The Mystery of Chaco Canyon: Meeting Again at the Centre of the World

This episode was made during one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. It happened in a place that’s been called the most important site in the world. Lynne Kelly said that, co-author of Songlines, and my guest in the extremely popular episode 92. She said it in a call with filmmaker Anna Sofaer and I a little after this was recorded. Anna has made a series of extraordinary films about this place, as founder of The Solstice Project. 

The place is called Chaco Canyon, located in the heart of New Mexico, and at the centre of the ancient Chacoan civilisation. This World Heritage site is still so little known, and at a time when its mysteries, prophesies and conscious transformations are so relevant to us today.

So this episode comes to you from the centrepiece of the centrepiece – the greatest of the Great Houses, Pueblo Bonito. I’m joined there by Dana Scott, a great old mate from our time in Guatemala a quarter of a century ago, highly accomplished educator and counsellor, and newish subscriber to the podcast too. Some of you may remember reading about him in a piece on Substack while we were in Philadelphia last year, as the Scott family invited us along to their old haunt. We’d been spending time with them in their current haunt in Baltimore, when it was revealed we had a long-standing mutual calling to Chaco Canyon. So we resolved to meet there. 

Dana and I peeled off in golden twilight one evening to share some of our transformational experience of the place. This includes some deeply personal and crazily uncanny links. But as we say in the conversation, there is so much to this story and place. So if you, like us, find yourself fascinated with it all, do go to the sources we talk about - the tribes, researchers and of course what lies beyond.

Chapter markers & transcript.

Recorded 15 April 2025. (Intro recorded in the car at camp)

Title slide: the view during this conversation (pic: Anthony James).

See more photos on the episode web page, and for more behind the scenes, become a supporting listener below.

For those keen to hear about Old Salt Festival, I’ve sent an initial missive with photos to paid subscribers on Patreon and Substack, and I’ll have more for you all soon.

Music:

Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.

The RegenNarration playlist, music chosen by guests.

Footage of Mercedes Sosa singing Cuando Tenga la Tierra, following Solo Le Pido a Dios.

Chapters

• 0:00 Arriving at Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon
• 2:58 A decades-long journey to here
• 9:15 The 2012 Mayan calendar cycle
• 13:15 Where we are in Chaco Canyon
• 17:25 A wander through the wonders of Pueblo Bonito
• 19:05 Pueblo Bonito: Ancient Architectural Marvel
• 22:00 The remarkable astronomical alignments
• 28:00 The main function of the entire complex?
• 30:50 What this might mean to us here now (as we head into some of the rooms)
• 33:10 Astronomical Alignments and Sacred Geometry
• 35:30 Poverty Point: Another ancient culture and huge structures in North America
• 36:20 Some take homes from all this
• 41:15 The highly engineered road systems - or spiritual pathways?
• 43:30 Ancient pottery around the Houses
• 45:18 Not Abandoned, But Consciously Sealed
• 47:00 An elder’s telling of a prophesy
• 48:00 Relating to stories heard from Aboriginal Australians
• 48:55 Dana relates this to an experience with his Jewish wife
• 52:50 Perhaps the heart of this journey here for me
• 55:40 The Guatemala Connection
• 59:30 Anna Sofaer’s journey to the Sun Dagger
• 1:01:30 Dana's shitty path to The Seven Fires prophesy
• 1:05:30 Where these prophesies converge
• 1:06:30 Incredible Archaeological Achievements
• 1:08:30 A convergence of cultures now?
• 1:13:15 A Dine/European perspective that unites
• 1:15:40 Sensations as we enter the room set up as it might have been
• 1:17:12 The Time of Choice and Transformation
• 1:18:40 Closing Reflections on Music and Hope

Transcript

AJ: 0:00

G'day Anthony James here for The RegenNarration, your independent, listener-supported podcast exploring how people are regenerating the systems and stories we live by. We're fresh out of the Old Salt Festival last week and, yes, it was amazing. I've sent an initial missive and set of photos to paid subscribers on Patreon and Substack and we'll have more for you all soon-ish. Speaking of which, thanks so much Jason Watts and Sarah Ransom for being paid subscribers for three years now. I so appreciate it and, if you can and feel like it, you can join this brilliant community of supporting listeners to get some exclusive stuff and help keep the show going, and I've really been more grateful to your supporting listeners for that, as this episode was made during one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life.

