Thousands of people, the ancestors of today's Din, or Navajo, and Pueblo peoples, may have lived there from around A.D. 850 to 1200. The mystery of Chaco Canyon | Colorado Mountain College Search For His Seal Continues, Proof That Neanderthals Ate Crabs 90,000 Years Ago Is Another Nail In The Coffin For Primitive Cave Dweller Stereotypes. Thousands of people, the ancestors of today's Din, or Navajo, and Pueblo peoples, may have lived there from around A.D. 850 to 1200. I cut a section that was one foot long and I weighed it on my bathroom scale. "These timbers brought pieces of the sacred mountains to Chaco Canyon.". 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. Landscape, directions, sun and moon, and movement of shadow and light were used by the Chacoan builders to unite with a cosmic order. But first, we need you to sign in to PBS using one of the services below. Four ESE facing Great Houses were constructed within and in proximity to Chaco between A.D. 860 and A.D. 1090. They built "Great Houses," which were as much as four stories tall and contained hundreds of rooms. Then the researchers hit on the idea of tumplines, which are depicted in ceramic effigiesrecovered from close to Chaco Canyon. Written by Anna Sofaer and Matt Dibble. I don't know how they could have possibly done that.. They built "Great Houses," which were as much as four stories tall and contained hundreds of rooms. This film describes and demonstrates the intricate and precise astronomical alignments among the many buildings spread over a wide desert area. (Credit: NPS). Director Anna Sofaer Writers Matt Dibble Anna Sofaer Stars Paul Pino Robert Redford (voice) Anna Sofaer See production, box office & company info Watch on Prime Video included with Prime More watch options Add to Watchlist They have been used by many cultures across the world for thousands of years, from African to Asia and the Americas. 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. Thousands of people, the ancestors of today's Din, or Navajo, and Pueblo peoples, may have lived there from around A.D. 850 to 1200. video produced and directed by Anna Sofaer. 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. An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. One of the characteristics of the human mode of existence shows up in modelling the structures and processes of the world onto the living space, which consists of certain landscapes, locations, and habitations. Pueblo Indians, descendants of the Chacoan people, regard Chaco as a place where their ancestors lived in a sacred past. These timbers brought pieces of the sacred mountains to Chaco Canyon.. Speaker: Anna Sofaer and her colleagues Robert Weiner and Richard Friedman. After three months of training with tumplines for six or seven days a week, Kram and Wilson were ready to try a real log. Weiner said the teams results show that supplying Chaco Canyon with goods may not have been as back-breaking an undertaking as archaeologists once assumed. Aerial and time lapse footage, computer modeling, and interviews with scholars show how the Chacoan culture designed, oriented and located its major buildings in relationship to the sun and moon. The film reveals that between 850 and 1150 AD, the Chacoan people designed and constructed massive ceremonial buildings in a complex celestial pattern . Surprisingly, these buildings that required such large investment of labor and planning reveal little evidence of residential use. In 1977 Sofaer visited Chaco Canyon as a volunteer recording ancient Southwestern American rock art. THE MYSTERY OF CHACO CANYON helps students to appreciate the scientific and cultural achievements of a significant civilization in pre-Columbian North America. This is the long-awaited sequel to Anna Sofaer's classic film THE SUN DAGGER, which changed forever our perception of America's earliest Indian peoples.THE MYSTERY OF CHACO CANYON examines the deep enigmas presented by the massive prehistoric remains found in Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico. Pueblo Bonito, a Chaco Canyon "Great House," once spanned hundreds of rooms and was several stories tall. Music by Michael Stearns. "Some people baked sourdough bread during COVID, Instead, we carried sand and heavy logs around using our heads," said Kram, who is a passionate runner in his free time. However, we do not guarantee individual replies due to the high volume of messages. To make sure they were being safe, Kram and Wilson started with light loads and worked their way up, said Joseph Carzoli, a study co-author and certified strength and conditioning coach. When/Where: Thursday, January 24, 2019 / 6:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. / James A. 