You want to talk about American exceptionalism? America was home to a medieval city bigger than London or Paris was at the time — with pyramids, writes Annalee Newitz for Ars Technica, one of our favourite online rags. “A thousand years ago, huge pyramids and earthen mounds stood where East St. Louis sprawls today in Southern Illinois. … At the city’s apex in 1050, the population exploded to as many as 30 thousand people. It was the largest pre-Columbian city in what became the United States, bigger than London or Paris at the time. … It was booming in 1050, and by 1400 its population had disappeared, leaving behind a landscape completely geoengineered by human hands. … The story of this place would take us back to the final decades of a great city whose social structure was undergoing a radical transformation. … It was bigger than Paris—then it was completely abandoned. I went there to find out why.” Read Finding North America’s lost medieval city.