7 ms·

briefly looking at a google map, i don't see many rivers connecting near chaco canyon. Maybe there were rivers in that era that could work.

treis 4y ago
Those white lines are rivers that exist only during the rainy season and/or snow melts. There's like a 1-2 mile gap between them north of Chaco Canyon. Otherwise, there's water all the way up into the mountains. And if there's not rivers, how exactly are you making a 70 mile trek across the desert carrying heavy logs? Anyone doing that would need lots of water and would likely try to follow rivers anyways.
- treis 4y ago
  Also, a significant human settlement likely needs lots of wood for fires. Unlikely they're doing that by carrying it from 70 miles away.
- eesmith 4y ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/20090326082103/http://wwwpaztcn.wr.usgs.gov/julio_pdf/Reynolds_ea.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20090326082103/http://wwwpaztcn.... (linked-to from the Wikipedia article) has a map showing where the wood came from; "mostly from the Chuska Mountains to the west and the La Plata and San Juan Mountains to the north and possibly Hosta Butte to the south" From the Chuska Mountains, they would need to be brought to the Chaco River then floated/moved upstream. From the other mountains, it's a lot further, and a lot more upriver transport. Which is not easy. > how exactly are you making a 70 mile trek across the desert carrying heavy logs? Hence this research. Which mentions how they built good roads. Eg, https://www.nps.gov/chcu/learn/historyculture/chacoan-roads.htm https://www.nps.gov/chcu/learn/historyculture/chacoan-roads.... says: "An astonishing volume and variety of material was imported to Chaco Canyon, including approximately 200,000 wooden beams used in the construction of the great houses. These beams, often whole trunks of ponderosa pine, had to be brought in from considerable distances, mostly from the Chuska Mountains and Mount Taylor. Since walking on the roads is easier than walking off of them, they would have been quite useful in carrying such heavy loads such great distances, even if this was not their primary purpose." > Anyone doing that would need lots of water and would likely try to follow rivers anyways. You can have enough water for human consumption but be far from what's needed to float a log. And they had an extensive canal system, with dams to capture runoff water. As https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/4BF5354A0977E909979DB4ACBCB2A2FD/S0003598X1800114Xa.pdf/water-uncertainty-ritual-predictability-and-agricultural-canals-at-chaco-canyon-new-mexico.pdf https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/c... says: "In particular, some researchers identify Chaco Canyon, located in the San Juan Basin of New Mexico, as an “unlikely setting” for substantial occupation ... Debates over whether food was grown locally or supplied from distant settlements dominate the literature ... While the presence of complex canal systems has long been noted (e.g. Vivian 1990), the difficulty in dating these constructions has led to doubts over their existence and utility ... Our recent fieldwork on one canal network definitively dates it to Chaco’s Bonito Phase occupation"
  - treis 4y ago
    >From the Chuska Mountains, they would need to be brought to the Chaco River then floated/moved upstream. From the other mountains, it's a lot further, and a lot more upriver transport. Which is not easy If you look at the terrain that route is easy to do by water. You have the steep drop out of the mountains where the current helps you. The rest of the journey is over flat terrain so "upstream" isn't very hard when you have the right conditions. This article has a good picture: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/water-uncertainty-ritual-predictability-and-agricultural-canals-at-chaco-canyon-new-mexico/4BF5354A0977E909979DB4ACBCB2A2FD https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/wa... The July 23 picture is when you would transport the logs. It's deep enough to float them and there's barely a current. >Hence this research. My point is that it's a bizarre thing to research. Obviously you can carry heavy things. But like every single culture in the history of humanity has figured out doing so on water is way easier.
