A Journey through Time
By Norman R. Keegan
First encountered by dawn or dusk, the massive and widespread structures at Chaco Canyon impart an otherworldly aura. The multistory housing complex (up to five stories) and kivas could accommodate a population of over 5000, but according to some theories, housed very few people! The smooth, even surfaced walls, perfectly circular kivas and precise alignment of structures to each other and to astronomical coordinates would challenge any modern craftsman with power tools and laser transits. It makes some think there may have been help from an extraterrestrial source, as has also been theorized
This great complex of highly precise construction was built by the Anasazi Indians over a thousand years ago (circa 900-1000AD), before the advent of the wheel or the horse. It is composed of eleven major pueblos and about 400 smaller archaeological sites in a 32 square mile area. The area runs along the bottom of an arid canyon rift some fifteen miles long. Walls were built of stones laid in adobe mortar, with the core filled with rubble – very similar to ancient Roman construction. This is typical of the Anasazi sites of the era, but the workmanship and precision were unlike any other site. Roofs/ceilings are supported by large wooden beams, cut from distant forests and carried by hand to the site where they were shaped with stone tools and embedded in the wall structure. Tens of thousands of trees were needed!
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The Anasazi abandoned Chaco about 1120AD. It was first documented in 1849 by Lt. James H. Simpson while he was engaged in wars against the Navajo. Simpson measured and recorded each site and named the major sites. In 1877, famed photographer William Henry Jackson spent five days photographing and sketching the ruins, but sadly his photos didn’t come out! In 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt declared it a National Monument. Since that time, a minimal infrastructure was put in place to house displays and management personnel, but – fortunately – improvements to public access were not established. Even now, no paved roads lead to Chaco Canyon; only rutted dirt roads. It is best visited by rugged truck or SUV vehicles in preference to passenger cars, as warning signs proclaim.
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One mystery adds to the appeal of Chaco Canyon. Although the living space in the buildings could accommodate a population of 5000 or more, the artifacts indicate that very few of the rooms were ever used for habitation, but mostly used for storage if at all. Typical dwellings of this and earlier periods are accompanied by a “midden” or household dump site a short distance from the dwellings, where household garbage and trash were thrown in a heap. Archaeological studies often consist of simply “digging through the trash pile” to find artifacts such as pottery shards, bones etc. from which many lifestyle elements can be inferred. Not unlike a detective going through someone’s trashcan contents today looking for documents, food scraps, etc. The middens at Chaco contain an inordinate amount of pottery shards, 150,000 vessels at Pueblo Alto alone – but very few other household items. Was the pottery breaking a ceremonial event? The strange nature of the artifacts and the unoccupied appearance of most rooms has led some to speculate that the entire site was for purely ceremonial purposes. This is also supported by the fact that major walls are precisely aligned with vectors to astronomical reference points and to other villages many miles away, and that the attention to detail lavished on this site might be more like that lavished on medieval European cathedrals. Also, the kivas – round ceremonial pits – are more numerous, much larger and more complex than in other Anasazi sites.The largest kiva, the Great Kiva at Casa Rinconada, is a perfect 62.5 feet in diameter, lined with stone and showing signs that its walls were once plastered and painted.
Another characteristic not satisfactorily explained to date are the broad, precisely straight “highways” radiating to outlying settlements. Comparing the construction to present-day highway routing, as NASA did, it is remarkable how these ancient roads are perfectly straight despite terrain obstacles, whereas modern highways are routed around such obstacles. Many of these roads radiate from the largest ruin, Pueblo Bonito. Undistinguishable at ground level by the naked eye, the roads were detected and mapped in 1982 by a NASA spaceflight instrument called the Thermal Infrared Multispectral Scanner or TIMS. About 200 miles of such roads, plus agricultural fields and building foundations were detected. Clearly such superhighways were not needed to accommodate simple foot traffic (recall no horses, other beasts of burden or wheels). Why were they built, and why with such perfection?
The many mysteries surrounding the Anasazi people and this site in particular make this a very meaningful place to visit. A small campground is available for those willing to brave the access road from the south. On Interstate 40 just east of the Gallup area, stop at Thoreau and take Rt. 371 north, which connects to the dirt road to the Park (about 15 miles long). Local directions and advice at Thoreau are recommended. For more details on Chaco Canyon, see the website at http://www.colorado.edu/Conferences/chaco/tour/chacomap.htm.
