On a summer evening in 1968, a friend and I ended up sitting on a crumbling wall of Pueblo Alto, sharing a 6-pack, and watching the sun set over Chaco Canyon in New Mexico. The Park Service, then and now, frowns on that practice, as it does on visitors pocketing pot-shards found amid the ruins – another disreputable activity we engaged in. Back then, however, the Park Service presence in what was Chaco Canyon National Monument (now Chaco Culture National Historical Park) was rather slim, consisting of a single ranger, camping in a tent and standing guard over an 8 x 10 wooden shack that served as a museum.Below us, spread out in this utterly barren canyon, were the ruins of dozens of abandoned pueblos; some had been as tall as 5-stories, each encompassing hundreds of rooms, indicating that thousands of Indians had to have not only lived here, but scratched out a relatively prosperous life in what now appeared to be totally inhospitable terrain. Now, some 900 years later, only these impressive remains were left. What happened? And what became of these people?
Aside from its monumental architecture, Chaco is a strange place. Take those big, multi-room, pueblos (called “great houses”): almost all are located on the northside of the wash, the “better,” i.e., sunnier side (think warmer winter temperatures – we’d call it “passive solar” these days). On the other side there were also lots of pueblos. In fact, lots more, but of a smaller, one-story, variety that had been the usual “Anasazi” living quarters for hundreds of years previously.
(Anasazi is the name applied to this culture, a culture which existed for over 2000 years in the 4-corners area where Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico come together; the word is usually interpreted as “ancient ones,” but it’s literal meaning, from the Navaho, is "enemy ancestors.")
Each of the “great houses” had hundreds of rooms, but it appears they were never fully occupied. At least not year-round. Pueblo Bonito (top photo), the greatest of the great houses, with some 650-800 rooms (archeologist’s estimates differ, indeed archeologists differ about almost everything concerning Chaco) might have housed thousands, but estimates based on the number of useable hearths reduce that to around 800; and some put it as low as 12 households, perhaps only 70 people. But however many, they were very rich households, for Chaco was a class society, the powerful living in relative splendor on the sunny side of the canyon (great house excavations have yielded luxury items such as turquoise, inlayed sea shells, copper bells, macaw skeletons, etc.), while others made do on the less desirable side of the wash. (We probably don’t have to ask who did most of the construction.)
But year-round occupation by a wealthy few doesn’t preclude occasional occupation by much larger numbers. Along with hundreds of ordinary rooms, Pueblo Bonito had 32 kivas and 3 great kivas – circular chambers specifically designed for ceremonial and religious purposes. A hell of a number if used by only a few families. And then there are roads: virtual highways extending out from Chaco in all directions, with the greatest beginning just north of Bonito (the Great North Road, passing in front of the Pueblo Alto wall we were sitting on). This road is over 30 feet wide – 30 feet in a society without wheels or beasts of burden. And planning. Chaco was first settled around 600 AD; with great house construction beginning about 850 and lasting until the early 1100s. From first to last, over a period of at least 200 years, it seems that Pueblo Bonito was being built with its final appearance always in mind.
Massive monumental construction, a vast road network, outlying satellite communities, trade goods moving over great distances (even much of Chaco’s corn – a basic staple – seems to have been grown at a far remove), a class society . . . it’s clear that Chaco was the administrative, political and religious center of a much wider civilization – an Anasazi Rome. And then around 1130-1150 it all came to an end. All signs of occupation vanish shortly after 1130.
Although archeologists have proposed dozens of theories, drought seems to be the most popular. Tree ring studies show the beginning of a 50-year drought at the time of Chaco abandonment. But there’s a problem. There had been earlier droughts, droughts of equal or greater severity. Why then were the consequences this time so much more severe? Especially since a society so much more powerful and better organized, more advanced in the techniques of irrigation, should have been better prepared to overcome this type of adversity.
