Go there and test it out. It was a very strange thing to observe.
I am not saying those Park Rangers are conspiring to hide the truth. I am saying they are not allowed to acknowledge or even discuss the possibility of a connection to any living descendants anywhere.
A great example is where the Monarch Butterflies gather in winter. The guy who came back from Mexico back around the 1980-90s and told others he'd seen them in the mountains in Mexico was called a fool and a liar by all the experts until he showed them the next year. Of course, the Mexicans who lived near the site had known they come there for many generations but no experts had thought to ask them, or they dismissed them if they were told about it.
All told I'd estimate I've spent around 30-40 days exploring Mayan sites and the Cahokia Mounds. How much time have you spent on that?
First off, which phase of Yucatan Maya civilization do the artifacts you're referring to come from? Are you looking at Itza phase or Mayapan phase? (I'm assuming in the first place that it's Postclassic Yucatan, given that the shift of Mayan civilization from the highlands to the Yucatan happens during the transition from Classic to Postclassic). One of those is contemporaneous with Cahokia, the other is not.
Another question to ask is what are you considering as diagnostic of the art and artifacts? Are these features common enough to indicate influences in local style, or are you misdiagnosing occasional trade goods showing up?
It's very possible that some of what I saw at Cahokia is Mayan trade goods and that is why I asked if those cultures could have been in touch with each other.
To be clear, I did not say "archeologists deny there is a connection". I said the Park Rangers there denied it with a scripted response and refused to even discuss the possibility Mayans had been there.
It's very common for people to see similarities in regions that weren't connected by contact though. People find it very hard to identify cross-cultural relationships in art/design unless they're intimately familiar with the cultural background and language of the designs. As someone who presumably isn't a time traveling precolumbian native, you're doubly alien to their cultural background. It's the same sort of phenomenon as the other-race effect. With enough exposure and practice, you get better at seeing the nuances and differences that weren't immediately apparent.
Even archaeologists are affected by this and it only gets better with experience and study. There can also be false similarities in some objects and styles due to convergent evolution. Houses in certain parts of Nepal look remarkably like ancestral puebloan structures. There was no contact, but they converged on broadly similar styles because of similarities in the resources provided by the local environments and the constraints of building good houses.
For the record, there's a long history of "theories" that posit mesoamericans came up into what's now the US and built all of the native structures that are there today. These ideas are pretty soundly rejected by the archaeological community and they're also a bit racist. You undoubtedly didn't intend to suggest this, but that's likely how it came across to the ranger. Rangers aren't perfect and sometimes they have bad days. They're generally majority correct though and worth listening to when they shut down discussions.
What I know is that the Mayans who still live there say our archaeologists here tend to ignore them. Two Mayan Park Rangers told me that while I was standing on top of a pyramid enjoying the refreshing breeze up there on a vicious hot and humid day.
One of the things I noticed in all those places (Cahokia, Belize, Guatemala, Mexico) is that refreshing breeze and I mentioned that to those Mayan Park Rangers because it occurred to me after visiting many sites there that maybe those structures were built to provide a place to cool down from working in the fields below and they were both astonished. They instantly changed their attitude and started talking to me. They confirmed that is why they were built and went on to say that the archaeologists who come there are completely dismissive and arrogant and don't ever talk to them to try and learn from them. That's what they told me. You can do what you will with it.
Finally, what those Park Rangers at Cahokia said was boilerplate legalese. It was not a conversation I had with them. They refused to converse because they are instructed to not even discuss it.
Go there and test it yourself.
Since you seem to be fishing for someone to point out the issues in your pet theories, I find it useful to start from the assumption that historical peoples weren't stupid about how to achieve their goals. Let's look at the cooling platform hypothesis in that light:
1) It takes a lot less labor to build a tower (like they did at palenque) than to build a pyramid.
2) It kind of defeats the purpose of a breeze driven cooling platform to have a big temple and narrow doors taking up most of the usable area. Triadic pyramids might fit the bill except for all the obvious reasons they don't.
