All language subtitles for PBS.Native.America.Part.3.Cities.of.the.Sky.1080p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org.eng

NARRATOR:
America, more than
500 years ago.

100 million people live

in some of the greatest
civilizations on Earth,

connected by social networks
spanning continents.

(chanting)

NARRATOR:
They build monumental cities.

And in some, as a sacred ritual,
they perform human sacrifice.

♪

DAVID CARRASCO:
Human beings have to make
blood offerings

so that the gods then
will release into the world

the powers to recreate life.

♪

NARRATOR:
One of the biggest cities is in
the middle of the United States.

Barely mentioned in textbooks,

its true name
is lost to history.

Today, it's called Cahokia.

SARAH BAIRES:
Cahokia would have been

inhabited with thousands
of people,

all coming here to live
in this one large city.

NARRATOR:
Cahokia boasts one of the
biggest pyramids in the world,

and it's built
with an eye to the sky.

♪

TIM PAUKETAT:
These buildings are almost
all celestially aligned.

And so the question becomes,
why?

(men chanting)

NARRATOR:
Across two continents,
people share a belief

that their lives are intimately
connected to the heavens.

LES WILLISTON:
You build a mound

to get closer to the Creator.

That's what's sacred.

PUMA QUISPE SINGONA:
We come from the stars.

We are honorary guests
on this planet,

and we are guardians of life
on this planet.

♪

NARRATOR:
Over thousands of years,

Native Americans
invent unique systems

of math, writing, science,
and spirituality,

and build their beliefs
into their cities.

CARRASCO:
People believed that they had
achieved a kind of replica

of what the gods wanted
on Earth.

(drone whirring)

NARRATOR:
At the intersection

of modern scholarship
and Native knowledge

is a new vision of America

and the people who built it.

This is "Native America."

(bird cawing)

♪

NARRATOR:
Just outside St. Louis, on
the banks of the Mississippi,

is a giant hill.

It doesn't appear
to be that unusual,

except that this is one of the
flattest areas in North America.

So what's this mound doing here?

♪

(man chanting in Choctaw)

NARRATOR:
The Choctaw people
have some answers.

Their ancestors
are mound builders.

(chanting continues)

WILLISTON:
This was built a long time ago
by a whole bunch of people

whose blood runs
through my veins now.

And that's a...
that is a powerful thing

to feel that energy.

(crickets chirping)

TERRY BEN:
It is a place

where people have a sense
of being,

people have a sense
of belonging,

where somebody came from.

It's a portal
to looking to the past.

♪

NARRATOR:
A thousand years ago,

Native Americans
pile earth by the basketload

to construct one of the largest
mounds in the world.

It towers over ten stories high.

Its base covers an area
larger than ten football fields.

And it's flanked
by over 100 other mounds.

♪

They are part
of a bustling city,

with temples and palaces,

markets and plazas,

sports fields,
and thousands of homes.

♪

In the year 1100,
30,000 people live here--

that's more than London
at the time.

♪

This is Cahokia.

(birds chirping)

Cahokia would have been
an ancient New York City.

It would have been
fully inhabited

with thousands of people,

potentially speaking different
dialects or different languages.

♪

(man chanting
in Native language)

It's as big as most
other early city complexes

anywhere in the world,

from China to Egypt
to South America.

(crowd murmuring
and fire crackling)

(people chanting
in Native language)

NARRATOR:
Who built Cahokia is a mystery.

(chanting continues)

NARRATOR:
But other mound-building
cultures, like the Choctaw,

believe mounds have a spiritual
power connected to the sky.

The mounds were built so that we
could be closer to the Creator.

It's that connection
with the Creator.

We strive for the sky.

(drone whirring)

...get some data points
over in this region...

NARRATOR:
New research is revealing
Cahokia's sky connection

is built right into the city.

That line there
is the end of it.

PAUKETAT:
These buildings

are almost all
celestially aligned.

♪

NARRATOR:
And there are even more
connections to the sky:

a large ring of cedar posts
similar to England's Stonehenge;

human sacrifices carefully timed
to a celestial event.

♪

And sculptures of goddesses

evoking ancient legends
of the sky.

♪

The mystery of Cahokia
is part of something much larger

going on across the Americas.