    - eesmith 4y ago
      > You have the steep drop out of the mountains where the current helps you. Where? What waterways off the Chuska Moutains have that volume and current? What's your proposed path? There doesn't appear to be any viable stream coming off the east side of those mountains, and a look at the map shows the arroyos which do come off meet up with the Chaco Wash/Chaco River at 36.18128218922837, -108.54422009733341 at what Google Maps calls Coyote Wash. That's about 40 miles downstream of Chaco Canyon, eyeballing it. (To verify, use https://apps.nationalmap.gov/viewer/ https://apps.nationalmap.gov/viewer/ , go to that point, zoom out, and see that's the most upstream point where the washes from the Chuska mountains meets the Chaco River.) Even if there was more water in the area so those arroyos were wet more often, the topology hasn't changed. And with more water, going upstream becomes harder. According to the link I gave, many of the trees came from north of the San Juan River (the La Plata and San Juan Mountains). Please also describe that route to Chaco Canyon. It looks like the Chaco River meets the San Juan near Shiprock, at 36.77203098974645, -108.64872995405689 , which calls for some 80 miles of upriver travel, and that's after floating them downriver. Again, use the USGS map to verify this. (BTW, I've done some hiking in New Mexico mountains. The creeks I saw were not enough to float logs, and had plenty of snags where trees and boulders were piled up. I find it hard to believe your proposed waterway even exists.) Why do you think water transport was easier than carrying the logs, when this paper shows that carrying logs on foot isn't so difficult? And that the relevant technology was already present in the area? > The July 23 picture is when you would transport the logs. How deep do you think that water was on July 23? Those are backpacks on the bank, and it looks narrow enough to step across. So, perhaps a few inches? Likely not enven a foot. How much muck and mud do you think is on the bottom? How do people pull those logs without having them drag on the bottom? In any case, I think it's a false path to explore. The text points out that the current entrenched state is under 150 years old, citing Lieutenant Simpson's account of it being 8 feet with a depth of 1½ feet back in 1850, so using current pictures doesn't give the right interpretation. > The rest of the journey is over flat terrain so "upstream" isn't very hard when you have the right conditions. Walking on a sandy arroyo bottom isn't that easy when it's dry. I've never walked on one when wet. Everyone said it was dangerous, as indeed your re-posting of my link points out how the water rose 1.5 meters overnight. What then are "the right conditions", and did they exist during the Chaco era? In the history of humanity, how many people have floated massive numbers of logs upstream without animal or sail power? All the examples I can think of went downriver. A goal of experimental archeology is to test if something is feasible. Not necessarily that it happened. Just because Thor Heyerdahl sailed from South America to Polynesia on a balsa tree raft doesn't mean that's how Polynesia was populated. What are your examples showing that your proposed transport method is at least as feasible as using tumplines?