Others have proposed invasion by outsiders. But it’s not likely that bands of marauding, much less invading, hunter/gathers, moving on foot, would have made much of an impression on relatively dense, organized, populations of settled agriculturists; populations with stored food reserves. Indeed, raiders would consider themselves lucky to escape alive, especially in the southwest’s open terrain. Think of Mongols invading the middle east – but on foot, without livestock, horses, supplies, superior weapons or organization . . . They’d be dead Mongols.
So if not drought or invaders, what then? Consider environmental destruction. Consider almost 600 years of occupation by large populations utilizing wood fires. Consider pueblo construction and the utilization of over 200,000 trees for lintels and beams. Analysis of packrat burrows have shown the area surrounding Chaco to have been completely deforested by the latter stages of occupation; building timbers were having to be transported from nearly 70 miles away. Think subsequent erosion and arroyo down-cutting rendering irrigation works ineffective. Think lowered water tables, flash flooding, earlier termination of streamflow, and the drying up of springs. And then came drought.
It was probably not pretty. We’re talking starvation and societal breakdown. The gods had failed, and their representatives were no longer creditable. It was not a matter of renting a U-Haul and moving on. It was family against family and clan against clan. A majority, and perhaps very much more than a majority, died in the collapse and ensuing carnage. It’s from this time that archeologists find destroyed kivas (the tops removed – no easy task since roofs were built up as a dome of solid timbers – and the insides burnt out), dismembered bodies and obvious signs of cannibalism. Nothing conveys hate and contempt quite so well as eating the good parts of someone and then defecating on the rest, and on their religious shrines.
Those that did survive moved on to other locations and re-established communal pueblo life. But it was communal life with a difference – pueblos were now situated for defense: cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde and Canyon de Chelly (lower photo), or fortress towers placed for mutual support at Hovenweep. Throughout the four-corners area Anasazi now lived in fear. And we have to ask “fear of whom?” Since the argument against outside invaders would still hold, the obvious answer has to be other Anasazi. Only other Anasazi had the resources and numbers to conduct war. This should come as no surprise. When things go belly up it’s your neighbors who will kill you. Just ask the Tutsi in Rwanda, or Polish Jews, or anyone who lived during the 90s in what was “Yugoslavia.”
By 1300 the Anasazi had completely disappeared. Survivors undoubtedly made their way southward to establish new pueblos, usually with other refugees from other failing societies afflicted with similar problems (e.g., the Hohokam and Mogollon). But culture and religion had changed; they were no longer Anasazi.
And now for the moral of this story (of course there has to be a moral!). Does environmental degradation and climate change leading to the destruction of an advanced civilization, a civilization that had lasted for hundreds of years, seem slightly familiar? It should. We ignore what we’re doing to our planet at our peril. Wholesale destruction of species, mindless harvesting of higher life forms from our oceans, exhaustion of the earth’s rivers and the mining of its groundwater, expanding human populations and the quest for a “western” way of life, etc., etc., and so on. These things can’t go on forever. And things that can’t go on forever, don’t.
Ignoring the possibility of climate change doesn’t help. Notice I said “possibility.” I’m convinced, along with almost every scientist studying global warming, that it’s not just a possibility, but reality. But let’s give nay-sayers the benefit of the doubt – the mere possibility alone should justify action. We’re fooling with things we don’t fully understand. We’re in for surprises; and most of them are unlikely to be pleasant. When consequences are dire, only the stupid fail to take precautions.
What were the Anasazi thinking during those last years? Did they turn a blind eye? Did they hope for a technological fix? Or put their faith in prayer? Did they condemn and punish those who pointed out the obvious? What was he thinking, that Easter Islander who cut down the last tree? Or those who fled the abandoned cities of the Mayan Yucatan? Why are there now no cedars in Lebanon? And when did the fertile crescent become unfertile? Perhaps these are things we should start thinking about – in preparation against the day when our gods fail us. As they surely will.
Al
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