How a Glamping Adventure Revealed the Secrets of New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon

TRAVEL + LEISURE ^

[servo1969]

I find the word glamping to be extremely glay.

[CenTex]

Sorry, wrong camera. It was my D80, well before the D750 was available. the visit was in February of 2009. I took 789 photographs during the walk around. I am going to re-visit today...

A sample of the stonework...

C:\Users\jbdve\OneDrive\Desktop\Chaco Canyon Feb 2009\Chaco_Canyon_-49.JPG

[CenTex]

Sorry, I can’t get the photograph to transfer...

[Big Red Badger]

‘ALTO’ always amused me.
.
Montazumas Castle is one hour away from me now and it will take a Crow Bar for a three hour Wash Board Boggie!
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Tha Ancient Ones were a lot Tougher!

[1Old Pro]

Sounds like a great place to visit, despite the writing style of the author.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***The Ancient Ones were a lot Tougher!***

https://archive.news.wsu.edu/press-release/2014/08/04/wsu-researchers-see-violent-era-in-ancient-southwest/#.U9_iumNjYzJ

https://www.science20.com/news_articles/the_most_violent_era_in_america_was_before_europeans_arrived-141847

[Big Red Badger]

Thanks...
Makes Ya Think.

[redinIllinois]

Lots of interesting stuff!!

Thanks for posting...

[george76]

The term “Anasazi” is a Navajo word = means “ancient enemy.”

The Apache and Navajo are from northwestern Canada and eastern Alaska.. Their Athabascan ancestors migrated south when the Spanish were moving north from new Spain / old Mexico..

Hopi call their ancestors: Hisatsinom

[Flag_This]

"The Apache and Navajo are from northwestern Canada and eastern Alaska."

According to the Navajo I was listening to, he was quite emphatic that they came from the east. I have no dog in this fight, but it is interesting when traditions and science clash.

[Peter ODonnell]

Another theory is that the Dene native people of the NWT in Canada may be descendants of the Anasazi people who dispersed around 1200 AD from some combination of drought, and warfare with other groups. In the Dene language their name simply means “the people” and it is oddly similar to the name used by the Navajo people (Dineh) which has a similar meaning.

Why would the Anasazi migrate that far from the desert southwest? Possibly they encountered more hostile and settled tribes in Montana and Alberta and kept going north until they found vacant land.

This theory has proponents and critics, I don’t have that much expertise in the subject that I would want to say either way.

I visited Chaco Canyon in August 2018 and yes the road in is a shocker alright, but it’s worth a visit and quite impressive. The people there apparently hauled in logs from a mountain range (Chuska Mountains) about 150 miles to the west. As people have commented Chaco “canyon” is not really a canyon, it’s surrounded by rather low cliffs but it’s not a canyon and the stream running through (a tributary of the San Juan) is intermittent and I can certainly understand that if the climate turned drier as research suggests it did after about 1160 AD, the kind of agriculture the people practiced there would be very difficult with few water sources around.