Credit: Patrick Campbell/CU Boulder, "I cut a 1-foot-long section of pine and weighed it on my bathroom scale," said Kram, who lives on a wooded property in the hills west of Boulder. However, we do not guarantee individual replies due to the high volume of messages. The Mystery of CHACO CANYON - YouTube The biggest mystery in North America is Chaco Canyon . Its wide roads, circular ritual sites called kivas, and sprawling. The information you enter will appear in your e-mail message and is not retained by Phys.org in any form. 1999. Chaco Culture For over 2,000 years, Pueblo peoples occupied a vast region of the south-western United States. Ancient Chaco. During the same time period, SSE orientation was dominant in the Totah region to the north at sites including Aztec and Chimney Rock. The film challenges the notion that Chaco Canyon was primarily a trade and redistribution center. They help porters to support weight using the bones of their neck and spine rather than their muscles. For decades, people have wondered how ancient ancestral Puebloans transported heavy building materials to Chaco Canyon, one of the most important archaeological sites in the Southwest. Then the researchers hit on the idea of tumplines, which are depicted in ceramic effigiesrecovered from close to Chaco Canyon. Most large complexes had four or five stories and averaged over 200 rooms, with the. Faculty-Staff Email Archive Student Email Archive Graduate Student Email Archive New Buffs Email Archive Senior Class Student Email Archive CommunityEmail Archive COVID-19 Digest Archive. As a person who studies biomechanics and physiology of the human body, I was like, that's crazy, Kram said. "Maybe the best way is to do it yourself.. Pueblo leaders speak of the significance of Chaco to the Pueblo world today.The film challenges the notion that Chaco Canyon was primarily a trade and redistribution center. The Mystery Of Chaco Canyon reveals that, instead, Chaco was a complex ceremonial center with extraordinary astronomical alignments of buildings and roads. Shining light on the astronomical brilliance of the austere civilization of Chaco Canyon Narrated by Robert Redford. I also felt that the place had been meant only for a certain time and a specific purpose, which thought was echoed at the end of the film. This region was historically occupied by Ancestral Puebloan people (better known as Anasazi) and is now part of the Chaco Culture National Historical Park. On todays show, we hear from two Colorado scientists who recently discovered one of the oldest female infant burial sites in a cave in Europe. University of Colorado at Boulder. This small calendar allowed for those living at Chaco Canyon to determine the beginning . University of Colorado Boulder Regents of the University of Colorado But first, we need you to sign in to PBS using one of the services below. The sun beam lines up with different spirals or edges on the equinoxes and solstices. Weiner said the team's results show that supplying Chaco Canyon with goods may not have been as back-breaking an undertaking as archaeologists once assumed. Understanding that it was sacred to a People was what mattered. People relied on an ordered and organized spatiotemporal natural world domesticated in culture, into which human life could be embedded and from which life received a deeper spirit and purpose. To construct their multi-storied buildings, the Chaco people transported by foot more than 200,000 timbers to the canyon and most of their food and ceramics from more productive lands 55 to 70 miles away. It is the summation of 20 years of research. The Mystery of Chaco Canyon examines the deep enigmas presented by the massive prehistoric remains found in Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico. These and other bizarre encounters suggest the park may be a portal between our world and distant star system. Music by Michael Stearns. That changed the calculation significantly when determining how many people would have been needed to carry the timbers 60-70 miles. He and Wilson werent trying to start a new exercise fad. Ten years after the events described in Massacre at Point of Rocks, Dan and Roque joined by Doa Loca and Jicarilla Apache, Peregrino Rojo, are set on a quest by a dying Masonic brother. Symbolically, the centerline of each of the three nearby Hooper Ranch Pueblo kivas aligns with this ancient Sun Dagger shrine. NASA began researching Chaco Canyon in the 1970s, when the organization discovered some 300 kilometers of sophisticated roadways and underground kivas through multispectral scanning technology. But how this society got its construction supplies has been a long-standing mystery. They describe the deliberate action of their ancestors to seal off the buildings and these aspects of their past. Examines the enigmas presented by the prehistoric remains found in Chaco Canyon in New Mexico. The sample of Chacoan Great Houses assessed for astronomical associations was unchanged from the mid 1990s to 2007. That means my focus is building relationships and telling stories from under-covered pockets of Colorado. Wilson and Kram rest their log on supports called "tokmas." An enduring mystery from the great houses of Chaco Canyon is the origin of more than 240,000 construction timbers. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt has agreed to put off oil and gas leasing for a year on land that tribes consider sacred surrounding Chaco Culture, Northern Colorado Center for Investigative Reporting, Tom Sizemore, 'Saving Private Ryan' actor, has died at 61, Election-denying former Colorado clerk guilty of obstruction, He visited Disneyland 2,995 days in a row. This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Jen is a web producer at KPBS, responsible for program promotion, online membership-related activities, and is the editor of the KPBS community calendar. We chose a forest road up here in the foothills and outside of Nederland and we walked up and down this darn road. From the 9th to the 12th century BCE, Chaco Canyon was the center of a pre-Columbian civilization that flourished in the San Juan Basin of the American Southwest. It is the summation of 20 years of research. It was just debilitating, Kram said. video produced and directed by Anna Sofaer. Speaker: Anna Sofaer and her colleagues Robert Weiner and Richard Friedman. In and around Chaco Canyon, archaeologists have found ceramic effigies illustrating Puebloan people using tumplines to carry resources, as well as yucca fiber wraps that could be the remains of ancient tumplines.. Landscape, directions, sun and moon, and movement of shadow and light were the materials used by the Chacoan architects and builders to express their knowledge of an order in the universe.This is the long-awaited sequel to Anna Sofaers classic film THE SUN DAGGER, which changed forever our perception of Americas earliest Indian peoples. "These timbers brought pieces of the sacred mountains to Chaco Canyon.". These include front-facing south-southeast (SSE) orientation, front facing east-southeast (ESE) orientation, alignments to the cardinal directions of North-South and/or East-West (NS/EW), and the construction of Great Houses at workable calendrical stations with horizon foresights for solstice dates. Building upon Hayes and Leksons assessments of orientations, temporal analysis of these four traditions may improve our understanding of shifting patterns of multi-cultural collaboration and dominance among ancestral Pueblo groups. The authors mention that sherpas in Nepal still use tumplines to carry loads as heavy as 111 kilograms, all the while guiding tourists whose shoulders are likely burning with much . The team's findings open up a new understanding of the day-to-day lives of the people who shaped the Southwest more than a thousand years ago, said study co-author Robert Weiner. The SSE orientation tradition continued during the peak of Bonito Phase construction activity (A.D. 1020-1100). The Mystery Of Chaco Canyon examines the deep enigmas presented by the massive prehistoric remains found in Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico, revealing that between 850 and 1150 AD, the Chacoan people designed and constructed massive ceremonial buildings oriented in a complex celestial pattern throughout this vast desert region. The Mystery of Chaco Canyon is valuable, respectful, and decent. Landscape, directions, sun and moon, and movement of shadow and light were the materials used by the Chacoan architects and builders to express their knowledge of an order in the universe. The so-called "great houses" of Chaco Canyon in New Mexico may have taken decades or longer to construct. The Mystery of Chaco Canyon and The Sun Dagger are available for HOME use and for EDUCATIONAL use. Archaeological evidence suggests that ancient peoples in the Southwest employed tumplines woven from yucca plants to transport everyday items like food and water. Produced by The Solstice Project. Pueblo Indians, descendants of the Chacoan people, regard Chaco as a place where their ancestors lived in a sacred past. He and Wilson decided to read everything they could about the properties of dried wood. Millions of years of history reveal . Chaco is also an enduring enigma for researchers. The team's findings show that the key to this testament to human labor may have