AJ: 0:46

It happened in a place that's been called the most important site in the world. Lynn Kelly said that, co-author of Songlines and my guest in the extremely popular Episode 92. She said it in a call with filmmaker Anna Sofaer and I, a little after this was recorded. Anna has made a series of extraordinary documentary films about this place as founder of the Solstice Project. The place is called Chaco Canyon, located in the heart of New Mexico and at the center of the ancient Chacoan civilization Want to go through the front?

Dana: 1:21

Wherever you like yeah, walk around, sit. What are you thinking?

AJ: 1:24

I reckon let's start somewhere with some cover.

Dana: 1:29

All right, just hop in one of these keepers over here.

AJ: 1:32

Yeah, this World Heritage Site is still so little known, and at a time when its mysteries, prophecies and conscious transformations are so relevant to us today. So this episode comes to you from the centrepiece of the centrepiece, the greatest of the great houses Pueblo Bonito. I'm joined there by Dana Scott, a great old mate from our time in Guatemala a quarter of a century ago, who's gone on to become a highly accomplished educator and counsellor and newish subscriber to the podcast too. Dana and I peeled off in golden twilight one evening to share some of our transformational experience of this place and some of the often crazily uncanny journey here. It could even work. What do you reckon? Yeah, want to sit here.

Dana: 2:22

Let me see where they go to sit on. Not much.

AJ: 2:26

This might give us more cover if we're down low.

Dana: 2:29

Yeah Well, I mean, you know what? We've been camping for days, so I'm dusty as hell anyway, whoa. Holy, you just collapsed that poor squirrel's own home. All right, maybe that's not the space, maybe that's not it. There's these ground holes all over the damn place. Here we go. All right, I got a mound happy, try it.

AJ: 2:51

We'll start here. Hey, it's nice and calm there. He is heralding our arrival. All by ourselves, I think.

Dana: 3:03

I think so. I think I saw the last family leave well, mate, good to be with you here. Yeah, thanks for speaking with me yeah, no, thanks for inviting me and told you before I'm flattered I'm very glad to.

AJ: 3:17

I'm very glad to. Yeah, why are we here?

Dana: 3:20

I mean, this has been a culmination of 25 years of friendship and figuring kind of I don't know, this is a landing point for certainly a bucket list item for I think both of us and kind of where our I don't know, maybe a spiritual and gosh, just life paths seem to intersect here. Gosh, just life paths seem to intersect here. It seems right to come here to be with you and have our families spend time together.

AJ: 3:51

Well, it's funny, isn't it? Because we were with you in Baltimore, at your home, first time seeing you in 21 years. It's been a while With families that then connected beautifully, and then we resolved to meet up here on our way back west. You've made the trip out particularly to visit a couple of places in the southwest and, summing to our experience here, it's also interesting because, I mean, it was on arrival. Well, I should go back a step further. So for decades I was enchanted by the ancient Pueblo cultures and structures. So when we came through on the way east, we visited a bunch, including where descendants are today, like Chaus, for example. They still live in the ancient one as well. Obviously, descendants live around where the ancient ones did.

AJ: 4:42

And, sure enough, I was just fascinated. And it's so spectacularly beautiful in an incredible landscape and incredible achievements, such sophistication and such relevance to today, which we'll obviously go on to here. Yeah, but it was in doing that that I really came to see Chaco in a bit clearer way. As to the place of it, sure, but we didn't make it all the same, just the way our journey went. It ended up Mesa Verde, there, where a lot of the people from here apparently went after this was left, and it's incredible in its own right Aztec on the way there, incredible in its own right. And there's a whole bunch of other structures, some of which we visited south of here, but I knew, you know, it was being written about as the centre, yeah, and so it stuck in my mind, but we didn't make it. And then I thought, well, that's probably it for our journey, and I'll just have to feel into the story of Chaco culture and.

AJ: 5:39

Chaco Canyon, from there and then to get to a point where we're with you in baltimore at the end of last year and then connect on this, yeah, such that we end up doing it together, yeah, and then it feels like a real moment, something special 100, I think it was.

Dana: 5:58

There's definitely like well, you guys, coming to baltimore for us was a big shift, you know, similarly to when you know our paths crossed for the first time 20, whatever years ago. Was it 2002? 23 years ago, yeah, yeah, and you put that first Noam Chomsky book in my hand. And how are you an American and you've never heard of Noam Chomsky? You're a university educator. I don't know. I didn't even know to ask. This is part of the profound thing?

AJ: 6:26

Well, sure, yeah, and who's heard of this place? Right, exactly, much less a poverty point or something.

