On 9/22/06, jdiebremse <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], "Klaus Stock" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hm, wait. "Little evidence of city life" and "was clearly at the heart of an > extensive trading network" appear contradictory to me. Well, at least when I > consider other historical examples of how trading opportunity and/or > activity lead to the appearance and/or growth of settlments and/or cities. There certainly is a lot about Chaco Canyon that we don't fully understand. What we do know: 1) Many of the buildings at Chaco Canyon do not show signs of habitation - for example, heart remains, smoke stains on the walls and ceilings, trash middens, and artifacts of household goods. 2) To a rough approximation, in the Ancestral Puebloan world, "all roads lead to Chaco." The Ancestral Puebloan road system almost seems to radiate out of Chaco Canyon to other settlements. Now remember, these roads weren't totally practical - they maintained nearly straight lines over whatever obstacles were in the way. There is also archeological evidence of goods at Chaco that were traded from as far away as Mexico, the Pacific, and the Great Plains. My favorite interpretation of this evidence is that Chaco Canyon was a religious/spiritual center, that was home to perhaps an annual or biannual major festival, accompanied by a large trading market. Other interpretations of the evidence are certainly possible, however - and the National Park Service emphasizes that we certainly don't have all the evidence needed to make a completely convincing interpretation of just what Chaco Canyon was like.
I haven't read Diamond's book, and I'm certainly not a Chaco Canyon expert, but... Several years ago I had the pleasure of attending a presentation in Kansas City made by an archeologist who had been doing research in Chaco Canyon. His theory was that there were major religious festivals between one and three times per year, and that the canyon was eventually abandoned, but instead of heading north to Mesa Verde as in the theory you mention, JDG, he suggested there was a major split in the civilization with some going north but many, perhaps a majority, heading south, perhaps a few hundred miles or more south. It was a long time ago, but I remember him presenting some evidence that trade with cultures in what we now call Mexico had been on the rise, and he suggested that might have caused a cultural rift. I think he may have also suggested that the Mesa Verde people might have actually come from farther north and interbred with people of the Chaco Canyon civilization, so you have this culture in the middle -- whether they lived or just worshipped in Chaco Canyon -- caught between a "northernizing" of their culture on the one hand and a "southernizing" on the other. So instead of, as you put it, "extensive trading increas[ing] the population pressures on the Canyon, pushing it to unsustainable levels," this researcher suggested that the extensive trading caused cultural pressures that caused a divide within the culture itself. In other words, they may not have abandoned the canyon because it had become unsustainable -- it appears to have been sustained primarily from the outside already from 1000 to the 1300s, reaching the peak as you stated in the 1100s. Instead, the increasing cultural divide may have caused them to give up on their extraordinary effort they had sustained for centuries. Imagine if the Palestinians, Jews, Christians, etc. suddenly decided all the ruckus over Jerusalem wasn't worth it, and all sides abandoned the city. I'm now sure how closely that supports or contrasts what is in the book, and JDG, you are probably more current than I am, since you recently visited there. But I remember hearing that theory and thought I'd throw it in there for whatever it's worth. -- Mauro Diotallevi "Hey, Harry, you haven't done anything useful for a while -- you be the god of jello now." -- Patricia Wrede, 8/16/2006 on rasfc _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