From the very origins
of Native America,

over 10,000 years ago,

peoples across both continents
are fixated on the sky.

♪

The Maya, the Inca, the Aztec,
all build cities inspired by,

aligned to, and synchronized
with the cosmos.

Why go to such lengths
to build cities of the sky?

♪

Some answers can be found
in the ultimate celestial city.

♪

It's located just outside
Mexico City.

The name of its builders
is lost to history.

♪

The Aztec discover it as a ruin,
and name it Teotihuacan--

the place where the gods
were born.

♪

At its height, between
the first and fifth centuries,

about a thousand years
before Cahokia,

Teotihuacan has a population
of 125,000 people.

♪

It covers eight square miles,

an area larger
than the walled city of Rome.

At the heart of the city
is one of the largest structures

in the ancient world.

Its base is the size
of ten football fields,

as large as the Egyptian pyramid
of Giza.

♪

The Aztecs called it
the Sun Pyramid.

♪

NAWA SUGIYAMA:
The Sun Pyramid is the
largest mound in Teotihuacan.

The ceremonies
that would have taken place

associated with the Sun Pyramid

would have been
quite spectacular.

NARRATOR:
Archaeologist Nawa Sugiyama

is excavating
an observation platform.

(speaking local language)

NARRATOR:
Thousands of people

would make pilgrimages here.

From these platforms,
the most powerful Teotihuacanos

would oversee ceremonies
associated with the Sun Pyramid.

SUGIYAMA:
This platform would have been
overlooking a large plaza

where a lot of people
would have been able to come in

and conduct rituals.

NARRATOR:
Nawa estimates,
within a single generation,

workers moved nearly
a million cubic meters of stone

to build the Sun Pyramid.

The reason that people
would have agreed

to build such a large monument

is because they themselves
believed

in what the building
represented.

NARRATOR:
What do the pyramids represent?

Nawa works closely

with historian of religion
Davíd Carrasco.

They hike down
the city's central road,

the Avenue of the Dead,

to Teotihuacan's
second-largest monument--

the Pyramid of the Moon.

SUGIYAMA:
The view at the end is worth it.

♪

CARRASCO:
Teotihuacan has two of the
greatest pyramids of the world.

Well, if you look at them,
you'll notice that

they are very similar
to the mountains

around this ceremonial city.

In fact,
they are human-made mountains.

NARRATOR:
The names of these
man-made mountains--

the pyramids of the Sun
and Moon--

suggest a connection to the sky.

♪

Long before Cahokia
or Teotihuacan,

as early as 11,000 BCE,

deep in the Amazon,

Native Americans are observing
the cycles of the sun.

Their earliest art,
painted on a cliff face,

is one of the oldest calendars
in the world.

They record the different
positions of the sunset

throughout the year.

From its furthest north,
the Summer Solstice,

to its furthest south,
the Winter Solstice.

♪

CARRASCO:
People discovered the calendar,

they discovered the repetition
of their cycles,

and they began throughout
the Americas to measure

some of their own human lives
and their ceremonies

on the passage of the sky.

NARRATOR:
Just as the earliest
Native Americans transform

a cliff face into a calendar,

the people of Teotihuacan
build a calendar

into the very design
of their city.

Everything from the orientation
of the Sun Pyramid

to even the measurement
of the buildings itself,

they're referencing specific
astronomical alignments.

♪

NARRATOR:
52 days after
the Summer Solstice,

the sun sets on the
Sun Pyramid's east-west axis.

It sets along this axis again
260 days later.

The numbers 52 and 260
are sacred in Mesoamerica.

♪

Their calendar system is built

around the solar year
of 365 days

and a ritual year of 260 days--

a number they associate
with human pregnancy.

The first day of these calendars
synchronize every 52 years,

marking a complete cycle.

On this day, the Teotihuacanos
perform a ceremony

to reenact the creation
of the world.

CARRASCO:
At the beginning of time,
when all was in darkness,

the deities themselves
gathered here in this place,

and around a great fire,

they made sacrifices
of themselves.

And in making these sacrifices
they created a new cosmic era.

NARRATOR:
To mark this moment of creation,

Teotihuacanos conduct
the New Fire Ceremony

at the base of the Sun Pyramid.

♪

The Aztec describe their own
version of this ceremony

in one of their few
surviving books.