Dana: 6:30

Well, all the things. So there is a big shift happening everywhere, as we've discussed multiple times. It feels like things are changing and, yeah, you guys coming in. I think it sort of shook us up a little, in a way that we needed to be shaken up, seeing about the possibility of what life can be like when you're not pinned down to the concerns of, I mean very real concerns of health insurance and, you know, the pension and 403Bs and all of the things that, like Americans, are forever worrying about and I am, you know, it's on my mind always. And then, kind of, there's this, almost this awakening to this other sort of like. Oh, maybe we don't have to worry about that, maybe there's another path and I don't want to sound sanctimonious by saying like a higher path, but something that just feels more connected to the source, you know, to what we're really supposed to be here for and like as humans, you know.

AJ: 7:37

Yeah, that's interesting.

Dana: 7:39

There's no. Humans aren't meant to accrue, you know, revenue for our four or three bees or whatever you know, even though, like retirement's great and I hope I don't want to, you know, starve when I'm older, but at the same time, just this idea that in connecting to the source and I know gosh, you've had prior interviews with other people. You know, jenny, who specifically is who I'm thinking of at Springhouse, who talks about that?

AJ: 8:10

Yeah, at the school, yeah, at Springhouse School, at Springhouse School, which we'll have featured by the time this goes out, by the time this goes out, yeah, sure.

Dana: 8:18

So when she talks about connecting to the source, you know, and I see you, olivia, and Yashi, so clearly living that it awakens an old excitement and a spirit in me that I haven't felt in a long time and it deeply, I mean appreciative, excited. And I see that happening in Becca too. My wife Something's awakening, something's awakening, something's changing, Can't tell you what. Coming here, I think, for our family, and you know, you straddle the line always between, like, this is a deeply spiritual place. Right, this is a deeply spiritual place and this has been on my bucket list, our bucket list, for years. And, like bucket list doesn't quite do it justice because it's, it's been a call. Yeah, yeah, a call. Sure, that sounds right. But neither of us are Pueblo Indian. I'm from a million miles away.

Dana: 9:17

Yeah right.

AJ: 9:18

The call, the call to this culture from decades ago.

Dana: 9:21

And I think it's a call to. I mean, I remember, gosh, I remember after you left Guatemala I got super into all the the 2012 stuff and the Mayan calendar stuff and at the time, because this is, 2003,.

AJ: 9:36

that would have been 2003. Sure, sure.

Dana: 9:38

So it was still far enough in the future that we could dream about it. But, uh, you know, and it was. It still seemed fantastical at the time, this idea that the Mayan calendar round would come to a close, and I don't know if your listeners know what I mean when I say that, but you know the Mayan calendar works in cycles, right, and so the largest and gosh over the largest arc of time, the cycle concluded in December 21st, 2012. And back in 2003, that seemed like you know my gosh, the world's going to end, you know, and it was an exciting. It was an exciting and scary and like what does this all mean? Kind of a thing. But I remember at the time I began collecting prophecies and things, and I remember coming across something on YouTube about the anasazi's prophecies and we don't use the term anasazi anymore, to be very, very clear, I'm using that to date the experience, you know and just to chime in there.

AJ: 10:33

So that was the term that was used in the films that I saw, sure like sure, diana scatzi and those sorts of films back then. But it actually means ancient enemy, I think. Ancient enemy in navajo, in navajo, right, and uh tells you something about the, the history, but but uh, yes, it's an ancestral or ancestral ancestral pueblo. Yeah, it's hard isn't it because all names spanish around here. Right ancestral pueblo people right.

Dana: 10:59

But talking about their prophecies, and god, I'll be honest, I've definitely gotten off the end of the world prophecy. Kick that I was on back then.

AJ: 11:07

Well, this is the thing we learned too, how, being down there and connecting with Mayan culture, that it's the end of the world, in that understanding of a cycle, sure, and I mean, plenty is transforming. So maybe there'd be people who peg it to that day. Still, I don't know, but we know plenty is transforming.

Dana: 11:24

Well, but also like what I love about the Mayan calendar and I think what you, what we get from a lot of I mean geez, I I've been reading a lot recently just from indigenous authors and things, and just trying to have a better understanding of what we might consider an indigenous worldview. And by indigenous I want to like not necessarily one particular indigenous culture per se, but when we talk about indigenous, maybe using the definition that Robin Wall Kimmerer uses, of like acknowledging that I live here, I'm born here, I will die here, my ancestors are from here, my people will, you know, we will drink the water, we will eat the food and the land is part of us. So in that sense, time is not linear, it's more of a cyclical experience. And so you know, at the time, in 2003, still very much grafting, I think, a lot of Western ideas of time onto a Mayan prophecy or a Mayan system it caused maybe a little bit more hysteria than it needed to, because you know time is cyclical.

