What is Chaco Really? with Steve Lekson

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  • Опубликовано: 23 ноя 2024

Комментарии • 182

  • @susanwilliams6710
    @susanwilliams6710 Год назад +15

    I’ve listened to him in an earlier documentary, in which he seemed ill at ease, delivering this same information in a much more scatter-shot way. Thus, I really appreciated this fuller, more relaxed delivery. I think he did an excellent job with this lecture. Also, his unassuming attitude about his work is refreshing and uncommon among academics. I particularly appreciated the collegial way he spoke of others’ work, of the work he even has reservations about.

    • @sabineb.5616
      @sabineb.5616 11 месяцев назад +3

      @susanwilliams, Steve Lekson might've felt ill at ease because the whole subject is such a can of worms, and many scientists don't want to step on anyone"s toes. This is very tough when oral traditions of indigenous people are concerned. I still think that Lekson isn't totally comfortable when he gives oral lectures. I prefer to read his papers and books.

  • @Redfour5
    @Redfour5 Год назад +19

    Having traveled through there summer after summer as a kid in the late 1960's and early/mid 70's, I remember my dad a teacher/Jr. HS Principal speculating on the interconnectedness of the entire area that wasn't being discussed. In the right light you could see the roads out of Chaco. Dad speculated on a connected culture and most of the archeaology was pretty buried in hard copy journals. He knew locals including having beers with Edward Abbey and Moki Mac. Waldo Wilcox took my parents to ruins no one had ever seen and they told me it was like someone the people had just gotten up and left one morning in the middle of breakfast. We were told about Montezuma Canyon when only a few locals lived there and walked all over it over the years before it was even really known. Locals said archeologists had begun to look at it but not much done yet. Walking a wash, with tells, we saw one where the corner was being washed away and you could see wall remnants soon to be gone with the next rains and finding turquoise beads in the dirt in a circle about the size of a bracelet some already washed away. Yes, we know you were not supposed to touch them, but the next rains would wash them away. Mom treasured them for life. With the Wilcox Ruins, my parents said Textiles, even weapons just laying in corners, obvious sleeping areas...made it very eery. Anyway, you present the information in an objective open way that makes sense and does resonate with the things my father speculated on not being biased by an academic culture...just observations.

    • @GreatistheWorld
      @GreatistheWorld Год назад +3

      Dude that’s incredible

    • @jopainting1668
      @jopainting1668 Год назад +5

      Fascinating, thank you for sharing this story with us!

    • @scarletred1497
      @scarletred1497 Год назад +1

      Those items should be repatriated

    • @Redfour5
      @Redfour5 Год назад +1

      I'll talk to my mom about it. Oh wait, she's been dead for 10 years. I have NO idea what happened to them. Feel better trying to throw a guilt trip on me? Reality is what it is, deal with it. Right now they would be washed down a gully for fifty years never to be seen again. They gave my mother 50 years of a connection she shared with the world, that culture she sincerely respected and modern day elements of the surviving cultures supported in many ways including monetary. What's your problem? There was no disrespect.@@scarletred1497

    • @snowmiaow
      @snowmiaow Год назад +1

      Thank you for the amazing story.

  • @Redfour5
    @Redfour5 Год назад +6

    The signaling system. Up in Wyoming at the Medicine Wheel off 14A, we were there in the late 1960's and an old rancher took us in a WWII Jeep. It was still pristine, few went there. The rancher pointed across the vast landscape and said an old Indian had told him stories he had been told by his parents that they would light big fires and he would point to mountain outcrops 60 100 miles away you can see and he said they would light fires and see across areas as big as states... I've never seen that mentioned in any analysis of that arechological site. Oh someone cleaned it up from Pictures I've seen made it much more clear and "crisp." I wonder how accurate that was done...

  • @calebwilliamsmusician
    @calebwilliamsmusician Месяц назад +1

    This fits with the Diné narrative that the Anasazi and Ancestral Puebloans were two separate groups- the Anasazi were ruthless slave masters, and the Ancestral Puebloans their slaves.