♪

(fires crackling)

(fires extinguishing)

WOMAN (speaking Nahuatl):

♪

WOMAN (speaking Nahuatl):

WOMAN (speaking Nahuatl):

(fire flares and crackles)

(people talking
in Native language)

(people running)

WOMAN (speaking Nahuatl):

♪

NARRATOR:
All fires in all the land
would be lit

from the single fire
from the Sun Pyramid.

♪

The Fire Ceremony
resets the calendar cycle

and renews the world.

♪

CARRASCO:
These were sky watchers.

These were people
who were very observant.

And what they came to feel

was that they could actually
build buildings,

carry out rituals,

which would be
almost exact replicas

of what they saw
in the surrounding hills,

as well as in the patterns
in the sky above.

♪

NARRATOR:
The rulers of Teotihuacan
design the city

to mirror the world around them
and the heavens above.

♪

On this sacred stage,
they orchestrate rituals

connecting human life
to the cosmos.

These ceremonies attract
thousands of people

from hundreds of miles away.

♪

Could pilgrimage and sky worship
also explain

the giant mounds of Cahokia
a thousand years later?

♪

Across the Eastern United States
and Canada,

there are over 10,000
sacred mounds--

some more ancient
than the Egyptian pyramids.

At one of these--
Nanih Waiya--

descendants of the people
who built it

still gather today.

(man chanting
in Native language)

NARRATOR:
Ian Thompson and Les Williston

are members
of the Choctaw Nation.

(birds chirping)

They're on a pilgrimage
to their ancestral mound

deep in the Mississippi
back country.

The earth mounds come out
of a long cultural continuity

for Choctaw people
and other Southeastern tribes.

Choctaw is the blood
I have running through my veins.

It's a connection
with a tribe of people,

both in Oklahoma
and Mississippi.

(drum beating)

(man chanting)

NARRATOR:
In the 1840s, most of the
Choctaw Nation and other tribes

were forcibly moved
from Mississippi to Oklahoma.

Thousands died.

That journey is known
as the Trail of Tears.

MAN (chanting
in Native language):

NARRATOR:
After more than 150 years

in the hands of the
State of Mississippi,

the Choctaw
recently regained control

of their ancestral mound,
Nanih Waiya.

(chanting)

WILLISTON:
That's where we're connecting
with the Creator,

so that's our church.

(chanting)

WILLISTON:
The spiritual power
of this place

is an energy that we get,
thousands of years of ancestors

being right here in this place.

(chanting)

NARRATOR:
Norma Hickman
is a Choctaw elder.

HICKMAN:
The mounds were used
to revere the sun.

(chanting)

Every morning, this shaman,
or the holy man,

would raise his hand up
and help the sun rise.

(chanting)

HICKMAN:
And then at night, the shaman
or medicine man came

and they helped the sun
lower itself down to the Earth.

♪

NARRATOR:
Choctaw traditions
link the mounds with the sky.

♪

(woman speaking Choctaw)

(breeze blowing)

WOMAN (speaking Choctaw):

WOMAN (speaking Choctaw):

♪

WOMAN (speaking Choctaw):

(wings fluttering)

WOMAN (speaking Choctaw):

(birds chirping)

WOMAN (speaking Choctaw):

WOMAN (speaking Choctaw):

♪

NARRATOR:
Statues of this celestial
goddess have been excavated

at mound sites throughout
the Mississippi region--

including Cahokia.

It's likely many of those mounds
were inspired by the sky.

(birds chirping)

But with 120 mounds,

the entire city of Cahokia
is designed around sky worship.

PAUKETAT:
I remember an early trip
past Cahokia.

My father was a truck driver.

And I occasionally,
as a little kid, six or seven,

I would go with him
and we would drive past it.

I remember feeling, like,

"Wait a minute," like,
"What's this doing here?"

You know, "What is this?"

NARRATOR:
That drive past the mounds
sparked a career

for archaeologist Tim Pauketat.

His research suggests
that Cahokia, like Teotihuacan,

is laid out
on a celestial blueprint.

PAUKETAT:
The mounds are positioned

in various ways
to reference something.

It's not, they're not
arbitrarily, randomly placed.

They never just dump dirt.

