Wednesday, March 15, 2023

Chaco Canyon Mystery

 From Ars Technica:

The so-called "great houses" of Chaco Canyon in New Mexico may have taken decades or longer to construct. Most large complexes had four or five stories and averaged over 200 rooms, with the largest boasting as many as 700 rooms. The complexes also featured large circular ceremonial areas called kivas. To construct these great houses, archaeologists have estimated that the Chacoans would have needed wood from some 200,000 trees, and those 16-foot-long wooden beams must have been transported from mountain ranges as far as 70 miles (110 km) away.

Many scientists have hypothesized about how the Chacoans might have accomplished this feat. The latest theory is that the Chacoans may have used simple devices called tumplines, still favored by sherpas in Nepal, according to a new paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. To test that hypothesis, co-authors Rodger Kram and James Wilson spent the summer of 2020 training until they could haul a heavy log some 15 miles using tumplines. "Some people baked sourdough bread during COVID," said Kram, an emeritus professor of integrative physiology at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "Instead, we carried sand and heavy logs around using our heads." (Read more.)
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