Gisela Ermel
Mysterious cultural leap
In: Legendary Times, No. 5, Beatenberg 2004
The old Anasaziland in the quadrilateral region - Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado - the North American Southwest, with its spectacular rock formations, deep, almost sheer canyon walls and high sandstone table mountains seems almost like an otherworldly region and is a still largely unsettled area, ask its visitors often: How can you live here voluntarily? The Anasazi Indians did not ask, but they adapted over a long period of time in this inhospitable area perfectly.
archaeologists found already from the period from about BC 7000th Legacies of primitive hunters and gatherers. there is evidence of early tillage from the time BC in 1900. Between 8 and 7 Century before Christ began the inhabitants of the area Baskets to weave and build simple pit houses later, during the maize-dominated diet has been enhanced by the cultivation of vegetables such as beans and pumpkins.
The pit houses were more and more together to settlements and the so-called basket-maker Anasazi worked wood, bone, shells, stones and animal skins. When finally grown more than we could eat was, above-ground storage rooms were built of simple masonry. Everything was peaceful (more or less), and everything was perfect. The Anasazi had been well adapted to the harsh country with hot, dry summers and cold winters, and was able to recurring droughts to master. Better able to live in this part is not the world.
The master plan
But from this sleeping beauty, the Anasazi suddenly awakened to suddenly start what today's archaeologists puzzled and fascinated by the "Chaco phenomenon" designated. It seems seamlessly to the Anasazi began to run a construction project, which created a whole team of architects, astronomers, mathematicians, engineers, masons, artists, designers and surveyors had to have planned and carried out. Buildings, they just have simple pit houses, so now suddenly emerged magnificent stone cities, Great Houses, as archaeologists call it the admiration that work as designed on the drawing board. The Southwest archaeologist named this the basket-maker time next phase "Chaco phenomenon" after the Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, the center of this extraordinary construction project, and were baffled: How could such a sudden cultural leap happen? Who or what could have caused it?
The Chaco Canyon - the center of the Anasazi culture jump
Almost from one day to the other, there was a complex and complicated construction project to which a number of stone buildings, about one hundred (now recovered) satellite settlements (Outlier) and a huge road network included. stood up to all generations must have worked, people got along without a written language. To make happen that it is a "multi-cultural project" is that different Anasazi groups from several regions with potentially different languages united under a common idea.
Nothing is left to chance. From the first stone of the Great Houses were planned exactly. The concept for the entire vast area to be built was from the beginning there. Everything was designed not only balanced, but also even in such a way that lines of walls, buildings or building complexes showed that after astronomical data were aligned.
The archaeologist John spoke of stone, which covered many of his colleagues.. Was "the whole mechanism a deliberate, intelligent design be a giant, intertwined, designed and planned construction projects all located at precisely designated and previously calculated space . In southwestern archaeologists was the talk of the mysterious master plan - but who had been this smart and high-Master Planner? Where at one time this amazing building logistics of people who previously knew only simple pit houses and primitive earth-stone walls? This simple basket makers will suddenly advanced architecture, astronomy and engineering have applied? to create the most archaeologists made the suddenness of this cultural leap that took place sometime shortly before or after the year 800.
It began with three stone cities
probably all started with the three Great Houses "Penasco Blanco, Pueblo Bonito" and "Una Vida" in Chaco Canyon. Penasco Blanco was built high up on top of a table of the three hills on the northwest end of the canyon. At the very inhospitable place only had to be removed significant quantities of earth to get a straight terrace of the building. The architects and planners had had a good reason, just have to let this rise to a complex of buildings. This reason is only clear when one considers the localization of the three Great Houses in context.