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. A potential calendrical station located in the vicinity of Peasco Blancos McElmo ruin is yet to be confirmed. part may be reproduced without the written permission. One such road, the Great North Road, connects the central canyons ceremonial buildings across 35 miles of desert to a steep badlands canyon in the North a direction of profound significance to descendant Pueblo people. It is the summation of 20 years of research. I am the Rural and Small Communities Reporter at KUNC. video produced and directed by Anna Sofaer. "As they became more comfortable with their training, we began alternating training days between carrying light loads for greater distances and heavier loads for shorter distances.". Examines the enigmas presented by the prehistoric remains found in Chaco Canyon in New Mexico. Kram rewrote history when he published a paper showing the Chaco logs were actually much lighter, weighing closer to 200 pounds. These elaborate roads and kivas aren't visible to the naked eye or even through aerial photography. I am grateful to Anna Sofaer for involving me in her decades-long passion to explain this extraordinary and magical place.Robert Redford, The videobecomes part of the ongoing dialogue between archeologists, anthropologists, and native peoples(Its) a multi-level phenomenon, like Chaco, which embraces complexity, beauty and mystery.Rina Swentzell, Architect, Santa Clara Pueblo, A captivating look at one of the most impressive archaeological sites in North AmericaAnna Sofaer reveals the solar and lunar complexity of Chacoan buildings with impressive visual economy and clarity. Custom Review of "The Mystery of Chaco Canyon" Essay Paper Concepts of housing the world are implemented in the architecture of lodgings, cultic buildings, settlements, territories, and the artificial shaping of the landscape. Register to request a quote. We can remove the first video in the list to add this one. That's where we go to heal, to pray,' said Weiner, who will receive his doctorate in anthropology from CU Boulder later this spring. the mystery of chaco canyon transcript - startup-agenda.com He read a statistic suggesting that the mass of a typical roof beam, or "viga," in a Chacoan Great House likely averaged around 275 kilograms (more than 600 pounds). "I multiplied by 16 feet and realized, 'That can't add up to 275 kilograms.'". "It was just debilitating," Kram said. In the center of America's Four Corners Region, Chaco Canyon is an arid, desolate place, sprinkled with the occasional, lonely juniper tree, cactus, or sage bush. The number, Kram discovered, could be traced back to a study published in the 1980s. As a person who studies biomechanics and physiology of the human body, I was like, that's crazy, Kram said. Everybody else who was hiking there scratched their head and asked us what the heck we were doing, Kram recalled. Symbolically, the centerline of each of the three nearby Hooper Ranch Pueblo kivas aligns with this ancient Sun Dagger shrine. 'Ghost Canyon' brings murder to Chaco Canyon - Albuquerque Journal It seemed unrealistically high to him. In a 2022 study, they and their colleagues estimated that a pine log measuring about 16 feet long probably weighed closer to 85 kilograms (a little over 185 pounds). In a 2022 study, they and their colleagues estimated that a pine log measuring about 16 feet longprobably weighed closer to 85 kilograms(a little over 185 pounds). The ancient Native American ruins of a Great House in Chaco Culture National Historical Park The Late Bonito calendrical Great Houses may have been intended as pilgrimage destinations where people could witness a dramatic solstice sunrise or sunset. Shining light on the astronomical brilliance of the austere civilization of Chaco Canyon Narrated by Robert Redford. The team's findings show that the key to this testament to human labor may have been simple devices called tumplines. It fits with all the evidence: they used tumplines, they made the roads very wide, Kram said. The teaching materials in the Guide are designed to be used with the film THE MYSTERY OF CHACO CANYON. 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. Drawing on 20 years of the Solstice Projects research, assisted by NOAAs National Geodetic Survey, the film details evidence for Chaco Canyon as a center of intense ceremonial life and an elegant cosmology. A new study has solved the third mystery - how they carry as many as 200,000 16-foot-long wooden beams to Chaco Canyon from forests over 60 miles away. Others have suggested that the timbers were rolled rather than carried to construction sites, perhaps bundled within smaller wood pieces for protection or carried on the shoulders. For more information, contact Bullfrog Films, Box 149, Oley, PA 19547; 1-800-543-FROG (3764); info@. Chaco Culture For over 2,000 years, Pueblo peoples occupied a vast region of the south-western United States. Published work includes a variety of proposals including horizon calendars, solar calendrical constructs in architecture, cardinal North-South and/or East-West (NS/EW) alignments of architecture and roads, building alignments to lunar standstills or June solstice sunrise, wall alignments to equinox sunrise or sunset, and the positioning of structures at observation points for horizon calendrical stations. To make sure they were being safe, Kram and Wilson started with light loads and worked their way up, said Joseph Carzoli, a study co-author and certified strength and conditioning coach. The astronomical evidence presented supports the idea that people with at least three distinct cosmological intents collaborated at Chaco; it also supports Van Dykes hypothesis that Late Bonito phase construction at Chaco represented an attempt by a weakened ritual elite to reinvigorate their legitimacy and power. 