  • @andrewselden2244
    @andrewselden2244 3 месяца назад +1

    This discussion omits consideration of a clan structure within the larger urban polity, which might help explain the multiple great house arrangement as well as a diffusion and specialization of skills and roles. The clan structure might have anticipated similar internal affiliations within Navajo/Dine society, or as evident today within North Pacific Coast tribes.

  • @chrismanspeaker9372
    @chrismanspeaker9372 11 месяцев назад +2

    Was out there this past weekend. I had many questions. This answered many. It is a shame that a few folks, working from a strange stance has influenced the history or rather the interpretation of history based on an assumption with any claims to being remotely valid. I see that currently with the use of prescribed burns.
    It is unfortunate that the local people do not share their stories as it could change so much, honestly, so many opportunities to put story and legends to events that you could create many new archaeologists/historians/park people (PhDs) out of the local peoples AND keep that knowledge uniquely theirs at the same time.

  • @petem6846
    @petem6846 Год назад +3

    Great talk! I've been a fan of Lekson for years and enjoy reading his books because he's willing to hold opinions different from the currently accepted opinions. Very easy lecture to listen to and understand. His points are very compelling! Much different comments than what I heard from rangers at Chaco years ago.

  • @katrussell6819
    @katrussell6819 Год назад +1

    I'd like more details about the stored materials and foods found in the little rooms. I'd like to know more about the turquoise jewels and feather pieces that were made. Fascinating information. Thanks.

  • @Redfour5
    @Redfour5 Год назад +4

    As an added variable to the question of why did they leave, go into the cliff dwellings. There appears to be an influx of people, the Navajo, as a factor that might have also played into the disruption of the society.... I still remember as a kid seeing the one place in Mesa Verde where a person had to crawl through a hole to get inside and the two places where a man could stand and essentially "bludgeon" anyone coming through with the first body basically blocking the hole... There were undoubtedly complex relationships with existing tribes not puebloan like the Utes??? but an influx of a "new" people in large numbers.... ???? Could that have been an "exclamation point."

    • @DennisRoberts-sv4hi
      @DennisRoberts-sv4hi Год назад

      Word is giants appeared, like 25- 30 foot tall. They started grabbing the indians and eating them. So they all bailed, got the hell out of there. Some moved high up into the sides of cliffs. Several books by Steve Quayle documents giants in Europe, Americas, up to the 14th century, they seemed to have died off then. Every nation in Europe has government archives documenting this. They disappeared from Europe around the 9 th century. Possibly came to Americas. All captain ship logs from 1400s, 1500s, 1600s documents giants in America's. Around 25 ft tall. Cortez, Balboa, ECT. All of them. Indian legends say the giants appeared and started eating them. Oral tradition from elders.

    • @AccDeleted1
      @AccDeleted1 6 месяцев назад +1

      I don’t think Navajos were unified enough to come in large groups, they were known to spread out in many small bands.

  • @ensenadorjones4224
    @ensenadorjones4224 Год назад +4

    Great video. I like the part where ethnologies and the original experts supposed some things about the pueblo people and Chaco that were inaccurate assumptions that were then accepted by academia as dogma.
    I see from many people that this area is center of trade and commerce for that region at that time.

    • @Neebrecker
      @Neebrecker 5 месяцев назад

      Yeah, great video, though like many academics he oversells how revolutionary and "against dogma" his research is (not saying this need to prove the predecessors wrong and make a name is a bad thing for actual sophisticated academics like Lekson--it's only dangerous when practiced by the undisciplined armchair conspiracy folk trying to fool people into buying their junk stories). Lekson here cites early ethnologists/cultural anthropologists, but those people weren't very interested in the historical questions such as the Chaco Canyon phenomenon, but instead were interested in studying currently existing societies. In fact, their work drastically improved the practice and theories of cultural anthropology, a different field than the archaeology field that Leson works in.
      The only reason he can get away setting them up as part of the foil is that Chaco is unique in that the descendants literally live nearby, and so it's a very plausible methodology to use their current and recorded cultural/political practices (Lekson's "Pueblo space") as a source for understanding those they had in the unrecorded past. Historians use cross-time cultural comparisons to generate explanations all the time (see work on ancient Egypt for instance). But..as Leksen shows, this methodology has largely failed for explaining the Chaco phenomenon and needs to go on the back burner.