NARRATOR:
Tim and his team
are looking for evidence

of that celestial blueprint

just west of Cahokia's
largest mound.

(gradiometer beeping)

They use a gradiometer,

an instrument that detects holes
where posts once stood.

SUSAN ALT:
I'm seeing
very quiet readings,

and then it jumps up again.

So it could be consistent
with post holes.

♪

NARRATOR:
The original posts
have rotted away,

but new ones have been erected
in their place.

They form a ring
with one post in the middle.

It's known as Woodhenge.

(birds squawking)

PAUKETAT:
Woodhenge is a large ring
of sizable cedar posts.

And if you look from

across that post
to the perimeter post,

you could watch the sun
on the horizon rise and set,

and you'd know
when the solstices were.

NARRATOR:
Just like the sun disc paintings
in the Amazon,

Woodhenge is a solar calendar.

It can be used to determine
when to plant and harvest.

And when to gather
for ceremonies.

PAUKETAT:
This is a big ritual ground.

Inside the circle
is some kind of sacred space,

and you'd go there
for certain ceremonial events.

♪

NARRATOR:
Like the Sun Pyramid
in Teotihuacan,

the location of Woodhenge
is precisely aligned.

On the equinox,
the sun rises to the east

directly in front
of Monk's Mound,

Cahokia's largest
earthen pyramid.

(birds chirping)

PAUKETAT:
On a major event,

let's say an autumn feast
tied to the equinox,

there would be thousands
of people on the move,

coming in from all directions.

♪

NARRATOR:
Artifacts from Cahokia show
just how far pilgrims traveled.

This carved stone pipe
was found 500 miles away.

It depicts a player of an
ancient Native American game

called chunkey.

In one hand he holds a spear,

which was thrown
at a rolling stone disc.

♪

Hundreds of chunkey stones
have been excavated

throughout the United States.

PAUKETAT:
Cahokia-style chunkey stones

start showing up
hundreds of miles away.

So the thought may be

that you play against people,
either you make friends

or you resolve disputes--

instead of going to war,
you play chunkey.

NARRATOR:
The chunkey stones
and the rise of Cahokia

date to 1100-1400,
a time of unusual peace

throughout
the Mississippi region.

♪

People in cities like Cahokia
and Teotihuacan

use games, ceremonies,
and sky beliefs

to extend their influence
across vast distances.

♪

In South America,
it's the same strategy

that will build one of the
biggest empires on Earth--

the Inca.

♪

In the 1400s--

about 200 years
after Cahokia's height--

the Inca rule an empire
of 12 million people in an area

that encompasses six modern
South American nations.

Archaeologist Noa Corcoran-Tadd
believes the Inca

create their vast empire
by using a ceremonial network

centered on the sun.

In Peru, he finds evidence
of this network--

sacred markers the Inca called
"huacas."

CORCORAN-TADD:
Huacas may be rock outcrops.

They may be springs.

But they may also be
unusual things in the landscape.

This is very difficult for
Western mindset to get around,

but it's a category
of particularly charged places

that form this wider
sacred world of the Incas.

(insects chirping)

NARRATOR:
Noa is using historic chronicles
and GPS

to map the huacas.

They're leading him
to the political capital

of the Inca Empire:

Cuzco.

Here, he finds
the most sacred huaca:

the Qorikancha,
the Temple of the Sun.

CORCORAN-TADD:
The Qorikancha is one

of the most important buildings
that we still have

in Cuzco today.

It's located at the center
of Inca Cuzco.

It's understood to be
the primary temple of the sun,

Inti,
who is the deified solar being.

♪

♪

MAN (speaking Quechua):

♪

MAN (speaking Quechua):

♪

MAN (speaking Quechua):

(bird squawking)

♪

MAN (speaking Quechua):

♪

(loud electric shock)

MAN (speaking Quechua):

♪

MAN (speaking Quechua):

♪

NARRATOR:
The Inca believed they were
children of the sun god, Inti,

who instructs them to build
Cuzco and the Qorikancha.

♪

The foundation of these
inner chambers still remain,

but most of the temple
was destroyed in the mid-1500s

by the Spanish,

who built a church on top of it.

The Spanish destroy
many other huacas, as well,

but left a record
of where they may have been.

CORCORAN-TADD:
Spanish colonial sources talk

about at least 328 huacas
in the Cuzco landscape.