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. The two made three round trips over the course of the day. Workable solstice horizon calendars are now confirmed at Casa Chiquita, Kin Kletso, Headquarters Site A, Wijiji, Bis saani, and 125 m from Roberts Small Pueblo at 29SJ 2538/2539. Krams big insight was that multiple tumplines could have been attached, side by side, to a single log, allowing several people to share the load. The film reveals that between 850 and 1150 AD, the Chacoan people designed and constructed massive ceremonial buildings in a complex celestial pattern throughout a vast desert region. Many scientists have hypothesized about how the Chacoans might have accomplished this feat. Chaco Culture - UNESCO World Heritage Centre Its massive stone and timber buildings were constructed starting in 800 A.D. with materials taken from as far away as the Zuni Mountains to the south and the Chuska Mountains to the west. 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. 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. Peter Whiteley, Dept. A majority of the Great Houses built before A.D. 1000 are front-facing to the SSE. What is known is that beginning around the mid-800s, Chaco people began building here, creating multi-story stone buildings on a grand scale. What Does The Brain Of The Homo Erectus Fossil With The Lowest Cranial Capacity Tell About Evolution? Use one of the services below to sign in to PBS: You've just tried to add this video to My List. 'From the pyramids and temples of Egypt, to England's Stonehenge, (ancient peoples) locked their buildings to the movements of the sky gods. Little Theater, New Mexico School for the Deaf / 1060 . Additional manual findings using NVDA screen reader 1. Explore how the Chacoan people expressed a complex solar and lunar cosmology in their arch, The Mystery of Chaco Canyon is a local public television program presented by. Seventy miles from the nearest town and accessible only by washboard dirt roads, it's remote by today's standards. - Feb 24, 2023 9:00 pm UTC. 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. Colorado scientists form a better picture after uncovering the earliest known female infant burial site in Europe, U.S. Officials To Put Off Oil Leases Near Sacred Tribal Land. Tumplines are hardly a new innovation. "It's just a dumb way to carry a heavy object.". This research expands on previous samples of Chacoan Great Houses to include all those identified within downtown Chaco, as well as a small sample of halo and outlier Great Houses. The latest theory is that the Chacoans may have used simple devices called tumplines, still favored by sherpas in Nepal, according to a new paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. The Mystery of Chaco Canyon. 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. Archaeological Collection - Chaco Culture - National Park Service See production, box office & company info, Self - Laguna Pueblo Council member - this is not the same Paul Pino in your database, The Extraordinary Tale of William Buckley: The great untold story of Australia's Robinson Crusoe, Australia's Lost Gold: The Legend of Lasseter. Left Coat Press, Walnut Creek CA. They hit a hiking pace with the log of just under 3 mphnot much slower than their normal walking speed. The Mystery of Chaco Canyon | WXXI Long Mysterious Tunnel Discovered Inside The Khufu Pyramid, 220 Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Footprint Found On Wales Beach By Girl, Archaeologists Excavate Two Roman Bath Hidden In A Dark Passage Below The Streets Of Bath, On This Day In History: The Battle of Salamis Sep 22, 480 BC, Vikings Brewed Beer With Heated Stones Old Tradition Popular In Germany, Finland And Baltic States, Indigenous Communities Used The Caribbean Sea As An Aquatic Highway, Ancient Underwater City Of Heracleion Reveals More Archaeological Treasures. See page 43 of attached scanned book. The Chacoan civilization reflects a unique time in the history of the "Ancestral Puebloans," a group of ancient people. The Mystery of Chaco Canyon (1999) - YouTube It is located in the region known as the Four Corners, where the states of Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico meet. Significantly, recently a large effigy of Quetzalcoatl which was removed from the site prior to the Field Museum's 1961 excavation has been recovered, and the embellishment of the shrine itself as an equinox marker has been noted. Archaeologist Bill Lipe thinks religion was a . Summaries America's Stonehenge? The ancient ruins of Chaco Canyon, built