Una Vida had - can occur on a completely flat portion of the canyon floor, but this was apparently not the right place - at the opposite end of the canyon. Instead, a space was next to straighten a lot of effort and manpower and leveled. The quantity of earth that had to be moved before construction could begin at all, must have been considerable. The builders - or plan - this Great House wanted exactly at this juncture. Why?
was not until the 1970s, archaeologists realized from the camp of Archaeoastronomy, what these two Great Houses as well as many other links and what the Chaco Canyon as a center of this construction project so unique. Penasco Blanco and Una Vida are at the beginning and end of a straight line due course and follows the canyon - extends to the horizon - to the points of the so-called moon is turning.
(moon turn the correspondences with the solstices, the moon reached, however, the same rise and fall point does not like the sun once a year, but only once every 18.6 years once.)
On this moon Wend line is also the third Great House: Pueblo Bonito. It was built approximately in the middle of the valley to the canyon floor, in front of a giant, menacing rock, which at any time threatened to overthrow. But this site was so important that that is where the structures were built. By post, mortar and masonry tried to keep the rock in place. Protection measures that are renewed and later during the massive construction project generation and over again and repaired. (The huge boulder - Threatening Rock - was only in 1941 on the ruins after a year of heavy rainfall.)
The ruins of the Great House Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon 
The ruins of the Great House Penasco Blanco in Chaco Canyon Astronomical puzzles
The exact positioning of the first three Great Houses on leading through the Chaco Canyon Moon Wend line is typical of the overall plan of the Chaco phenomenon, and it gives a new answer to the question of why exactly the most inhospitable corner of the Anasazilandes selected as the center of the construction project was: Just Because by now that a canyon an astronomically relevant line leads. And not only this: To move a tiny piece also a solstice line runs right through the rock cutting. Both lines are only a few degrees apart. At summer solstice the setting sun shining through the valley, while the winter solstice the rising sun. This line is characterized by a previously unexcavated so-called "Great Kiva" - a huge underground circular room - called Kin Nahasbas, lying at the Canyon near the end of Una Vida, and the Great House Penasco Blanco.
The exact alignment of astronomical relevant points is one of the fundamental aspects of the Chaco phenomenon and shows a whole new Bauideologie. Again and again had to straighten surfaces and platforms are erected in places where you would otherwise not be able to build. The presence of water apparently played no role in the selection of the site.
all at the same time
Chaco This new style was almost everywhere at once. While it began in Chaco Canyon with the first Great Houses were outside at the same time far in the country "outlier" Great Houses built. Archaeologists despair still in the experiments, the traces of the structural changes of small pit house settlements to a complex organized civilization with stone cities, a road network (but not as transportation routes served) and a completely new masonry technique worked with to find stones. So far, all search was in vain. The Great Houses there are no archaeological precedent. The Chaco Phenomenon anywhere must have started almost simultaneously. It does not spread slowly, so a conclusion of the researchers, but suddenly these new building types emerged everywhere in Great Houses, Great Kiva, great wall art, pre-planned architecture and a master plan that combines everything together into an overall picture.
Was there a "center", which imposed, as they had to build from now? Yes and no. For in addition to the construction project affected places was the simple, built on previous styles. Obviously, the Chaco phenomenon was strictly limited to just the places and locations that were part of the master plan.
sketch of the Chaco Canyon Great Houses with the local
studies and research of the Solstice Project, an interdisciplinary group of scientists focusing on Archaeoastronomy and other subjects revealed since the 1980s, striking geometrical patterns in the astronomical Anasazigebiet. Archaeologists speak enthusiastically about "cosmic landscape architecture" or "sun and moon geometry." The master plan reflected in the large reflect the cycles of sun and moon. Not a single building of the Chaco phenomenon is no fundamental metric in place. Since there are only in the Chaco Canyon various lines targeted to specific data of solar cycles, were more often applied to lunar cycles out. This Great Houses of Great Houses, Great Houses of Great Kiva and cross connect also the possibility outlier Great Houses with inclusions.