And they suggest that they
were a single, coherent system,

centered on the Qorikancha,

in a series of up to 42 lines

that radiated
out of the Qorikancha

into the broader valley.

♪

NARRATOR:
To the Inca,
the Temple of the Sun

is the center
of a spiritual universe

that radiates out
across the empire.

The lines connecting the huacas
form a ceremonial network

called ceques.

(exhales)

(speaking Quechua):

(exhales)

SINGONA:
When I come to a huaca,
we activate the energy first

with prayers
and with intentions.

And we send that energy
through these ceques systems.

NARRATOR:
Shamans like Puma continue
an unbroken Inca spirituality

worshipping at these huacas.

(exhales)

NARRATOR:
They offer sacred coca leaves,

candy to signify
the sweetness of life,

and one of their most
holy ancient offerings,

a stillborn llama fetus.

SINGONA:
The most important element
in this offering

is the llama fetus.

It represents that
which is yet to born.

We celebrate in our spirituality

that we are constantly
being reborn.

(blowing)

The Inca pathway,
the Qhapaq Ñan,

was marked by our Inca ancestors

in order to lead people
in the right way to service,

to ceremony, and to communion.

(blowing)

(speaking Quechua):

What we put in these offerings
is elements that connect us

to the sun, to the moon,
and to Mother Earth.

♪

NARRATOR:
The Inca sacred landscape
also has a practical side.

♪

Inca rulers enlist masses
of laborers

to turn portions
of the ceque system

into a 25,000-mile road network.

♪

The Inca Road stretches
across six modern nations,

from 15,000-foot peaks
in the Andes

to the depths
of the Amazon rainforest.

Connected
by stunning engineering,

like the world's earliest
cable bridges,

it is the longest road network
in the Americas

until the U.S. interstate
highway system is built

in the 1950s.

(wind blowing)

CORCORAN-TADD:
We tend to think of roads
as a practical infrastructure.

But they were much more
than that, as well.

In many cases, they also moved
through sacred landscapes.

♪

It's drawing
on this much longer tradition

that understands humans
as belonging

into a much wider, complicated
set of interrelationships

with the natural world.

NARRATOR:
The Inca ceque system creates
an infrastructure

of roads, bridges, and beliefs

that connects a vast empire.

(men talking in local language,
bell ringing)

NARRATOR:
The Inca harness
the spiritual power of the sun

and concentrate it in a city--
Cuzco.

♪

Is Cahokia also laid out
to harness the power

of celestial bodies?

To find out, archaeologists
Melissa Baltus and Sarah Baires

are taking to the sky.

BAIRES:
We're really interested

in a human-made feature

that we think is located
in this area here.

So we're hoping to get
some data points

over in this region,

just south of where
we're standing now.

MAN:
Okay.

NARRATOR:
To uncover Cahokia's
urban plan,

they're using a laser-based
aerial mapping system

called LiDAR.

BAIRES:
There've been a lot

of modern building projects,

the highway goes through here.

So we're hoping that the LiDAR

will actually show us
the archaeological features

and give us a totally new look

at this ancient Native American
city of Cahokia.

(drone whirring)

(drone whirring continues)

NARRATOR:
LiDAR uses quick bursts
of lasers fired from a drone

to create a precise 3D map.

Once processed, the LiDAR data
can be used to peel back trees,

modern development,
and layers of time.

BAIRES:
Let's take a look
at the data.

BALTUS:
Oh, wow.

Look how clear that is.

Okay, so we've got
Monk's Mound to the north.

NARRATOR:
The LiDAR reveals
the city is laid out

with remarkable precision.

Each mound follows along
the exact same alignment

to form a city grid.

The grid is centered

along a feature
rediscovered only today--

a roadway.

BAIRES:
This looks like a causeway
running north, doesn't it?

BALTUS:
Maybe just a little bit
off north.

NARRATOR:
Discovery of this long,
straight road

leading to Cahokia's
largest mound

is bringing the city's
precise alignment into focus.

BAIRES:
Using the LiDAR data,

we are able to determine that
this is definitely a causeway

made by human beings early on

during Cahokia's
formative years,

and it aligns Cahokia
to its city grid,

which is five degrees
offset of north.

