Thanks for highlighting Cahokia. One of the hypothesis that I find fascinating is that the mounds around it correspond to the night sky. So they form a star map. More on that theory here: Ancient World Blog: Cahokia Deciphered as a hermetic Sky Map
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I have a friend here (Missouri) who’s researching ancient American astronomy. We’ve been using LIDAR data to investigate some Hopewell mounds. The Hopewell were around some 2,000 years ago – just before the Adena, who possibly built the Great Serpent Mound; some think they were continuations of the same culture. The Hopewell were mostly in the Ohio area but had settlements all over, many of which included alignments useful in horizon astronomy.
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came here to recommend this. Wait til you read the companion volume — 1493 — learn that sending clothes samples to China to be made at lower cost for sale in Europe was a thing in the early 1500s.
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I don’t know what the scholarship says on this, as it’s not my field/area… but I do think it’s kind of funny that lots of people will accept at face value that Saint Brendan probably did reach North America, but that this king, who had vastly more wealth and resources, and better technologies in sailing (keeping in mind that Malian Empire was one of the wealthiest on earth at the time), well that is just uNpoSsiBle! Because reasons. 
Again, I don’t know the veracity of either story, but I do think of the two, given the resources at hand, Abubakari was more likely, given those resources at his command.
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I understand the impulse to push against the Columbian white saviour narrative but there is absolutely no credible evidence for any post-first nations immigration from Asia and pre Columbian contact with the American continent except for the (brief and highly unsuccessful) Norse settlement in Newfoundland.
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I’ve recently read the book Four Lost Cities which fancies itself as an antidote to city collapse narratives, such as those promulgated by Jared Diamond in his Collapse book.
The chapter on Cahokia features the work of Sarah E. Baires, Melissa R. Baltus. They wrote a paper contesting the then popular Cahokian collapse narrative, which revolves around a giant flood.
https://www.pnas.org/content/112/29/E3753
Instead, Bairnes and Baltus propose that Cahokia was designed around centralized religious practices, and when those religious practices became less centralized, fewer citizens felt the need to remain in Cahokia.
Cahokia grew to such an enormous size because the structure of the city itself was part of its residents’ spiritual and political worldview. But over time that centralized belief system began to crumble. When the last revitalization swept the city, people returned to the old ways. They looked to home, rather than the plaza, for their sense of identity and community. Their once-unified city was divided into many peoples who left the mounds behind.
Newitz, Annalee. Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age (p. 250). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.
Newitz doen’t make this connection, but I’m reminded of Mecca. Currently, Mecca is designed around the needs of the Hajj. Each year 2.5 million pilgrims go to Mecca for a couple of days, and then return home. If future generations reinterpret the pillar, and attendance dwindles, that would leave an archeological record suggesting “collapse”.
In Europe, medieval cities were designed around pilgrimages to saintly relics. Now, that infrastructure is superfluous, and much of it exists only as archeology.
This just came out
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Makes sense to me.
Finished clothing sells for a higher price than bolts of silk. Of course, the European customers didn’t want shenyi, they wanted the usual mantles, capes, and doublets. So, samples would be useful information.
Similarly, Chinese Export Porcelain featured non Chinese motifs.
Africans buying inferior European cloth because of “prestige” was a thing in the 1500s and 1600s, despite many areas being net exporters of superior textiles. Then there was a “buy African” movement in places like the Gold Coast to regain control of their markets.
Not exactly the point I was making…globalization is not a new thing. Europeans were sending patterns to China and getting back crates of silk dresses (silk compresses quite well) at lower prices than they could make them at home.
Fair enough. Seems pretty closely related, though–the European textile trade also encompassed African at the same time.
From the excerpts of 1493 I’ve skimmed, the chinese emperor rebased his currency on silver to combat inflation. The major sources of silver were outside China-- Japan, and later south America. In order to get this silver, China would ramp up production of silk, which enabled them to undercut everyone else.
Similarly, chinese export porcelain was produced in order to bring silver into the country.
Of course, Spain preferred to use the silver extracted from South America for other purposes-- european wars, for instance, and wasn’t terribly happy about Coloniists buying goods from China, or worse, undercutting the weavers and tailors in Spain.
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