Climax cultures originated in the American Bottom

First houses, first gardens, first Hopewell, first Mississippians

  While researching the American Bottom I’ve discovered a pattern of cultural emergence that seems almost uncanny for how it repeats and redounds. The west-central Illinois area in question is directly above St. Louis and Cahokia in the immensely fecund valley between the lower Illinois River and the Mississippi. The floodplains form a long south-poin…