Before Europeans arrived on the North American continent, the central Mississippi River Valley formed the core of an extensive prehistoric urban network. Villages and cities flourished in the Midwest and Southeast U.S., extending north to Canada and south to the Gulf of Mexico. The Native Americans built extensive ceremonial and burial mounds that rivaled the cities of the Incas and Aztecs. Their culture, known as the Mississippian, thrived in urban complexes where archaeological research has unearthed the evidence of a complex agrarian society with unique funerary practices and a sophisticate
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