later, at its
43:30most southern.
43:32This celestial event last happened in 2006, and won't happen again until 2025.
43:41It's called a lunar standstill.
43:46Tim calculates the position of the lunar standstill and the direction the bodies are pointing.
43:53They are aligned with a major moonrise that happens once every 19 years or so.
44:00Tim believes the 53 women are buried in relationship to this once-in-a-generation moon event.
44:07The discovery of Mount 72 and its lunar orientation is forcing Tim to rethink the entire city's celestial alignments.
44:21But it also raises a more fundamental question.
44:25Why sacrifice?
44:27It is a ritual once practiced by nearly every world culture, from slaying young men and women on altars in
44:36Greece,
44:37to spectacles of executions at the Colosseum in Rome,
44:42to sacrificing servants in the tombs of China's Shang Dynasty rulers.
44:49Even the foundational story of Christianity evokes God sacrificing his own son to save the world.
44:59We find the whole notion of offering another human being to the gods to be an extremely difficult place to
45:07go in our own heads.
45:12But when I understand the principles that lie behind it, I can understand it.
45:21In Mesoamerican thought, the gods took their own blood to shape humans.
45:27And so what the gods said that humans needed to offer in return was human blood.
45:36What human beings have to do is make offerings, blood offerings, offerings of animals.
45:42And it's only in the giving of these gifts that the gods then will release into the world the agricultural
45:49productivities,
45:51the powers to recreate life in both human form and in other natural forms.
45:57Aligning the bodies in the earth with the moon moving in the sky is in a way linking the sky
46:03and the earth and life which is above and death which is beneath here in Mount 72.
46:13A new picture is emerging of Cahokia.
46:16This Mississippi city of mounds shares the same cosmological beliefs as the great cities of Central and South America.
46:28Its people perform human sacrifice as a sacred ritual,
46:33have a deep understanding of the cycles of the sun and moon,
46:38and place great importance on celestial alignments.
46:46But Cahokia's city grid is five degrees off north,
46:50and not directly aligned to the sun or moon.
46:55So what is Cahokia's celestial alignment?
47:00Tim revisits the city grid.
47:04He maps the location of the sun at its southern and northern extremes each year.
47:09Then he maps the moon at its furthest north and south every 18.6 years.
47:17These lines form a rectangle offset from north by exactly five degrees.
47:26It's looking like ultimately the five degree offset is referencing both the summer solstice sunrise
47:34and a southern maximum lunar moonrise.
47:43Cahokia is a city of both the sun and moon.
47:49Cahokia is pretty clearly aligned both to the moon and the sun.
47:55And that five degree off north-south seems to be a solution,
47:59a way of unifying the observations of both the sun and the moon.
48:06It draws together both the year and the agricultural cycle with the sun,
48:11and then this longer cycle of life and death with the moon.
48:16It's kind of the ultimate cosmic city.
48:25It's kind of the ultimate cosmic city.
48:26Cahokia's festivals of the sun and moon attract tens of thousands of pilgrims.
48:35People come from hundreds of miles away,
48:38racing through markets and open plazas to participate.
48:45From atop its 120 mounds,
48:49religious leaders use sacred astronomical knowledge
48:52to conduct ceremonies timed to major sun and moon rises.
49:07These beliefs are carried throughout the Americas.
49:11It's a blessing every morning to greet the dawn.
49:16You see the rays of the sun starts to hit the ground,
49:19start to hit the trees and then comes down to the ground.
49:26And we know, we know we can't live without it.
49:32We understand that as our creator.
49:36The sky is a fascinating thing.
49:39The sun moves, the moon moves, the stars rotate.
49:49And if those things can be pulled into some understandable order,
49:53you can use them to help you move through the world.
49:59And that's what a city does.
50:01A city relates all the moving parts to a place,
50:06to some kind of axis or avenue or monument.
50:10And then people can go there and they can say,
50:12oh yeah, I got it now.
50:14You know, I understand why the sun's up there and the earth is down here.
50:19Cahokia is much more than a place to live.
50:22It's a spiritual center designed to connect people to fundamental beliefs of life and death.
50:33Whenever you see these great ceremonial centers in Peru and Mexico,
50:40and what is now the United States,
50:43what you see is great confidence that people came to feel
50:48that they had somehow come to understand how the cosmos worked.
50:52But they had a responsibility.
50:54And what it was, was to build a model of that in their community
50:57so that the human beings themselves could participate in some active way in this parallelism
51:03between the way the cosmos was ordered and the way human life was ordered.
51:07That desire to feel connected to the cosmos transcends time and cultures.
51:15The sun pyramid still stands and massive crowds still stand around it
51:19because you do feel that connection when you're standing on top.
51:25It's the bodily experiences of the natural landscape concentrated into one mound.
51:41The legacy of mounds lives on.
51:45The Choctaw from Oklahoma and Mississippi reunite at their ancestral mound,
51:51continuing an unbroken bond kept alive since the Trail of Tears.
51:59Les Williston lights a sacred fire to conclude their pilgrimage.
52:06This belongs to you, our people.
52:09We've been here for a long time.
52:12And it's through the sacrifices of our elders, our ancestors, that we are still here.
52:18They had to make a lot of hard decisions to keep the people alive.
52:22And we must respect that.
52:24Now this is our church.
52:27Right here.
52:29Under the trees.
52:30Under the stars.
52:32Where we belong.
52:34Now we'll light the fire.
52:58Native Americans build cities aligned to the sun, moon, and stars.
53:05Thousands of people come for ceremonies and rituals,
53:09believing their participation is essential for the perpetuation of life.
53:15In the process, over thousands of years and across two continents,
53:21Native Americans create some of the greatest civilizations on Earth.
53:25And a last time, it's their vision.
53:25If you don't know what it's epic, it's been אפcast from another planet.
53:26To be lucid.
53:30In the process, Davidodie Mitgler.
53:31This is an au coma forever before we see,