No archaeologist has been an answer to the question found, why all these lines were created. Why, for example, had we not built exactly on the Pueblo Bonito intersection of the north-south line (Pueblo Alto and Tsin Kletzin) Wend line with the moon (Penasco Blanco by Una Vida), but a little bit wrong? At the intersection point is - nothing! Really? I was a little surprised when I found out that apparently not a single archaeologist for the interested lines resulting from the intersection. And certainly not been dug in one of the intersections in the world. If these intersections only imaginary points without meaning? Or is behind them something, has met with the only no-one?
(aside: I now have a guess what's behind this invisible line that I researched so far in Central America and North America in several cultures and in South America and elsewhere, already suspect, plugged in and that there may be a connection between the mysterious underground material deposit of all these cultures and these lines. The black hole hypothesis of the Chaco phenomenon with the mass production of objects, which are all dragged into the center but not could have been passed, so have to do - but here I have to vorknöpfen this aspect of the Anasazi once after I now know where I have are sitting up. Learn more about this in a written article too. 19.1.2009)
In the astronomical aspect of the master plan and the buildings themselves were involved. Some Great Houses were with their straight side exactly north-south orientation, others with the main wall west-east or solar or lunar cycle on the horizon points. This astronomical data were also accentuated in certain windows and door openings by through them - were to see the sun or moon - and only the appropriate data.
Among all these astronomical features of Chaco Canyon, the Great Houses, streets and architecture of the calendar Fajada Butte takes a special place. The independent rock monolith at the entrance to Chaco Canyon was ideal for astronomical observations because of his clear view in all directions. be conducted near the summit rejected the Anasazi three rock slabs have been against the vertical rock wall that light and shadow on two behind in the rocks incised spirals. So you can read out the winter and summer solstice, the day and night are equal and the moon Wend data. An "extraordinary astronomical and mathematical masterpiece," as Anna Sofaer, head of the Solstice Project gushed enthusiastically.
Refined Calendar Petroglyph system on Fajada Butte, Chaco Canyon has now had thirteen other calendar rock images are found on Fajada Butte, including a curious parallel to the "miracle of light "the pyramid in Chichen Itza (Mexico), where come down to a certain astronomical date serpentine shadow of the pyramid. Shows a hundred times smaller in the rocks of Butte Fajada incorporated the same snake spectacle shows an almost vertical 22 cm long line with the curve of Equinox and Summer Solstice, a light and shadow. appears to Equinox a shadow along the line, touching, and eventually all parts of the head to the shaft-like body to the tail of the animals. There
And a striking rock art here on Fajada Butte: an incised into the rock floor plan of Pueblo Bonito, but strangely reversed. One can see the Great House, the dividing wall, the place where Kiva is A, and the semi-circular room block. The wall is part of the rock art as precisely laid out north-south as the Great Houses. At the point of Kiva A is in the rock art is a small hole from which a stick, inserted on the day of the summer solstice during the meridian passage of the sun, a vertical shadow would produce exactly along the radial line of the plan. Above the floor plan of Pueblo Bonito, the rock art shows an arrow and a spiral. The D-shaped ground plan of the Great House is on the images presented as it forms the arc of the arrow and the arrow points to the spiral. Will we draw the attention of rock art on anything?
impractical - but powerful
The Southwestern archaeologists still puzzling over this inconvenient aspect of the Chaco phenomenon. If the Indians have created all this just to get accurate data calendar for agriculture or for rituals? Because almost no one believes more. Not given the excessive and cluttered Astro architecture. Lies before us here, perhaps a coded message hidden in the lines and intersections? This Great Houses and lines have been set is not without purpose, not out of sheer fascination with certain astronomical regularities in the landscape.
make matters come to solve the mysterious Anasazi mystery still further aspects of the Chaco phenomenon. All the Great Houses and other buildings give the impression that someone had tried it than here, as you can get out on the spot with the materials available (and only with) the best possible. Attempts were made at successively different Great house floor plans, built in nearly every Great House is a one occurring only in the architectural specification, testing different but sophisticated masonry techniques - sometimes several at a location directly next to each other as visual objects. Formerly part thereof Great Houses were built on in other designs and the older rooms just filled in with earth, as if they had served their purpose already. Surprisingly, this style was later seemed to change from the outset has been earmarked to be, one of the surprising conclusion of the Chaco archaeologist.