NARRATOR:
The LiDAR reveals the road
and the entire city of Cahokia

is aligned to five degrees
off north.

Often, celestial cities are
laid out on a north-south grid

to align to the sun.

Did the Cahokians
make a mistake,

or is their city aligned
to something else in the sky?

♪

Clues may lie with the
most celebrated astronomers

of the ancient world-- the Maya.

♪

Maya cities flourish between
the years 100 and 900--

a period twice as long
as the golden age of Rome.

The Maya track the positions
of many stars and planets

with an accuracy within one day
every 400 years.

♪

Their astronomical knowledge
would not be matched in Europe

until a thousand years later,
the time of Galileo.

(speaking Spanish)

(translated):
The Maya constructed cities
and buildings

that were in some way
aligned to the sun.

NARRATOR:
Pepe Huchim is Maya.

He grew up among these ruins and
is now a leading archaeologist

in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula

and site director of Uxmal.

(Herrera speaking Spanish)

HERRERA (translated):
The sun was the giver of life.

It was the fundamental
nourishment that regulated

the life of the Maya.

(birds chirping)

NARRATOR:
Here at Uxmal, one magnificent
building stands out.

(Herrera speaking Spanish)

HERRERA (translated):
The Governor's Palace

is one of the most beautiful
structures in this region

because of its exquisite lines
and finishes.

♪

(Herrera speaking Spanish)

This is a primary indicator that
this was a very important place.

NARRATOR:
Uxmal is built on the common
north-south grid.

But Uxmal's greatest king,
Chan Chak K'ak'nal Ajaw,

builds the Governor's Palace

twisted 15 degrees
off this axis.

MARY E. MILLER:
For so many years,

people had noticed that
the Governor's Palace at Uxmal

seemed a little bit
out of whack.

(birds chirping)

NARRATOR:
Art historian Mary Miller
finds the reason why

written on the building's
facade.

(birds chirping)

The House of the Governor
is covered

with thousands of glyphs--
the Maya form of writing.

MILLER:
Maya writing is one
of the few full writing systems

that ever evolved
in the history of humanity.

NARRATOR:
Maya writing contains
more than 800 characters.

Some are like letters,
representing certain sounds.

Others, like those
on the Governor's Palace,

represent entire words, names,
or concepts.

The repetition
of one particular glyph

is a clue to the building's
orientation.

There were dozens and dozens
of these fantastic masks

of Chaac the Rain God

piled up in great stacks across
the House of the Governor.

Under each and every eye
is the sign for Venus.

NARRATOR:
The House of the Governor
contains close to 350 glyphs

representing Venus.

And Maya astronomer priests
write an entire book

to track Venus,
the brightest body in the sky

after the sun and moon.

MILLER:
There are four surviving
Maya books,

and it is really quite striking

that one is entirely devoted
to the sequence of Venus.

♪

NARRATOR:
Mary stands in the doorway
where an astronomer priest

would observe its elaborate
cycle on the horizon.

♪

MILLER:
Venus would line up
once every eight years

with maximum brightness

with the principal doorway
of the House of the Governor.

NARRATOR:
The House of the Governor
is carefully positioned

to align not with the sun,
but with Venus.

♪

MILLER:
This building was aligned
from the very beginning

to Venus.

It's the harvest of perhaps
a thousand years of knowledge

about Venus,

and imbuing Venus
with this much meaning.

♪

NARRATOR:
But why Venus?

Understanding the cycles of the
sun helps guide agriculture.

Why track other
celestial bodies?

♪

To investigate,

Mary travels deep into the
jungles of Chiapas, Mexico,

to the ruins of another
Maya city: Bonampak.

♪

♪

MILLER:
The Bonampak murals
offer an extraordinary window

into life at the end
of the eighth century.

Here we find kings and captives,

victors, the vanquished,

all arrayed across three rooms
of a small painted structure.

NARRATOR:
One mural records a scene
of the ritual torture

and sacrifice
of prisoners of war.

They were captured by the
warriors of Bonampak's king,

Yajaw Chan Muwaan.

Mary photographs the mural
with an infrared camera

to reveal hidden details.

(lens whirring)

♪

(camera clicks)

MILLER:
What we see are captives.

Some are still standing,
kneeling.

