Free Republic

On June 2, the U.S. Department of the Interior blocked oil and gas leasing for the next twenty years within a ten-mile radius of Chaco Canyon — the site of a Puebloan civilization in now-northern New Mexico dating back over a millennium. Despite some support from people within the Pueblo tribes and Navajo Nation which surround the land, the vast majority of Navajo leaders have opposed these drilling restrictions. It’s essential that climate advocates hear them out. Between high-profile cases of extractive industries seizing and polluting Indigenous land and the fact that climate change exacerbates the many environmental and economic...

Native American activists verbally clashed outside Chaco Culture National Historical Park on Sunday, derailing a visit by U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who was there to celebrate a 20-year buffer around a World Heritage Site in northwest New Mexico. Haaland’s trip to Chaco on Sunday was canceled when a group of Navajo land allotment owners blocked the road, upset with the Biden administration’s recent decision to enshrine for the next 20 years what previously had been an informal 10-mile buffer around the World Heritage site. The buffer protects the area from future federal mineral development, including oil and gas drilling....

In a new study, several researchers at CU Boulder reenacted a small part of a trek that people in what is today the Southwest United States may have made more than 1,000 years ago. Rodger Kram, associate professor emeritus of integrative physiology, and James Wilson, then an undergraduate studying biochemistry, spent the summer of 2020 training for an impressive test of endurance: Together, they carried a ponderosa pine log weighing more than 130 pounds for 15 miles up and down a forest road in Boulder County, Colorado—and they did it using only their heads in a technique inspired, in part,...

President Joe Biden will propose a 20-year drilling ban for oil and gas in the areas in and surrounding Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, according to reports, despite soaring energy prices in the United States. The president plans to announce his plan during the White House tribal nations summit on Monday.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Researchers at the University of Cincinnati say they have more evidence that Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico was more than just an ancient gathering spot for Indigenous ceremonies and rituals... The researchers reported a gradual degradation of the surrounding woodlands beginning around 600 B.C., much earlier than previously thought... ...Amid the shift from people hunting and gathering to underatking agriculture, the researchers noted measurable changes — such as juniper trees decimated for building needs, food resources and firewood for cooking. “This is a very arid area,” he said. “In arid woodlands, the trees are essential...

Girl power! Mysterious ancient human society was run by a 'female elite' and lived in sprawling stone mansions ... The bodies were placed in sequential tombs over a 330 year period and spanned multiple generations. The finds reveal that a high degree of social differentiation and societal complexity existed in Chaco by the early 9th century. 'All societies are complex, but here we see a society with larger populations living in villages and cities and where major differences in status and wealth are evident,' Professor Kennett told MailOnline. ... The Chacoans, one of North America’s earliest complex societies, lived in...

You may be surprised to know how far back chocolate goes -- perhaps 1,000 years in what's now the United States. Evidence of chocolate has been found in northwestern New Mexico's Chaco Canyon, at Pueblo Bonito. The discovery indicates trade was under way between the Chaco Canyon and cacao growers in Central America -- more than 1,000 miles away. Crown says importing the material would have been a major undertaking.

Ancient Culture Prompts Worry for Arid Southwest by Richard Harris Jane Greenhalgh An overview of what remains standing at Chaco Canyon. NPR Eve Goldman A view into the ruins at Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon. Peek into the Cole-Overpeck family camping trip under the towering Ponderosa pines in the highlands of eastern Arizona, where climate change is both a personal and professional concern. All Things Considered, July 9, 2007 · Chaco Canyon is a stark and breathtaking ruin, nestled under soaring, red sandstone cliffs. It resembles the condition of the lost Inca city of Machu Picchu in Peru. For climate...

Mon Jun 5 09:31:01 2006 Pacific Time New Mexico's Chaco Canyon: A Place of Kings and Palaces? BOULDER, Colo., June 5 (AScribe Newswire) -- Kings living in palaces may have ruled New Mexico's Chaco Canyon a thousand years ago, causing Pueblo people to reject the brawny, top-down politics in the centuries that followed, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder archaeologist. University of Colorado Museum anthropology Curator Steve Lekson, who has studied Chaco Canyon for several decades, said one argument for royalty comes from the rich, crypt-style burials of two men discovered deep in a Chaco Canyon "great house"...

Unearthing canyon's cluesMysteries of Anasazi revealed in Chaco's centuries-old corn By Jim Erickson, Rocky Mountain News May 15, 2004 CHACO CANYON, N.M. - As Rich Friedman twists the handle of the T-shaped auger, the steel blades bite into loamy brown soil in a field where scientists suspect Anasazi farmers grew corn 1,000 years ago. Friedman is part of a Boulder-led research team that collected 60 soil samples around the Chaco basin this month in an ongoing effort to determine where the Anasazi grew all the corn they would have needed to feed the thousands who periodically gathered in the canyon....

Mon Feb 17 13:32:03 2003 Pacific Time Misunderstanding the Prehistoric Southwest: What Happened at Chaco? BOULDER, Feb. 17 (AScribe Newswire) -- Two University of Colorado at Boulder researchers have developed intriguing theories on the mysterious demise of the Chaco Canyon Pueblo people and the larger Chaco region that governed an area in the Southwest about the size of Ohio before it collapsed about 1125. Steve Lekson, curator of anthropology at the CU Museum, believes a powerful political system centered at Chaco Canyon in northern New Mexico may have kept other Pueblo peoples under its thumb from about 1000 to 1125....