3) The stairs are uncomfortably steep even for modern people.
4) The pyramids are pretty far from where they would have grown crops. Instead they're on elevated rocky ground that could support them.
5) Big fields of crops weren't really the classical mayan style of agriculture. Mayans tended to live in reasonable proximity to their fields and it's baffling why they'd walk a fair distance to the pyramid when they could retire to their much closer, presumably comfortable houses.
6) Cooling platforms would have kept being useful, but mayans stopped building, maintaining, or even using these structures in the postclassic.
People will tell you a lot of things, particularly in tourist traps. Many will also agree with whatever crazy ideas you come up with in the interests of appearing friendly and/or for money. You don't necessarily need to take everything at face value (a lesson I've been trying to teach my father for years).
And the park I'm talking about where that conversation took is not a "tourist trap". Almost every visitor there was Mayan and very few tourists go near there. It was Xunantunich. Go look around with Google Maps and tell us again there's no where to grow crops there.
You're all so fast to dismiss me when none of you know more about this than me and I don't care where you sat in a classroom to get your degree. And the giant leaps to take what I've said so completely out of context here is stunning. You all didn't read what I said at all, you all projected your own made up interpretations onto me so you had something to bitch about.
The Mayans that live there confirmed my assumption. Go tell them they're wrong
1) Everyone of the sites I've been to with a grand structure had many lessor structures around the main pyramid. I think it's probably accurate to say that on most all cases those large pyramids were built in stages and transformed into being used mainly for ceremonial purposes during and/or after lessor structures were built all around it to catch that cool breeze on those hot and humid days.
As communities grew courtyards and markets and sports fields were built, and around them were elevated areas, not so much different than our own sports arenas now, for people to gather and watch and sit in a cool breeze on hot days.
Take a wider look at Palenque. That tiny tower is surrounded by structures there that are terraced with perfect amount of room to sit and eat and relax in a cool breeze. Very few have any or much indoor space because they were not created to provide that.
2) Again, all of those large pyramids were built in stages and all of them have smaller structures underneath the big one. Some of them evolved into what we might call a "temple" but around all of those are many lessor buildings with elevated spaces to sit and relax and catch a cool breeze. Go look at photos of any of them.
3) Not on all of those structures. Uxmal is a prime example of where that's true but it's surrounded by buildings and structures that provide easy to climb stairs to elevated places to cool off, and again that giant structure was built in stages and ended up being used for ceremonial purposes. It evolved into the temple it became.
4-5) I did not say "Big fields of crops" in regards to where they were working, but again, that's just not accurate. There is ample evidence of deforestation and agriculture on a lot of those hillsides and valleys surrounding those sites and not all of the locations where those sites exist are mountainous. And there is no way to sustain a large city without a thriving agriculture surrounding it. It makes no sense to build a city where it cannot sustain itself.
Some sites are on pretty flat lands. Tolum is an example of that. And consistent to where it's located there are no huge pyramids there because there's a breeze on the cliff face on the ocean front. But just just a city block inward of that it can be stifling hot and humid. Better yet, go to google maps and check out "Zona Arqueológica Xcambó". This is yet another site I visited and noticed how refreshing the breeze was on those buildings there. Unlike Tolum, that site is just slightly above sea level and most all the structures there are built with easy to climb stairs and have large decks to sit on and prepare and eat a meal.
6) What you're talking about there has nothing to do with why they were used when they were used. In some cases it could be their exodus from those metro areas had to do with drought and famine, and something similar probably happened at Cahokia.
And we really don't know much about their use during and after the European invasion. Their historical records were destroyed for the most part and most of them were captured and enslaved or chased far into the mountains and forest and jungles and either murdered or enslaved as the invasions expanded. There's no good reason to assume sites like Tolum and Xcambó were uninhabited when the Spaniards arrived. There is clear evidence they were all rounded up and either enslaved or murdered.