treis 4y ago

Those white lines are rivers that exist only during the rainy season and/or snow melts. There's like a 1-2 mile gap between them north of Chaco Canyon. Otherwise, there's water all the way up into the mountains. And if there's not rivers, how exactly are you making a 70 mile trek across the desert carrying heavy logs? Anyone doing that would need lots of water and would likely try to follow rivers anyways.

treis 4y ago
Also, a significant human settlement likely needs lots of wood for fires. Unlikely they're doing that by carrying it from 70 miles away.
eesmith 4y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20090326082103/http://wwwpaztcn.wr.usgs.gov/julio_pdf/Reynolds_ea.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20090326082103/http://wwwpaztcn.... (linked-to from the Wikipedia article) has a map showing where the wood came from; "mostly from the Chuska Mountains to the west and the La Plata and San Juan Mountains to the north and possibly Hosta Butte to the south" From the Chuska Mountains, they would need to be brought to the Chaco River then floated/moved upstream. From the other mountains, it's a lot further, and a lot more upriver transport. Which is not easy. > how exactly are you making a 70 mile trek across the desert carrying heavy logs? Hence this research. Which mentions how they built good roads. Eg, https://www.nps.gov/chcu/learn/historyculture/chacoan-roads.htm https://www.nps.gov/chcu/learn/historyculture/chacoan-roads.... says: "An astonishing volume and variety of material was imported to Chaco Canyon, including approximately 200,000 wooden beams used in the construction of the great houses. These beams, often whole trunks of ponderosa pine, had to be brought in from considerable distances, mostly from the Chuska Mountains and Mount Taylor. Since walking on the roads is easier than walking off of them, they would have been quite useful in carrying such heavy loads such great distances, even if this was not their primary purpose." > Anyone doing that would need lots of water and would likely try to follow rivers anyways. You can have enough water for human consumption but be far from what's needed to float a log. And they had an extensive canal system, with dams to capture runoff water. As https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/4BF5354A0977E909979DB4ACBCB2A2FD/S0003598X1800114Xa.pdf/water-uncertainty-ritual-predictability-and-agricultural-canals-at-chaco-canyon-new-mexico.pdf https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/c... says: "In particular, some researchers identify Chaco Canyon, located in the San Juan Basin of New Mexico, as an “unlikely setting” for substantial occupation ... Debates over whether food was grown locally or supplied from distant settlements dominate the literature ... While the presence of complex canal systems has long been noted (e.g. Vivian 1990), the difficulty in dating these constructions has led to doubts over their existence and utility ... Our recent fieldwork on one canal network definitively dates it to Chaco’s Bonito Phase occupation"
- treis 4y ago
  >From the Chuska Mountains, they would need to be brought to the Chaco River then floated/moved upstream. From the other mountains, it's a lot further, and a lot more upriver transport. Which is not easy If you look at the terrain that route is easy to do by water. You have the steep drop out of the mountains where the current helps you. The rest of the journey is over flat terrain so "upstream" isn't very hard when you have the right conditions. This article has a good picture: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/water-uncertainty-ritual-predictability-and-agricultural-canals-at-chaco-canyon-new-mexico/4BF5354A0977E909979DB4ACBCB2A2FD https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/wa... The July 23 picture is when you would transport the logs. It's deep enough to float them and there's barely a current. >Hence this research. My point is that it's a bizarre thing to research. Obviously you can carry heavy things. But like every single culture in the history of humanity has figured out doing so on water is way easier.
  - eesmith 4y ago
    > You have the steep drop out of the mountains where the current helps you. Where? What waterways off the Chuska Moutains have that volume and current? What's your proposed path? There doesn't appear to be any viable stream coming off the east side of those mountains, and a look at the map shows the arroyos which do come off meet up with the Chaco Wash/Chaco River at 36.18128218922837, -108.54422009733341 at what Google Maps calls Coyote Wash. That's about 40 miles downstream of Chaco Canyon, eyeballing it. (To verify, use https://apps.nationalmap.gov/viewer/ https://apps.nationalmap.gov/viewer/ , go to that point, zoom out, and see that's the most upstream point where the washes from the Chuska mountains meets the Chaco River.) Even if there was more water in the area so those arroyos were wet more often, the topology hasn't changed. And with more water, going upstream becomes harder. According to the link I gave, many of the trees came from north of the San Juan River (the La Plata and San Juan Mountains). Please also describe that route to Chaco Canyon. It looks like the Chaco River meets the San Juan near Shiprock, at 36.77203098974645, -108.64872995405689 , which calls for some 80 miles of upriver travel, and that's after floating them downriver. Again, use the USGS map to verify this. (BTW, I've done some hiking in New Mexico mountains. The creeks I saw were not enough to float logs, and had plenty of snags where trees and boulders were piled up. I find it hard to believe your proposed waterway even exists.) Why do you think water transport was easier than carrying the logs, when this paper shows that carrying logs on foot isn't so difficult? And that the relevant technology was already present in the area? > The July 23 picture is when you would transport the logs. How deep do you think that water was on July 23? Those are backpacks on the bank, and it looks narrow enough to step across. So, perhaps a few inches? Likely not enven a foot. How much muck and mud do you think is on the bottom? How do people pull those logs without having them drag on the bottom? In any case, I think it's a false path to explore. The text points out that the current entrenched state is under 150 years old, citing Lieutenant Simpson's account of it being 8 feet with a depth of 1½ feet back in 1850, so using current pictures doesn't give the right interpretation. > The rest of the journey is over flat terrain so "upstream" isn't very hard when you have the right conditions. Walking on a sandy arroyo bottom isn't that easy when it's dry. I've never walked on one when wet. Everyone said it was dangerous, as indeed your re-posting of my link points out how the water rose 1.5 meters overnight. What then are "the right conditions", and did they exist during the Chaco era? In the history of humanity, how many people have floated massive numbers of logs upstream without animal or sail power? All the examples I can think of went downriver. A goal of experimental archeology is to test if something is feasible. Not necessarily that it happened. Just because Thor Heyerdahl sailed from South America to Polynesia on a balsa tree raft doesn't mean that's how Polynesia was populated. What are your examples showing that your proposed transport method is at least as feasible as using tumplines?