Cohokia & The Albs; The Irish in Pre-Columbian America

In concluding the reading of Pauketat's excellent book on the first North American civilization; Cahokia, I got a few ideas useful for addition to my project of musing about possible pre-Columbian journeys of Irish voyagers named Albs by the author Farley Mowatt in his book ‘The Farfarers'. I definitely recommend reading ‘Cahokia’ by Timothy Pauketat. It is put together to unfold like a mystery evolving from just digging in the dirt to a verbal reconstruction of much of the civilization. It is a history of American archeology of the Midwest as well. Archeology is something of a small world perhaps.

There is virtually no evidence known of Irish journeys in America before Columbus I should hasten to add, or there is almost none beyond Mowatt's logical and possible induction of evidence of the Irish hotly pursued by Vikings over stations in the North Atlantic and on to New Foundland. The Cohokian history of an explosion of civilization growth and disappearance at St. Louis in a civilization of mound and pyramid builders that played a sport called chunky (I'll bet Bill Clinton in Hangover 2 would have been a star in Cohokia too) between 1050 and 1250 a.d. provides tantalizing ideas of a cultural contact by voyaging Albs with their currach skin boats down the St. Lawrence Sea way, over the great Lakes and through Wisconsin and the Gottshall Rock shelter area and along rivers finally allowing portage to the Mississippi and Cohokia. With interesting petroglyphs at Wrangell Alaska at 54 degrees North latitude identical to those of Newgrange Ireland at 54 degrees north latitude, each from the late Neolithic, I am a little motivated to discover possible traces of Irish journeys across America from New Foundland to Wrangell Alaska in the pre-Columbian era.

We know the at Viking settlements at Greenland flourished and then disappeared on the east side and continued a while later on the west perhaps until 1100 a.d. Within Mowatt's theory these settlements would have been earlier colonized by Albs who then moved further west in pursuit of better fishing and hunting of furs and to escape Viking predation. This time paradigm fits rather well with the arrival at Cohokia by a few Albs as early as 1050, for these were explorers and voyaging parties ahead of a more substantive population that at some point remained behind-possibly in New Foundland.

Pauketat in writing about the archeology of Cohokia made several points that could be taken up into support of the theory that Albs stimulated the rise of Cohokian civilization. A rival theory is that Cohokian cultural development and architecture, religion and games were stimulated by Meso-American ideas from civilizations in Mexico. There is virtually no physical evidence of Mexican civilization trade artifacts in the Mississippian civilization though. The evidence offered to support the influence of Olmecs, Toltecs or other Meso-American people is largely cultural, and those traces are scant although perhaps more substantial than those offered for the Albs/Irish. Since I don’t know of anyone beside myself looking in that direction, I will offer a couple more ideas that seem fairly obvious. Reinforcement of ideas supporting a search for Irish pre-Columbian presence in North America could be useful to others also investigating the topic in order to reduce redundancy of effort and to point out what information is available.

The ghost men at the Gottshall rock shelter look like white men. The figures were painted on the wall maybe in the 11th century, and could be pictures of well put together Irishmen without shirts today. Of course they are wearing leather skull helmets. Actually that reminds me of white guys in sado-masochistic gay bar apparel from what I have seen on TV. Well, the 11th century was a rough era. A pair of shirtless, muscular round eyed white guys with black leather skull helmets along a north south flowing river that could be a way to the Mississippi river drainage and the future Cohokia. It is known that Cohokia influenced the Ho-Chunk peoples living in Wisconsin heavily.

Perhaps the Albs had some cultural knowledge of Egyptian pyramids. Assuredly the Albs had knowledge of walled fortress and mass human warrior assaults with clubs, maces and such. The rapid rise of pyramids at Cohokia, and the use of clubs for mass human sacrifices (line up 130 people, club the and let them fall face down in a burial ditch-some of these people were not killed, and awoke to claw with their fingers at the dirt walls while buried alive-archeologist found their bony fingers in such array at Cohokia) are a pair of cultural concepts that seem starkly counter-cultural to the prior people of Cohokia.

Old Cohokia was in fact completely razed to make way for the New Cohokian civilization built upon the old village. Seldom do people agree for urban renewal of such scale voluntarily. A few Albs or possibly Aztecs entering to take over might have the political power to order such a destruction and reconstruction.

If one considers what a party of Albs would have encountered journeying over the great lakes, to Wisconsin and on to Cohokia, it is easy to imagine that they might have been regarded as ghosts or ghost goods from the underworld. If they were few in number at least they would have presented no military threat, and might instead have been a guaranteed promotion for anyone finding them and introducing the mysterious strangers to the community. If the Albs were few in number and were able to organize a new military tactical method to the Cohokians and eventually across the plains an explanation for the rise and fairly quick fall of Cohokia is created.

The Cohokians had a matrilineal culture and the Albs a patrilineal culture. That alone could have made for a cultural transition of a swift scale, although then matrilineal society did continue the effect for a takeover of military and religious leadership in the male role would have been quick. One could theorize that matrilineal societies occur when promiscuity obscures pale parentage and female parentage is more dependable.

At Crow Creek in Lakota territory in the late 20t century archeologist unearthed a village massacre of more than 800 people. The Lakota were offended by the discovery that such atrocity had ever occurred in their nation. Dating from the 14th century I believe, the story as retold in Pauketat’s book as best I recall (I haven’t a photographic memory), had a defense ditch and palisade being constructed and partly finished at the time of the attack. The attackers killed men women and children clubbing them efficiently with a stick and carved stone shaped something like a mace. This sort of infantry storm the wall and kill everything in the way tactic before burning the village is not found in America Indian archeology before Cohokia (outside perhaps Meso-America). That blood curdling battle method would not have been at all uncommon to Celtic-Alban-Brit-Jute melees in the British Isles and on the continent. Military tactics imported from Europe via the Albs and perhaps Vikings may have disseminated though North America.

Cohokian warriors had thick clothing used as armor for infantry battle storming and shields in addition to the vicious mace-clubs. This war uniform is uncharacteristic of prior North American tribal custom, yet mundane for European. Aztecs had a special mace made of obsidian with a cluster or flower of sharp blades meant for reducing a human skull or vulnerable body part, and obsidian was obtainable from Yellowstone, yet nothing like this is found in Cohokia. Such a war of the flowers club would not have been known to the Albs.

One might wonder where artifacts are of Alban or perhaps Viking tools of war in North America. Unfortunately I am not knowledgeable enough by half to compare possible Alban tools after they left an Iron and Bronze Age environment for the wilds of the west, New Foundland and America. It is interesting that flint was not used for arrowheads before Cohokia, and there were just a pair o sites where flint could be obtained readily. Flint arrowheads and larger chipped knife blades could have been suggested by Albs as well as by Meso-American travelers.

A mystery attending to the sudden fall of Cohokia in the 13th century is the abandonment of the Mississippi Valley of much of its population for the subsequent two hundred years. That is as interesting as the point that the supernova of 1054 a.d. that put a star in the daytime sky about as bright as Venus, nearly coincided with the rise of Cohokia. If albs voyaging in North America appeared in Cohokia as ghosts from the underworld along with the appearance of the supernova, they might have had a very powerful mojo for the construction of Cohokian civilization and the construction of the vast chunky field for sports competition in which the game was a metaphor for the male-female cycle of life. Perhaps genetic research may reveal something of traces of Albs in the future of Cohokian and plains archeology.