The last time Great Houses make the impression that they were built fast and hectic. Had the master plan on schedule? Is certain: The Chaco Phenomenon stopped as suddenly as it began - probably around 1150 AD. (New tree ring dating encounter this date again and again to change, but nothing on the approximate time frame.)
built for whom?
For whom all this was built? The Great Houses were never really lived in and covered. The exporting Anasazi-workers seem to have lived more in simple pit houses.
Equally puzzling, the purpose of the extensive road network, with an estimated 2400 square kilometers. The archaeologists were able to agree at least now that this road did not serve as a traffic and transport routes. They seem in general to have been used almost absent, and there was no repair work. They made the impression that they were designed so that they were just to the end of the construction project. What is their absolute straightness? Their "air lines" look? Why do you often abrupt end of nowhere?
And what were the high rooms, for example, at the Pueblo Alto, the numerous corridors and the star-shaped, tapering to the house street segments? The Great House, of which 80% of the rooms were used was never proven, midst of a chaotic route network of branching roads, as well as several outlier Great Houses.
The black hole hypothesis
Strangely, it seems that here at the Pueblo Alto occasional meetings have taken place, where vast amounts ceramic was broken at a certain point: all in all, 86 148 vessels, the fragments of a platform mound excavated the site. 90% of the enigmatic "rubble pile" has not yet been explored. Strangely enough, here were broken vessels, which fell apart on average, only 17 pieces, while the average elsewhere in Anasazigebiet at 63-138 pieces was per vessel. At no other point of the Anasaziruinen but so many broken vessels were found. What happened in Pueblo Alto 1000 years ago? A whole nation fell into a "Stag-mania"?
And where have all the materials that were heaps (and not on Roads) made by all the outlier settlements in the Chaco Canyon? Archaeologists dubbed this mysterious aspect of the "Black Hole" hypothesis. First, many archaeologists had thought the Great Houses have served as a storage and redistribution centers. But more and more documents were found, they pushed this hypothesis. Pueblo Alto have seemed to function primarily as a kind of rallying point for Products, of which a large part on the spot was used. The empty containers were broken and thrown away.
But who should have done this? The few inhabitants of the Great House? Pilgrim? Were Pueblo Alto and the other Great Houses cult facilities that were visited at certain times of pilgrims crowd? Archaeologists, however, are always much too fast with the religious explanation at hand, if everything is different does not make sense. Other Great Houses seem all kinds of goods "swallowed up" to have them back out back. Almost everything was - how? - Placed on the Chaco Canyon. The Chaco Canyon looked like a sponge, soaking up everything and no more were delivered.
Archaeologists are constantly perplexed by the unusual concentration of things that were found in the Great Houses. Was somewhere completed an outlier, so then flocked articles of the environment. Why all this has been stockpiled and redistributed? Anna Sofaer took the findings to the Great Houses to the point: "The latest research shows that the Great Houses were not built primarily for everyday use." This also applies to the Roads - and that is because even all that we know.
Heavenly culture bringer
The most important question, however, is: Who were the mysterious Master Planner, the apparently sudden and there were present the master plan all ready have? They were able to mobilize masses of workers to Anasazi, left their pit house settlements at the beginning of the Chaco Canyon for the construction project.
Man suspected local Anasazi rulers, priests, or Mesoamerican immigrants like something the Toltecs as initiators of the Chaco phenomenon, and we looked around the same time, other cultures, which came as a trigger of the cultural leap into question. But all previous hypotheses and assumptions had to be discarded. The master plan was still not come "on the ropes." Representative of another culture could just as little as the cause of the Chaco phenomenon be held responsible as the Anasazi themselves, which at best were acting as the control of workers in question.