♪

Others have had their
fingernails ripped right out.

NARRATOR:
Above the captives is a barely
visible row of glyphs.

The infrared camera enhances
their outlines,

which are then carefully painted
to bring the mural back to life.

♪

It reveals symbols like those
found on the Governor's Palace--

stars.

The glyphs portray
constellations.

MILLER:
Above this scene of sacrifice
preside constellations,

and it may very well be

that this is how
the constellations aligned

on the morning
of the sacrifice.

NARRATOR:
Bonampak's ruler may have timed
the execution of his captives

to the appearance of these stars
in the sky.

(crickets chirping)

MILLER:
One of the things we see
at both Uxmal and at Bonampak

is how the power of the stars

underpinned the very notions
of Maya statecraft.

NARRATOR:
Maya leaders look
to heavenly bodies like Venus

to guide decisions of war,
peace, and ritual sacrifice.

♪

And a new discovery is revealing
that Cahokia's leaders,

hundreds of years later,

are also looking to the sky
to govern their city.

(birds chirping)

KRIS HEDMAN:
I brought the field maps,

and then I brought a couple of
other illustrations here.

NARRATOR:
Tim Pauketat is meeting
Kris Hedman,

a physical anthropologist
investigating Mound 72.

PAUKETAT:
At the center of the mound
is where we start getting

some of the sacrificial pits.

Right.

NARRATOR:
Mound 72 reveals Cahokians

share a key ritual practice
with the Maya:

human sacrifice.

♪

In the very center of mound 72
is a mass burial

containing 53 young women.

All killed at the same time,
all buried in the same place,

all oriented
in the same direction.

NARRATOR:
In Bonampak, the Maya sacrifice
prisoners of war,

but here in Cahokia,
this burial is nearly all women.

HEDMAN:
The fact that they're all young,
they're reproductive-age women,

is reflective of a focus
on fertility.

It seems much more tied
to cosmologic beliefs,

to some sort of religious event.

NARRATOR:
To Kris and Tim, the burial--

women, all facing
the same direction--

suggests a cosmic alignment.

♪

And native oral traditions
connect women to the moon.

♪

PAUKETAT:
The moon is tied mostly to women

in the many native groups
in the eastern woodlands.

It's also tied to fertility,
and the Earth, and agriculture,

so possibly, then,

these women are connected

or offered in some way

to those powers.

♪

NARRATOR:
The moon has a monthly cycle,

but also follows
a longer pattern.

Every 18-and-a-half years,

it rises at its most
northern position,

and then two weeks later,
at its most southern.

This celestial event
last happened in 2006,

and won't happen again
until 2025.

It's called a lunar standstill.

♪

Tim calculates the position
of the lunar standstill

and the direction
the bodies are pointing.

PAUKETAT:
They are aligned

with a major moonrise
that happens

once every 19 years or so.

NARRATOR:
Tim believes the 53 women
are buried in relationship

to this once-in-a-generation
moon event.

The discovery of Mound 72
and its lunar orientation

is forcing Tim to rethink

the entire city's
celestial alignments.

♪

But it also raises
a more fundamental question:

why sacrifice?

It is a ritual once practiced
by nearly every world culture,

from slaying young men and women
on altars in Greece,

to spectacles of executions
at the Colosseum in Rome,

to sacrificing servants
in the tombs

of China's Shang Dynasty rulers.

Even the foundational story
of Christianity

evokes God sacrificing
his own son to save the world.

MILLER:
We find the whole notion
of offering another human being

to the gods

to be an extremely difficult
place to go in our own heads.

♪

But when I understand the
principles that lie behind it

I can understand it.

♪

In Mesoamerican thought,

the gods took their own blood
to shape humans,

and so what the gods said

that humans needed to offer
in return

was human blood.

♪

CARRASCO:
What human beings have to do
is make offerings--

blood offerings,
offerings of animals--

and it's only in the giving
of these gifts

that the gods then will release
into the world

the agricultural productivities,

the powers to recreate life,

in both human form
and in other natural forms.

♪

PAUKETAT:
Aligning the bodies in the Earth
with the moon moving in the sky

is, in a way, linking the sky
and the Earth,

and life, which is above,
and death, which is beneath,

here in mound 72.

♪

NARRATOR:
A new picture is emerging
of Cahokia.

