What Happened at Chaco?
BOULDER, Feb. 17 (AScribe Newswire) — Two University of Colorado at Boulder researchers have developed intriguing theories on the mysterious demise of the Chaco Canyon Pueblo people and the larger Chaco region that governed an area in the Southwest about the size of Ohio before it collapsed about 1125. Steve Lekson, curator of anthropology at the CU Museum, believes a powerful political system centered at Chaco Canyon in northern New Mexico may have kept other Pueblo peoples under its thumb from about 1000 to 1125. As the capital city of a huge region, Chaco became a place to store and exchange commodities, and the elite rulers probably exacted goods and taxes from outlying Chacoan villagers. Chaco was the first stable settlement in the Southwest, sporting a dozen huge, multistoried sandstone buildings known as “great houses” that surrounded a plaza. It appears that a hundred or so elite people lived in each great house, with another 1,000 or so people living in single-family kivas ou