been simple devices called tumplines. To test that hypothesis, co-authors Rodger Kram and James Wilson spent the summer of 2020 training until they could haul a heavy log some 15 miles using tumplines. New Mexico's Chaco Canyon is home to some of the most impressive pre-Columbian architecture in the Western Hemisphere. Kram said the next step is to do more experimental work - this time, on location at Chaco Canyon, where they can demonstrate the tumpline method works as they trace the ancient hauling routes of the ancestral Puebloans. Instead, they were hoping to solve an archaeological mystery that has perplexed researchers for decades: How did ancient peoples transport more than 200,000 heavy construction timbers over 60 miles to a famous site in the Southwest called Chaco Canyon? Your California Privacy Rights | Do Not Sell My Personal Information And they decided to test whether the journey was possible themselves. The film argues that the massive multistory buildings and roads the Chacoans constructed in a forbidding stretch of what is now New Mexico were designed to form a vast, stunningly precise map of the yearly cycle of the sun and the 19-year cycle of the moon.' Riddle Of The Ancient Sarcophagus And Its Strange Properties Can Science Solve This Mystery? I felt that in opening the sealed rooms, the purpose of the rooms and their having been sealed being unknown to the archaeologists, something that had been meant to be kept there was being released. 1999. Located above the Little Colorado River in east-central Arizona, a natural rock formation casts a dynamic shadow-line onto a panel of ancient rock art during the summer solstice. The Mystery of Chaco Canyon. In dialogue and narrative, one deeply feels that Chaco is haunted, magical. They hit a hiking pace with the log of just under 3 mphnot much slower than their normal walking speed. Dr. R. Gwinn Vivian, former Curator of Archaeology, Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona'I highly recommend this video for anthropological, sociological, and American studies classes.' Contemporary Pueblo Indians, descendants of the Chacoans, speak in the film of the spiritual significance of Chaco in their world today. Ancient Chaco Canyon population likely relied on imported food, Molecular atlas of spider silk production could help bring unparalleled material to market, Tracing the history of grape domestication using genome sequencing, Students ate less meat in the three years after hearing talk on its negative environmental impacts, Giving plants animal antibodies to help them ward off diseases, Determining the tempo of evolution across species, Science X Daily and the Weekly Email Newsletter are free features that allow you to receive your favorite sci-tech news updates in your email inbox. These cosmographic concepts of habitation across cultures are transformed into designed landscapes, cultic caves, tents, campsites, houses, cities, or temples. See page 43 of attached scanned book. The duo and their colleaguesdescribed their experimentFeb. 22 in theJournal of Archaeological Science: Reports. In a new study, several researchers at CUBoulder reenacted a small part of a trek that people in what is today the SouthwestUnited States may have made more than 1,000 years ago. Archaeologists have long been puzzled as to how the ancestral Puebloans managed to carry those heavy building materials that far - as much 60 miles away. THE MYSTERY OF CHACO CANYON examines the deep enigmas presented by the massive prehistoric remains found in Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico. These elaborate roads and kivas aren't visible to the naked eye or even through aerial photography. James Wilson and Rodger Kram carry a log with tumplines with the Boulder Foothills in the background. She chanced to record petroglyphs on Fajada Butte at what is now called the Sun Dagger or Three Slab site, now perhaps the most famous site in Chaco Canyon, located at a southeastern facing cliff near the top of Fajada Butte. I cut a 1-foot-long section of pine and weighed it on my bathroom scale, said Kram, who lives on a wooded property in the hills west of Boulder. Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. Wage theft is commonplace in San Diego. They used a log that weighed 132 pound. Archaeology February 22, 2023 How scientists hauling logs on their heads may have solved a Chaco Canyon mystery by Daniel Strain, University of Colorado at Boulder James Wilson, left, and. A feasibility study, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (2023). These achievements emerged a thousand years ago in the exceptionally demanding environment of New Mexicos San Juan Basin.