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>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 lo

by 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
  (1) You're looking at images in the dry season. When it rains all those white river shaped things turn into rivers that you can float logs down. That gets the logs to the fork. (2) When the waters recede a bit you take the logs upstream. You don't walk in the arroyo. You use a pole like this: https://catbirdinchina.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/p5315645.jpg https://catbirdinchina.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/p5315645.... You can move at more or less walking speed with a pole like that. >What are your examples showing that your proposed transport method is at least as feasible as using tumplines? This isn't a theoretical thing. People still move goods around like in places that are too poor to afford motor boats. I've seen it first hand in Myanmar and Vietnam. As long as the current is relatively weak it's easy to move a boat by pole. Stack a bunch of logs together onto a raft and have a couple guys on top with poles to move it. Bet they could do a raft of 30-40 at something around walking speed. >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. You don't need much more than a few inches to float logs. Either way, there's some point between those two photos where the trade off between river depth and current is optimal. >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. How many examples are there of them choosing to carry heavy stuff when water transport was available?
  - eesmith 4y ago
    Again, please indicate the likely route you think they would have taken. Which waterways? > When it rains all those white river shaped things turn into rivers that you can float logs down. You are conjecturing. I've seen wet arroyos. They are not like the image you've shown with the nice flat water. Here's what it looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obrgK17L1UM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obrgK17L1UM and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmO0xzXapeg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmO0xzXapeg and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ40m2SoBWM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ40m2SoBWM and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1PTLOp_hUs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1PTLOp_hUs . These are short-lived events. You are not going to pole a raft 50+ miles upstream during that time in that flow. Yes, they can be enough to carry logs downstream. But they'll also easily snag, and be abraded. > As long as the current is relatively weak it's easy to move a boat by pole. Why do you think the water flow in NM arroyos, in those rare times when the water is deep enough to float a log, is "relatively weak"? In NM there are a lot of warnings to stay out of arroyos when it rains, because the water can come quickly, with a dangerous flow. For example, from https://www.koat.com/article/officials-urge-residents-to-stay-out-of-arroyos-during-heavy-rain/4399129 https://www.koat.com/article/officials-urge-residents-to-sta...: ] LT. CHRIS CARLSEN WITH THE ALBUQUERQUE FIRE DEPARTMENT SAYS IT ONLY TAKES INCHES OF WATER IN AN ARROYO TO SWEEP YOU AWAY. Carlsen: "It doesn't seem very dangerous when it's hot and dry but it takes a very small amount of rain in the foothills or mesa to fill these channels up quickly." AND WHEN IT POURS AND THOSE ARROYOS FILL UP - THE WATER MOVES FAST AND GETS DEEP. LOOK AT WHAT THE WATERS HAVE DRAGGED DOWN THE CHANNEL, ALREADY THIS SEASON: Carlsen: "You can see the water can move concrete. We've had forklifts, vehicles come washing down the system." IF A PIECE OF HEAVY MACHINERY IS NO MATCH FOR THE RUSHING WATER ... NEITHER ARE YOU > You don't need much more than a few inches to float logs. To repeat the previous quote, "IT ONLY TAKES INCHES OF WATER IN AN ARROYO TO SWEEP YOU AWAY." You can work out how a rough minimum required depth. The paper says their test log is 22 cm in diameter = 8.6 inches and "timbers of at least 0.61 m diameter were used at Chaco as vertical support columns in great kivas", so 24 inches. Pine greenwood appears to have a density about 700 kg/cubic meter so it looks the test log needs 5-6 inches of depth and the vertical support columns need about 1.5 feet. (I used the greenwood weight since you're going to waterlog the pine anyway. The dried density is only about 400 kg/cubic meter.) That's a lot of water in dry New Mexico! Oh, and your hypothesis requires that each one of the "white river shaped things" is that inches deep, to be able to float logs. They merge into the Coyote Wash, so that would be carrying a huge volume of water. But looking at the aerial pictures you can see it's never had regular huge flows like that. Aslo, there's about a 600 foot rise from where Coyote Wash meets the Cacho River to Chaco Canyon proper, so there's a decent river flow. (A flow you saw in the photograph.) In Three Men in a Boat they punt the Thames from Kingston upon Thames to Oxford. That's 100 miles, and a rise of <200 feet. This stretch of the Cacho Wash is 600 feet in 50 miles, so about 6x the slope, and thus a rather faster current than the Thames. > How many examples are there of them choosing to carry heavy stuff when water transport was available? That doesn't answer my question. If no one brought tens of thousands of logs upstream 50 miles by water using only manual labor than your appeal to history is bad logic. If you can't show people did it, you can't appeal to history. Further, you've yet to demonstrate that appropriate water transport was available to the Chaco Canyon dwellers. Further, the paper cites the archeological evidence that "that the people of Chaco used tumplines to carry a variety of materials (water vessels, maize, ceramics, chert, obsidian, turquoise, cacao, and even macaws) across a trading network spanning the San Juan Basin and beyond." What evidence is there for your proposed transport method?

