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For
those of you not in the know about pre-Columbian history
here in the great american southwest, the Anasazi had a
whacking big empire
which
stretched from Mexico to Colorado, and west to Nevada.
The administrative and religious center for this empire for
hundreds of years was in Chaco Canyon. At its peak, Chaco
was a bustling center of commerce, with several large
apartment buildings which could have housed thousands, an
observatory, an extensive highway system, and a
huge church, built in a style now
called a "kiva;" clearly religion was important to the
Anasazi....
...and then around 1200 ad they gave up on the whole deal
and disappeared. They had no writing, so while there is
evidence the culture did not die out for another couple
hundred years, there is no record of their rise and fall
except the petroglyphs and other artifacts from their hasty
flight.
Many believe that the modern day Pueblo tribes are descended
from the Anazazi, but they too have no oral history of the
catastrophe that destroyed the Chacoan empire. So there you
go.
Why
that's fascinating! Tell
me more
about southwestern archeology.
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