Nothing about Chaco makes sense. What we know today as the National Historic Park, or what visitors may know as Downtown Chaco along the modern road, is located in an incredibly arid and hostile environment.
Yet, look at these Great Houses and other monumental building. How? Why? For what purpose?
When you look closer, you may also come to another realization. Almost nothing that comes out of the Chaco world was particularly unique? Large monumental building? Well, the Mississippians may have outdone them at Cahokia, not to mention the structures, cities, and complexes, of the Maya and Inca. Rock art? Found on 6 continents. And, as it turns out, virtually all of the agricultural practices were imported from elsewhere, and nearly all of their goods were imported. Their pottery, especially corrugated and black-on-white, was rather plain until new designs came from elsewhere.
So why are the Chacoans celebrated while other cultures are less studies? Like the Egyptians, it may simply come down to an arid climate. There aren’t too many other places in the world where a granary discovery may yield 900 year old corn, or a backcountry settlement may have an intact ladder.
Still, the building of these Great Houses, outlying communities, engineered roads, and other connected elements reveal an extraordinary phenomenon that built one of the biggest extra-village societies in pre-contact North America.
And then, it disappeared.
If you spend anytime in the Southwest United States, you likely become aware of the Ancestral Puebloans who inhabited the area up until 900 years ago1.
The Ancestral Puebloans capture the wonder of modern travelers because of the wealth of evidence they left, and the fact that they seem to have disappeared. The evidence is vast and widespread. The easiest to locate is their rock art, in both pictographs and petroglyphs. Rock art existed in antiquity on all 6 inhabited continents. Rock art in the Southwest is popular, extensive, and under modern threat. The Ancestral Puebloans also left behind extensive sites, some perhaps being large cities. They lived in cliff overhangs and left granaries in many areas. Pottery is quite easy to find, and in many cases, steal before archaeologists get there.
The Ancestral Puebloans never really disappeared. We do know their last archaeological impressions on the Southwest occurred in the 12th century.
- You may know the Ancestral Puebloans as the Anasazi. In English, the term sounds cool, but it is a perjorative in Navajo that means something analagous to “Ancient Enemies.” This is considered an inappropriate term by archaeologists and the Puebloan Nation, and most Navajo also deem the term inappropriate.