in 850 and 1150 A.D. in New Mexico, are described in the movie. As the title states - they used their heads but not just by thinking about it. It proved worthwhile, though, because their efforts helped prove that the multiple-tumpline method was viable. Credit: Patrick Campbell/CU Boulder. Once home to the Ancient Puebloans, Chaco Canyon was a major center of ancestral Puebloan culture between 850 and 1250 A.D. By 1000 A.D., the Chaco culture had firmly established a spiritual, political, and economic center serving the Four Corners area. That's where we go to heal, to pray,'" said Weiner, who will receive his doctorate in anthropology from CU Boulder later this spring. It should be mentioned that archaeological work at Chaco Canyon had a significant contribution to the film. Your email address is used only to let the recipient know who sent the email. Under the terms of a U.S. National Park Service field research permit some location- specific site data has been deliberately redacted from this document, as required by the U.S. Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979. But how this society got its construction supplies has been a long-standing mystery. But how this society got its construction supplies has been a long-standing mystery. Scientists may have solved a Chaco Canyon mystery by hauling logs with In a remote canyon in northwestern New Mexico sits one of America's greatest historical treasures and one of the Southwest's greatest mysteries. Please select the most appropriate category to facilitate processing of your request. Refereed proceedings of The Oxford VI International Conference on Archaeoastronomy and Astronomy and Culture and SEAC in 1999, Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the American Southwest, The Architecture of Chaco Canyon, edited by Stephen Lekson, Kim Malville, J. McKim Malville, Andy Munro, The Southwest School of Landscape Archaeology, Memory, Meaning, and Masonry: The Late Bonito Chacoan Landscape, Anasazi solar marker: The use of a natural rockfall, Religious Behavior in the Post-Chaco Years, The Housing of the World: About the Significance of Cosmographic Concepts for Habitation, The Astronomical Context of the Archaeology and Architecture of the Chacoan Culture, 2006 National Conference on the Beginning Design Student An Inquiry into the Intersection and Fusion of Astronomical Alignments and Sacred Geometry in the Design Process of Architecture, Foundation Studio, Naked-Eye Astronomy for Cultural Astronomers (2008), The Hooper Ranch Pueblo Sun Dagger Shrine Revisited - Revealing Greater Regional Significance, Possible astronomical references in the planning of the Great Hopewell Road, Visions of the Cosmos: Ceremonial Landscapes and Civic Plans (2008), Pueblo Folklore, Landscape Phenomenology and the Visual Poetics of Fajada Butte, Astronomy and the Design of Late Bonito Great Houses at Chaco Canyon, ARCHAEOASTRONOMY IN THE FIELD; METHODOLOGIES APPLIED IN CHACO CANYON, Ancestors and the sun: astronomy, architecture and culture at Chaco Canyon, 2013. He and Wilson decided to read everything they could about the properties of dried wood. The Mystery of Chaco Canyon (Home Video Version) Astronomical analysis of 10th to 12th century A.D. cultural evidence at Chaco Canyon New Mexico began in the 1970s. They used sticks called "tokmas," which Nepalese sherpas also employ, to take breaks, resting the log without lowering it all the way to the ground. The complexes also featured large circular ceremonial areas called kivas. THE MYSTERY OF CHACO CANYON examines the deep enigmas presented by the massive prehistoric remains found in Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico. Kram developed his own theory about how the Chacoans managed the feat, starting with his realization a few years ago that the assumptions since 1980 about the mass of a typical roof beam (viga) used in one of the great houses was likely too high: 275 kilograms, a bit more than 600 pounds. It seemed unrealistically high to him. Yearning to be the center of everything, when we are the center of nothing: The parallels and reversals in Chaco, Hubble, and Facebook, "The Sky Starts at Our Feet: Anasazi Clues about Overcoming the Mind/Body Dualism through the Unity of Earth/Sky, A Sensory Approach to Exotica, Ritual Practice, and Cosmology at Chaco Canyon, MRES Thesis: The Fluteplayer of Chaco Canyon, Ritual, Timelessness, and Lived Experience in the Pueblo World, Materialities of Place: Ideology on the Chacoan Landscape, The Beginning of Prehistoric Settlements of the American SouthwestThe Beginning of Prehistoric Settlements of the American Southwest, Rock Art Studies: A Bibliographic Database_North America_United States_Arizona, Rock Art Studies: A Bibliographic Database_North America_United States_New Mexico, Unheard Voices, Part 1: The Astronomy of Many Cultures -- A Resource Guide, Rock Art Studies: A Bibliographic Database_North America_United States_Southwest_Navajo Rock Art, Great Houses, Shrines, and High Places: Intervisibility in the Chacoan World.