  • @Redfour5
    @Redfour5 Год назад +2

    My dad did speak to some of the "academics" of the time and his own observations were more along the lines of how you think. I remember when he and our friend were at Chaco and disagreeing with the academics they had spoken to who were talking of places as discrete and population numbers as "low" compared to what they thought... Dad really wasn't coming to any conclusions just making observations.

  • @ercost60
    @ercost60 9 месяцев назад

    Fantastic talk! I've read some books and seen some videos and visited Chaco twice. Steve's reasoning on houses & kivas seems sound and quite well thought out. Such a fascinating subject.

  • @mariawheatley7029
    @mariawheatley7029 4 месяца назад

    Excellent talk, I am from England near Stonehenge and revisting Chaco in 2024 so this was very informative. Brilliant speaker

    • @jool5941
      @jool5941 2 месяца назад

      When will you be there I’m planning on going too, maybe I buy you lunch.

  • @scottlopez9822
    @scottlopez9822 9 месяцев назад +1

    All you have to do is go out there and try to meditate ... you'll see what kind of energy you can connect with. Make your own decisions on what happened there. The energy will guide you.

  • @crbielert
    @crbielert Год назад +3

    Fantastic lecture. Thank you so much!

  • @dennissmith8699
    @dennissmith8699 Год назад +3

    Chaco Canyon was the meeting place of the tribes of 5 directions.
    They arose from the wars with the reds as survivors. Here they shared the beautiful obsidian in great quantities here.
    Each house is built in the style of the traveler. The secret to understanding Chaco is to see the skill and pride they shared in the construction technics and their difference.
    Each shared their cultures and the mix created a very knowledgeable group.

  • @gregcleveland3498
    @gregcleveland3498 8 месяцев назад +1

    Very much appreciated. Thank you. Altepetl was new to me but seems to fit.

  • @adammillwardart7831
    @adammillwardart7831 Год назад

    The area around Chaco canyon has SO many dams/tanks in the valleys. There are hundreds and hundreds of them, and most of them are at least 20-30m long structures. The population of the area had to be higher than modern archeologists are saying. Building one of those without earthmoving equipment must have taken a lot of people and a lot of work. Let alone hundreds.

  • @jamesn.economou9922
    @jamesn.economou9922 10 месяцев назад +1

    So who was the royalty, at Chaco? Were they Aztec? That part, never came full circle here.

    • @zemog1025
      @zemog1025 6 месяцев назад

      The Dineh/Navajo say the Chacoans were Toltecs and that the Ancestral Pueblo were there before both them and the Dineh.

  • @mikeygmm
    @mikeygmm 3 года назад +4

    Fascinating lecture. Thank you

  • @watcherofthewest8597
    @watcherofthewest8597 Год назад +1

    Great le ture and great ideas and a look into how digmatic american archeology can be and how rigourous, scientific investigation and common sence soeculation can destroy those old, often extremely biased narratives.

  • @patrickbass3542
    @patrickbass3542 5 месяцев назад

    Who were the "nobles"? Were they 'locals" or did they migrate in? If so, where did they originate?

  • @xNightZuNx
    @xNightZuNx Год назад +8

    JFYI the Apache and the Navajo are recent arrivals in the US Southwest.

    • @borninvincible
      @borninvincible Год назад

      How long is recent?

    • @xNightZuNx
      @xNightZuNx Год назад

      @@borninvincible 1400s

    • @borninvincible
      @borninvincible Год назад

      @@xNightZuNx thanks for the reply. this is very interesting. could you recommend any books that cover this topic ?

    • @logicmontano3160
      @logicmontano3160 Год назад +2

      @@xNightZuNx according to archaeologists and anthropologists but if you ask the Navajo they'll tell you that they've been there well before that...

    • @xNightZuNx
      @xNightZuNx Год назад +3

      @@logicmontano3160 With respect to the Navajo... science trumps stories.

  • @MrJameric
    @MrJameric Месяц назад

    It's probably a regional trade center with an open air market /trade center. The "Nobels" probably lived there and enjoyed the best of what people brought to trade.