Who were the few individuals whose unusually large structures - in comparison to the diminutive Anasazi - you dug up buried in Pueblo Bonito and Aztec outlier rich? Who were the master planner?
Right here but may set the Paleo-SETI research. This was to be only a coincidence that just after the end of the Chaco phenomenon in the regions around the old Anasaziland at once all over rock art and pottery motifs appeared and Kachina Kachina rituals were celebrated?
Since we have on the one hand, this unknown, high-polluter of the Chaco phenomenon that appeared as suddenly as they disappeared again. On the other hand, there are traditions about Kachinas, culture bearer "of the stars", some time must be lived among the Indians and went away again. Locations of the Chaco phenomenon occur in the traditions of the Kachinas in front again. Also appear on rock art of the period after the end of the Anasazi culture in a strange star beings. Why has this not a Southwestern archaeologist suspected a connection? Thus, if the master planner no other known culture and not the simple-Anasazi pit house in questions are - who will? Are we dealing with here is an intervention by representatives of a foreign intelligence?
Peter Fiebag introduced in 1995 on the thesis that many peoples of Mesoamerica had for a long-term "gods plan" drawn to certain places, were built there great facilities - astronomically aligned - which they left on schedule again to a higher-level plan following new places to target. He cited, among other things, the Olmecs, the Maya, the Teotihuacanos, the Toltecs and the Aztecs, all of a nearly identical pattern as the Anasazi are followed. Peter also has Fiebag attention to several places in the Zuni and Hopi, in which they follow the orders of their cosmic Following companion, sacred objects buried. Were those who drew up the master plan for the Anasazi, the same as those who were in charge throughout the Americas for an incredible construction activity and migration? disappeared
as the master planner for the abrupt end of the Chaco phenomenon, the Anasazi were back themselves überlassesn. It started a phase that is identified by archaeologists with the "McElmo style". In this era began Anasazi groups, to make themselves at home in the desolate Chaco Great Houses and other buildings. They became the Great "squatters". They changed little things here and there, added its own but primitive walls added or completed Chaco areas of waste, modeled in such kivas to its own ideas.
But the stage did not last long. Abruptly, the Anasazi began everywhere in inaccessible cliffs retreat. Only now, they built them so famous "Cliff Dwellings" of the Mesa Verde region. Elsewhere, as in Cliff Palace or Antelope House, we see similar means all buildings are placed with primitive masonry in inaccessible places and easy to defend.
Typical cliff dwellings of the Anasazi from the time of collapse after the Chaco Phenomenon
In other places joined together in one big defensive settlements. Together, the descendants of the early Anasazi culture were now protected behind enclosing walls. They began to build towers en masse. Around the year 1200 around, everyone seemed to live in a Defensivbau Anasazi. But from whom or what were they afraid of? Of whom they entrenched themselves? Their fear was well founded, for there was a time of raids and bloody massacres and cannibalism. Many Anasazi settlements were attacked and massacred. The bodies you left lying around carelessly either, or they were roasted and eaten. Who were these enemies?
The researchers have also to this question still can not find the answer. We found neither weapons nor other signs that point to any other people. Indian tribes like the Navajo, Apache and Ute as an attacker had to be discarded because it was only much later immigrated to the Anasazi abandoned regions. Massacred each other down the Anasazi? That too is uncertain. It can only be one thing: Rows of the Anasazi left their settlements and disappeared from history. By the year 1300 the entire Anasazigebiet was deserted. Verify that the Pueblo Indians as Hopi, Zuni and other descendants or the descendants of the Anasazi neighbors, is completely unclear. The Anasazi mystery is far from solved.
Kachinafiguren Two of the Pueblo Indians - Memories of unknown master planner? Literature:
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Gisela Ermel: The Anasazi mystery.
master planner, cannibals and Kachinas: On the trail of a vanished people.
Bohmeier-Verlag, Leipzig 2005 ISBN 3-89094-448-5
200 pages, with illustrations
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