Chaco Culture - the Ancient Pueblo Peoples

Chaco Culture National Historical Park has several pre-Columbian pueblos. It is the largest concentration of ancient structures of this nature in the American Southwest. The park is located in northwestern New Mexico in a remote canyon.

Between AD 900 and 1150, Chaco Canyon was a major centre of culture for the Ancient Pueblo Peoples. These people quarried sandstone blocks and hauled timber from great distances and assembled fifteen major complexes.  It is believed that climate change beginning with a fifty-year drought commencing in 1130 led to the abandonment of the canyon.

The sites are considered sacred ancestral homelands by the Hopi and Pueblo people, who maintain oral accounts of their historical migration from Chaco and their spiritual relationship to the land. The area is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

 

This postcard came from Donna (8 September 2014) Direct Swap Postcrossing.