This Mississippi city of mounds

shares the same
cosmological beliefs

as the great cities
of Central and South America.

♪

Its people perform human
sacrifice as a sacred ritual,

have a deep understanding of the
cycles of the sun and moon,

and place great importance
on celestial alignments.

♪

But Cahokia's city grid
is five degrees off north,

and not directly aligned
to the sun or moon.

So what is Cahokia's
celestial alignment?

Tim revisits the city grid.

He maps the location of the sun

at its southern and northern
extremes each year.

Then he maps the moon at its
furthest north and south

every 18.6 years.

These lines form a rectangle,

offset from north
by exactly five degrees.

It's looking like, ultimately,

that the five-degree offset
is referencing

both the summer solstice sunrise

and the southern maximum
lunar moonrise.

♪

NARRATOR:
Cahokia is a city of both
the sun and moon.

♪

PAUKETAT:
Cahokia is pretty clearly

aligned both to the moon
and the sun,

and that five degree
off north-south

seems to be a solution,

a way of unifying
the observations

of both the sun and the moon.

♪

It draws together both the year
and the agricultural cycle

with the sun,

and then this longer cycle
of life and death

with the moon.

It's kind of the ultimate
cosmic city.

♪

NARRATOR:
Cahokia's festivals
of the sun and moon

attract tens of thousands
of pilgrims.

♪

People come from hundreds
of miles away,

racing through markets
and open plazas to participate.

♪

From atop its 120 mounds,

religious leaders use
sacred astronomical knowledge

to conduct ceremonies timed
to major sun and moon rises.

♪

(people singing
in another language)

♪

NARRATOR:
These beliefs are carried
throughout the Americas.

WILLISTON:
It's a blessing every morning
to greet the dawn.

You'll see the rays of the sun
start to hit the ground,

start to hit the trees,

and then it comes down
to the ground.

(birds chirping)

♪

And we know, we know
we can't live without it.

♪

We understand that
as our Creator.

♪

PAUKETAT:
The sky is a fascinating thing.

The sun moves.

The moon moves.

The stars rotate.

And if those things
can be pulled

into some understandable order,

you can use them to help you
move through the world.

♪

And that's what a city does.

A city relates all the
moving parts to a place,

to some kind of axis,
or avenue, or monument,

and then people can go there
and they can say,

"Oh, yeah, I got it now,"
you know.

"I understand
why the sun's up there

and the Earth is down here."

♪

NARRATOR:
Cahokia is much more
than a place to live.

It's a spiritual center
designed to connect people

to fundamental beliefs
of life and death.

CARRASCO:
Whenever you see these
great ceremonial centers

in Peru and Mexico,

and what is now
the United States,

what you see is great confidence
that people came to feel

that they had come to understand
how the cosmos worked.

But they had a responsibility.

And what it was was to build a
model of that in their community

so that the human beings
themselves could participate

in some active way
in this parallelism

between the way the cosmos
was ordered

and the way human life
was ordered.

NARRATOR:
That desire to feel connected
to the cosmos

transcends time and cultures.

♪

SUGIYAMA:
The Sun Pyramid still stands

and massive crowds
still stand around it

because you do feel
the connection

when you're standing on top.

♪

It's the bodily experiences
of the natural landscape

concentrated into one mound.

♪

♪

NARRATOR:
The legacy of mounds lives on.

The Choctaw from Oklahoma
and Mississippi

reunite at their
ancestral mound,

continuing an unbroken bond kept
alive since the Trail of Tears.

Les Williston lights
a sacred fire

to conclude their pilgrimage.

WILLISTON:
This belongs to you,
our people.

We've been here for a long time,

and it's through the sacrifices
of our elders, our ancestors,

that we are still here.

They had to make

a lot of hard decisions
to keep the people alive,

and we must respect that.

And this is our church.

Right here under the trees,

under the stars,

where we belong.

Now we'll light the fire.

(crackling)

(exhaling)

♪

NARRATOR:
Native Americans build cities

aligned to the sun, moon,
and stars.

Thousands of people
come for ceremonies and rituals,

believing their participation
is essential

for the perpetuation of life.

In the process,

over thousands of years
and across two continents,

Native Americans create

some of the greatest
civilizations on Earth.