  • @sheilam4964
    @sheilam4964 20 дней назад

    Hypothetically: why couldn't the "Great Houses" scattered around the area be 'granaries' for corn? Since they grew fields of corn plus other foods and there is a possible 'slave culture' could the corn and other foods not be some sort of 'homage' to the Superior Ones in the largest settlement (Chaco) whose surrounding fields were not good for growing food. The 'special' people who dwelled in the 'Great Houses' could be security guards protecting the 'homage' offered up to the Superior Ones. What you recognize as granaries could be granaries for the common population based on their size. This type of food set-up with Great Houses as granaries for the food for the Superior Ones and the acknowledged granaries for the common people also controled/guarded by the Superior Ones Security System would keep the food of the commoners under the control of the Superior Ones.

  • @joelgutierrez1523
    @joelgutierrez1523 2 месяца назад

    So Wijiji is just a Puebloan Amazon Warehouse.

  • @klakkinkittykat
    @klakkinkittykat Год назад +2

    Its the Sun's house where he lived with his 6 wives...and then a Gambler came and just reporposed it to store his goods 😮

  • @lordvonmanor6915
    @lordvonmanor6915 4 месяца назад

    Herr I am 3 years later but Meridian means South as in Australs (Southerners).
    There are Amerindians and Meridians but both are Indiens.👍

  • @asabovesobelow7200
    @asabovesobelow7200 Год назад +1

    Why Chaco to be the capital? Why? Nothing there for sustainability. What was the reason for building there?

    • @therealmusician
      @therealmusician Год назад +1

      I'm thinking that, as a kind of marketplace, you don't need any resources, just a central location. This they had.
      (The dwelling might have started out small like any other, but increased in size later due to social/political factors: the reason for Chaco being the capital would then be, 'because the nobility lived there'.)

    • @headlessspaceman5681
      @headlessspaceman5681 9 месяцев назад

      Because of the proximity to Fajada Butte

    • @andrewsanderson8566
      @andrewsanderson8566 7 месяцев назад

      It's in the middle.

    • @zemog1025
      @zemog1025 6 месяцев назад

      Perhaps Chaco is the Hubris of Empire, they built it to show their dominate power, technology, and religion to gain control over the local region. Also compare it with the New Capital City being built in Egypt.

    • @AccDeleted1
      @AccDeleted1 6 месяцев назад

      There was more water around then

  • @madhistory
    @madhistory 2 года назад +1

    awesome

  • @peatsdaddy
    @peatsdaddy 3 года назад

    Great lecture! Always a fascinating topic. Keep them coming!

  • @Tastaliciousful
    @Tastaliciousful 7 месяцев назад

    “They were very cosmopolitan” is a fun way of saying they were slave traders lol

  • @asabovesobelow7200
    @asabovesobelow7200 Год назад +2

    The whole Navajo and Hopi & Chaco area is a reflection star map of the constellation of Orin

  • @adamhedberg
    @adamhedberg 2 года назад +2

    Great as always. Any possibility of housing the dead rather than the living? like a necropolis

  • @cavemancaveman5190
    @cavemancaveman5190 Год назад +1

    If you fail to mention bugs I'll tell the elders

  • @miguelpaul1164
    @miguelpaul1164 2 месяца назад +1

    Navajo story of the gambler who lived at chaco and enslaved those who lost host games built chaco. Slavery caused the revolt against the gambler from the south and all the pottery was destroyed and places associated with chaco destroyed. Also, they were evil people who woeshipped the darkess and engaged in ritual sacrifices and cannibalism.

    • @AmerindFoundation
      @AmerindFoundation  2 месяца назад +2

      Interesting! we really need to do a follow-up talk from a native perspective/scholar!

  • @user-rw1ox1kl2p
    @user-rw1ox1kl2p 5 месяцев назад

    This fellow takes a lot of liberty filling in the gaps of his own research. The Navajos know what happened.

  • @Radius284
    @Radius284 3 года назад +25

    Navajo elders say evil things happened at Chaco. The Aztecs were probably kicked out for their worship of Huitzilopotchtli, abandoned chaco and went down south. The rest is history. Remember there were no borders back then.