And now, via lidar, we know there are all kinds of structures around and on the top of those hills that have been grown over. So we know they didn't have to "walk a fair distance to the pyramid". It really doesn't make a lot of sense to build so many of these otherwise. And they served a dual purpose. They cleared rock from areas to grow crops and they had to pile the rock somewhere. Why not make a platform to gather, cook, eat, catch a cool breeze, and rest and socialize.
Truth is all I'm really pointing out here is really quite obvious if you go and spend some time there. Go to Cahokia on a hot summer afternoon and test it out. Spend an hour outside in the park below the big mound taking in the sites. When you're good and hot and sweaty, and you will be, go climb that big mound.
The first thing you'll notice is the cool breeze and the wonderful relief it offers. Look at the layout of that structure. It's perfectly designed for a lot of people to catch that cool breeze after working a long hot shift in the fields around it. And it's really not good for anything else. There's really no other great reason for it to exist, and something that big requires a great reason. You spend that hour below it on a hot summer day and you'll know why that breeze is a great reason to build that mound. Of course you have to keep in mind there is no other escape from the heat.
The same thing happens at Xcambó, and those are not near as big or high as the big pyramid at Uxmal. But they're perfect to catch the cool breeze coming off the gulf. And the same is true a Uxmal. there are all kinds of structures there with elevated decks and patios that offer a refreshing breeze.
They are equivalent to modern day Air Conditioning. Some of them evolved into temples like Uxmal, but all of those have lessor structures design to provide a cool breeze surrounding them. Every one of them have that in common.
BTW, my wife's great uncle, Lowell Houser, also spent a lot of time with the Mayans and he did worked on some research projects with archeologist there. He left a lot of memos, letters, paintings and drawings behind and we have quite a few of them. I never got to meet him but I've heard quite a few stories of experiences he recounted from my wife and her family members and have read most all of what we have written by him. You can see some of his artwork at the Ames, Iowa Post office:
https://www.ameshistory.org/content/evolution-corn-post-offi...
The point is, I've spent quite a bit of time studying this topic. I live on a site that was one of the largest indigenous cities in south western Missouri and there are artifacts all around me and I did not claim the Mayans or any of their potential trade goods made it here. I've not seen anything similar that was found here, or anywhere else in the U.S. I've been for that matter.
I made a point to reach out and ask questions and listen to the Mayans I met while spending time in the Yucatan. I was humble. I broke the ice by showing them my "Espanol for dummies" book and asked questions. I did not tell them what their history is. I handed them my book and asked them to tell me. I have honestly had Park Rangers and citizens there tell me both Americans and specifically our archeologists that come there are generally arrogant and dismissive and that bothers them a lot. Enough to make a point for them to tell me it does.
You should take this hypothesis and research it and confirm it and publish it and take credit for it. I honestly don't care because it's not mine. It belongs to the Mayans. And if you ask them they'll tell you all about it and a lot more.
That's literally what they do, though. They employ a shit-load of experts there to figure out who lived there, what they did, and why they left/what happened to them. STL NPR just ran an interview with the scientist identified in this article about this literal thing.
I guess, what I'm saying is that if they're trying to engage in a cover-up, they're doing a terrible job.
Also, if a random tourist can put together the pieces, what are the chances that scientists haven't evaluated it? Maybe, if they say no, it is just because there was no substantive connection? Why does everything have to be a conspiracy?
When we mentioned to an employee at the Visitors Center at Cahokia that the art and artifacts were very similar to those we saw in the Yucatan and it seems plausible that those cultures were known to each other they responded with a statement that was a scripted response that denied any connection to any other culture and insisted there is none at all. It sounded exactly like something a lawyer would craft and they ignored everything we brought up that implied their could be any connection.
From what I could gather the reason for that is if any connection to a living tribe of indigenous peoples could be proved the privately owned lands surrounding the Cahokia site where there are mounds, and there are a lot of them, could be claimed as sacred sites to those tribes and would have to be returned to them.
So my take away is the State of Illinois is actively dissuading research that could provide more insight to who lived there and what actually became of them and anyone who tries to prove otherwise is booted out of the conversation.