Saturday, July 30, 2022
65 deg at 6:00 am, cloudy
We took the Loop Drive through Chaco Valley, stopping first at the Visitor’s Center. Behind the center was a 1-mile hike to Una Vida and some petroglyphs. It was pretty impressive. “Una Vida is a Chacoan “great house,” a large pre-planned multi-storied public building with distinctive masonry, formal earthen architecture, and a great kiva. Una Vida exists today in a near-natural state of preservation, free from major vandalism, and with only minor excavations and preservation repairs.” It was built in the mid-800’s AD and had 160 rooms. You can see the two streams that run through Chaco Canyon. There are six major sites on the loop drive, some largely excavated. For many Indian tribes The Pueblans, Hopi, Navajo and others, these are sacred sites where many are buried, and they don’t want further excavation. Some of these were found and excavated in the late 1800’s.
We drove to the next spot, Hungo Pavi, which included several sites, then looped behind to the cliff where there were a lot of petroglyphs. These were pretty amazing structures. Chaco Canyon was the hub of trade throughout New Mexico and beyond. I would like to see Machu Pichu, but this is pretty incredible. It is huge, and the rock work is impressive. Certainly they had the materials, with plenty of flat stones falling off the cliffs naturally, but they way they put them together, using mud for mortar would rival today’s stonework. At times they used tiny stones to fill gaps. In later buildings, they used columns, wooden support beams and flying buttresses. Sometimes they used a double-wall construction. Parts of these buildings still stand 1,000 years later!
The common thread was the kiva, a round building with windows, often aligned with the sun, moon and stars. Several of these kivas are huge! 50 people would fit comfortably. They built roads for commerce with other settlements, often carving steps in the cliffs above. They built irrigation canals and water storage. We talked about the Romans and their incredible construction at the same time. One difference is we know a lot about the history of the Romans. We know little about Chaco Culture. Why did they leave? What did they do in these great kivas? This was a huge, open society where people visited from hundreds of miles away. Artifacts were found from the west coast, Mexico and the north.
We completed the loop drive and went back to the Visitor’s Center.I found several interesting books while Martha talked with a ranger about what hike to take tomorrow. Her favorite hike was out, because we can’t cross the “wash”, which is a river right now, and it is supposed to rain tonight.
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