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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....

On Friday, Joe Biden’s U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a former Democrat congresswoman from New Mexico, released her decision to ban permitting of any type of natural mineral extraction within ten miles of Chaco Canyon, resulting in fury from the Navajo Nation, which opposed the measure after unsuccessfully trying to work with the administration on a compromise. “Despite the Navajo Nation’s position, Secretary Haaland proceeded to issue this decision one day after the Navajo Nation commemorated our Treaty Day, which recognizes the Treaty of 1868 and the start of the government-to-government relationship between the Navajo Nation and...

Here's a sweet notion: Eat a little chocolate each day and you could be doing your heart a favor. A new study published in the journal Heart found that habitual chocolate eaters had a lower risk of cardiovascular disease and strokes compared to people who didn't eat chocolate. So, what is it about chocolate that could possibly lead to such a benefit? Well, when you strip out the sugar and milk that's added to chocolate, you're left with the cocoa bean. And it's the compounds in the cocoa that researchers are most interested in. The study is part of a...

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...

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...

Historically, scarlet macaws lived from South America to eastern coastal Mexico and Guatemala, thousands of miles from the American Southwest. Previously, researchers thought that ancestral Puebloan people might have traveled to these natural breeding areas and brought birds back, but the logistics of transporting adolescent birds are difficult. None of the sites where these early macaw remains were found contained evidence of breeding—eggshells, pens or perches. "We were interested in the prehistoric scarlet macaw population history and the impacts of human direct management," said George. "Especially any evidence for directed breeding or changes in the genetic diversity that could co-occur...

Washington State University scientists... say the region saw three other cultural transitions over the preceding five centuries. The researchers also document recurring narratives in which the Pueblo people agreed on canons of ritual, behavior and belief that quickly dissolved as climate change hurt crops and precipitated social turmoil and violence... Bocinsky, WSU Regents Professor Tim Kohler and colleagues analyzed data from just over 1,000 southwest archaeological sites and nearly 30,000 tree-ring dates that served as indicators of rainfall, heat and time. Their data-intensive approach, facilitated by climate reconstructions run at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of...

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....

Researchers see violent era in ancient Southwest

A massive deposit of mutilated and processed human remains has been found in the American Southwest. The remains and other artifacts at the site, Sacred Ridge in Colorado, indicate ethnic cleansing took place there in the early ninth century. The genocide likely occurred due to conflict between different Anasazi Ancestral Puebloan ethnic groups. Crushed leg bones, battered skulls and other mutilated human remains are likely all that's left of a Native American population destroyed by genocide that took place circa 800 A.D., suggests a new study... The entire assemblage comprises 14,882 human skeletal fragments, as well as the mutilated remains...

It is said that the first structure was built around A.D. 1000, by an ancient culture known as the Sinagua, also known as the Anasazi. The Sinagua's were obviously aware of its greatness, as this is where they built their homes and thrived off of the land. They were agriculturalists with trade connections that spanned hundreds of miles. They hunted game and gathered seeds and nuts to sustain themselves. By studying petroglyphs, artifacts, and comparatives of indigenous and Hopi groups, Archaeologists and anthropologists describe Sinagua rituals as being closely related to the flora and fauna of the area. They utilized...

From the sky, the Mound of the Cross at Paquime, a 14th-century ruin in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, looks like a compass rose -- the roundish emblem indicating the cardinal directions on a map. About 30 feet in diameter and molded from compacted earth and rock taken near the banks of the Casas Grandes River, the crisscross arms point to four circular platforms. They might as well be labeled N, S, E and W...

It is believed that the single-family dwelling belonged to the Virgin Anasazi, who once flourished in the region, said Utah Department of Transportation spokesman Kevin Kitchen. The Virgin Anasazi was a prehistoric American Indian culture that lived along the Virgin River. The culture predates other American Indian tribes who inhabited the area. The site, found amid deep red, sandy soil, was apparently home to a single family, Higgins said. No remains were found and it's unknown how many people lived there or for how long. Crews identified a pit house used for shelter, which measured about 13 feet in diameter,...

Save water to avoid eating you neighbour By Chris Turney Last Updated: 1:01pm BST 02/05/2008 It's easy to get hung up on the tag 'global warming'. There's no doubt it's a useful catchphrase for describing the challenges we face, but there's always the risk that our predicament is just seen as warming. Temperature is of course an important facet of the climate, but it's not our only concern. Downpours in the future are likely to vary around the world and throughout the year. The combined effect of changing rainfall and increasing temperature will mean that some regions will get wetter,...

Ancient Massacre Discovered in New Mexico -- Was It Genocide? Blake de Pastino in Jemez Springs, New Mexico National Geographic News July 12, 2007 Seven skeletons discovered in a remote New Mexico canyon were victims of a brutal massacre that may have been part of an ancient campaign of genocide, archaeologists say. The victims—five adults, one child, and one infant—were members of an obscure native culture known as the Gallina, which occupied a small region of northwestern New Mexico around A.D. 1100 (see New Mexico map). The culture suddenly vanished around 1275, as the last of its members either left...