All of this maintenance labor had to be organized and supplied, which means that a significant proportion of the city’s population was engaged in construction and maintenance activity rather than in food production.

The organizational capacity implied by all of this — the ability to plan and execute large-scale construction projects, to mobilize and direct labor forces, to manage the supply of construction materials from multiple sources, and to sustain these activities over periods of decades and centuries — is itself evidence of the social and political sophistication of the Cahokia polity.

Mounds do not build themselves.

Cities do not organize themselves.