by treis 4y ago

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
(1) You're looking at images in the dry season. When it rains all those white river shaped things turn into rivers that you can float logs down. That gets the logs to the fork. (2) When the waters recede a bit you take the logs upstream. You don't walk in the arroyo. You use a pole like this: https://catbirdinchina.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/p5315645.jpg https://catbirdinchina.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/p5315645.... You can move at more or less walking speed with a pole like that. >What are your examples showing that your proposed transport method is at least as feasible as using tumplines? This isn't a theoretical thing. People still move goods around like in places that are too poor to afford motor boats. I've seen it first hand in Myanmar and Vietnam. As long as the current is relatively weak it's easy to move a boat by pole. Stack a bunch of logs together onto a raft and have a couple guys on top with poles to move it. Bet they could do a raft of 30-40 at something around walking speed. >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. You don't need much more than a few inches to float logs. Either way, there's some point between those two photos where the trade off between river depth and current is optimal. >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. How many examples are there of them choosing to carry heavy stuff when water transport was available?
- eesmith 4y ago
  Again, please indicate the likely route you think they would have taken. Which waterways? > When it rains all those white river shaped things turn into rivers that you can float logs down. You are conjecturing. I've seen wet arroyos. They are not like the image you've shown with the nice flat water. Here's what it looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obrgK17L1UM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obrgK17L1UM and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmO0xzXapeg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmO0xzXapeg and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ40m2SoBWM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ40m2SoBWM and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1PTLOp_hUs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1PTLOp_hUs . These are short-lived events. You are not going to pole a raft 50+ miles upstream during that time in that flow. Yes, they can be enough to carry logs downstream. But they'll also easily snag, and be abraded. > As long as the current is relatively weak it's easy to move a boat by pole. Why do you think the water flow in NM arroyos, in those rare times when the water is deep enough to float a log, is "relatively weak"? In NM there are a lot of warnings to stay out of arroyos when it rains, because the water can come quickly, with a dangerous flow. For example, from https://www.koat.com/article/officials-urge-residents-to-stay-out-of-arroyos-during-heavy-rain/4399129 https://www.koat.com/article/officials-urge-residents-to-sta...: ] LT. CHRIS CARLSEN WITH THE ALBUQUERQUE FIRE DEPARTMENT SAYS IT ONLY TAKES INCHES OF WATER IN AN ARROYO TO SWEEP YOU AWAY. Carlsen: "It doesn't seem very dangerous when it's hot and dry but it takes a very small amount of rain in the foothills or mesa to fill these channels up quickly." AND WHEN IT POURS AND THOSE ARROYOS FILL UP - THE WATER MOVES FAST AND GETS DEEP. LOOK AT WHAT THE WATERS HAVE DRAGGED DOWN THE CHANNEL, ALREADY THIS SEASON: Carlsen: "You can see the water can move concrete. We've had forklifts, vehicles come washing down the system." IF A PIECE OF HEAVY MACHINERY IS NO MATCH FOR THE RUSHING WATER ... NEITHER ARE YOU > You don't need much more than a few inches to float logs. To repeat the previous quote, "IT ONLY TAKES INCHES OF WATER IN AN ARROYO TO SWEEP YOU AWAY." You can work out how a rough minimum required depth. The paper says their test log is 22 cm in diameter = 8.6 inches and "timbers of at least 0.61 m diameter were used at Chaco as vertical support columns in great kivas", so 24 inches. Pine greenwood appears to have a density about 700 kg/cubic meter so it looks the test log needs 5-6 inches of depth and the vertical support columns need about 1.5 feet. (I used the greenwood weight since you're going to waterlog the pine anyway. The dried density is only about 400 kg/cubic meter.) That's a lot of water in dry New Mexico! Oh, and your hypothesis requires that each one of the "white river shaped things" is that inches deep, to be able to float logs. They merge into the Coyote Wash, so that would be carrying a huge volume of water. But looking at the aerial pictures you can see it's never had regular huge flows like that. Aslo, there's about a 600 foot rise from where Coyote Wash meets the Cacho River to Chaco Canyon proper, so there's a decent river flow. (A flow you saw in the photograph.) In Three Men in a Boat they punt the Thames from Kingston upon Thames to Oxford. That's 100 miles, and a rise of <200 feet. This stretch of the Cacho Wash is 600 feet in 50 miles, so about 6x the slope, and thus a rather faster current than the Thames. > How many examples are there of them choosing to carry heavy stuff when water transport was available? That doesn't answer my question. If no one brought tens of thousands of logs upstream 50 miles by water using only manual labor than your appeal to history is bad logic. If you can't show people did it, you can't appeal to history. Further, you've yet to demonstrate that appropriate water transport was available to the Chaco Canyon dwellers. Further, the paper cites the archeological evidence that "that the people of Chaco used tumplines to carry a variety of materials (water vessels, maize, ceramics, chert, obsidian, turquoise, cacao, and even macaws) across a trading network spanning the San Juan Basin and beyond." What evidence is there for your proposed transport method?