    • @sabineb.5616
      @sabineb.5616 2 года назад +7

      Radius284, the Aztecs were probably not responsible for what happened to the Anasazi. They came into power too late. But something might've come northwards from the collapsing Toltec empire. However, it cannot be excluded that the ensuing terror which eventually ended the Chaco phenomenon was homegrown and just influenced by Meso-American ideologies.

    • @scarletred1497
      @scarletred1497 2 года назад +19

      Navajo elders are spreading misinformation. Navajos/Apache didnt arrive in the 4 corner until the 1500's. They dont know nothing about Ancestral Puebloan.

    • @sabineb.5616
      @sabineb.5616 2 года назад +11

      @@scarletred1497 , yes it is correct that the Navajo migrated into the area, when the Anasazi had already abandonned their habitats and migrated southwards. I have no idea why the Navjos called the previous population of that area "ancient enemies", because that's the translation of the Navajo term "Anasazi". How can these people who had already departed, have been enemies of the Navajos?
      However, it's absolutely plausible that the newly arrived Navajos searched the ruins of the abandonned villages and discovered the tell-tale remnants of the massacres - just like the modern archeologists. It's not hard to deduct that something very evil happened in these artfully constructed houses. I don't think that the Navajo elders spread misinformation. And if we consider the strong aversion of the traditinal Navajo against the remnants of human corpses, it's plausible that they shunned the habitats of the people they called "Anasazi".

    • @scarletred1497
      @scarletred1497 2 года назад +6

      @@sabineb.5616 can you cite your sources on massacres that "happened" at those ruins? Also not only navajo have strong averions to human corpses, us pueblo ppl have that view on human corpses. The misinformation is that Navajos are not related to my Ancestral puebloan people.

    • @marcosortiz3665
      @marcosortiz3665 2 года назад +5

      @@scarletred1497 there's an awesome documentary that talks about the mass bodies that were cannabolized at the ruins

  • @adeshwodan4679
    @adeshwodan4679 7 месяцев назад

    Chaco is not in SE Arizona
    ❤😂❤

  • @nothingbutmilk6576
    @nothingbutmilk6576 8 месяцев назад +2

    A you tube site named Navajo Traditional Teaching has several videos on how the Dine view Chaco canyon and the Anasazi. They claim that the Anasazi "nobility" were actually slave traders and that the slaves eventually revolted and wiped out the nobility. Afterwards, some of the former slaves became clans of Dine. "Navajo" is actually a Spanish language corruption of the term (A nab a ho) that the Anasazi language used to describe the Dine.

  • @cherylhager6065
    @cherylhager6065 Год назад +2

    Chaco/Draco!!!

  • @pauldaystar
    @pauldaystar Год назад +2

    Ignoring Tribal Hopi Elders History, Seeing They Are The Oldest Continuous Living Villages in North America, is an Ethnocentric European Racist View

    • @Allen-yv3ue
      @Allen-yv3ue 8 месяцев назад

      Maybe your view is Racist -

  • @GreatWolf-df7bj
    @GreatWolf-df7bj 2 месяца назад

    You give me a migraine.

  • @AmericanMadeAdventures
    @AmericanMadeAdventures 6 месяцев назад

    Cannibals

  • @clairerobsin
    @clairerobsin Год назад +1

    at 0:45 ...I`m glad you ain`t wearin a mask and, if I was there, I wouldn`t social distance from you neither! :O)

  • @sabineb.5616
    @sabineb.5616 2 года назад +2

    I really like Steve Lekson's ideas, but I find it very hard to listen to him. He is not a naturally gifted speaker. I prefer to read his writings. And in this video he is especially long winded.

  • @pauldaystar
    @pauldaystar Год назад +1

    Let us Know When you Ask Live with Hopi Farmers,you Will Learn Real History Not your Educated Speculation

    • @russelmurray9268
      @russelmurray9268 Год назад +4

      Hopi elders add lots of myths n superstitious to the subject and little ŕeason to the subject

    • @pauldaystar
      @pauldaystar 29 дней назад

      Hopi Myths to indoeuropeans who Believed Flat Earth, Are Still Ignorant