Dana: 12:32

So we ended a cycle, we're beginning a new one, and you know that doesn't need to have cataclysms, although maybe it does, because cataclysms happen but also time keeps going. You know the world keeps turning and just sitting with that and you know, we don't need to build bunkers, maybe to prepare. We just need to maybe acknowledge and that's a moment to reflect on your soul and just be like I'm part of the earth, I'm part of the cycle, I'm part of this. Whatever the great process is, I'm, I'm, I'm processing with it well, that's it.

AJ: 13:03

It's, uh, more an opening than a bunkering. Come back up to the, to the source, as you said before. I want to come back to some of this later on, sure, because it's relevant to to how we did come to be here together. There's more layers to that guatemala story that that longer-term listeners of the podcast have heard increasing amounts of and will continue to, because we visited there, so there'll be stories from there yeah, still coming or maybe they're out by now, but I'm thinking what to do with the ones that are actually in spanish.

AJ: 13:31

But we'll come back to that, but it's time for us to really bring listeners into where sure yeah, we should, we should.

Dana: 13:38

So this this place.

AJ: 13:39

We've referred to chaco canyon and chaco and culture and the particular great house, as it's called, that we're seated in a room that's sort of now open to the, to what was the plaza, but a lot of the perimeter is still sort of intact. So we've come to the interior but we're sort of semi-sheltered in one of the rooms, one of the old rooms, because the wind's blowing from the west and it gives us a vantage point where we look across to beautifully illuminated cliff faces and and old structures in this incredible place as the sun gets low on the horizon. It's a quarter to six in the evening here. So this great house Pueblo Bonito it's called I can't help, I have to say it somewhat. As for spanish accent, we're going to talk spanish. No, yeah, you can't help it right, pueblo bonito, it's the beautiful town, right, right, essentially.

AJ: 14:33

But because the spanish called the people here pueblo, people, because they lived in towns 800s and existed, or the civilization that flourished here, flourished here for a few centuries, actually centuries prior to right.

AJ: 14:57

There was a build-up to it and I want to come back to that too, but. But what we are amongst is the peak of that civilization that then was left, the people left in the 1200s, it seems, but that started in the 1100s, but after extraordinary achievement. So let's delve a bit, dana, into what we've been walking around these last couple of days and the impact it's had, and we can just start with what we've seen in the canyon. Basically, you've got 150 of these great houses in the region that this civilisation built and there are a number of them in and around this particular canyon, but they extend up to southern Colorado. We're in sort of northwest New Mexico now, some across into Arizona and some south. So we'll start by bringing you into the physicality, I think, and then we can talk about some of the extraordinary story that is this place. Yeah, and we can walk to do that, haven't?

Dana: 16:00

we, yeah, we can do that.

AJ: 16:02

Let's take foot and.

Dana: 16:03

Yeah, let's see if the wind has other plans for us this has certainly been a friendly.

Dana: 16:08

A friendly shelter, yes, which we can come back to if we need one thing while we're getting up our 45 and 50 year old selves off the dirt floor I think when you said the peak of the culture, I, I think I want to sit with that for a minute Because I or the civilization, I think, is what you said I think I would characterize it as maybe the peak of the material civilization, or it's tough to say right, because this is a civilization that predated European contact and we can only look at it through Western eyes and we see a great structure and it's beautiful and impressive and I think as we walk around we should talk about it.

Dana: 16:53

But it's also important to note that this civilization is still happening, it's still civilization, and that this civilization made a choice to walk away from this. And so when we talk about a peak, you know I'm thinking of that. That feels like a linear word, but this is a civil, as the civilization made a decision to mothball this place or to, to, to leave it, you know, to leave it as is, and I think that's worth noting it is worth noting.

AJ: 17:18

Yeah, let's come back to it. Yeah, because it's it's climactic in a sense, but, as you say, really with ongoing relevance to all cultures on the planet today what we're living right now Bang yeah, Okay that'll be where we come back around For sure.

AJ: 17:33

So we're on the west side of it, yep, and we came in the entrance to the plaza that we're going to move out into and there might be a little bit of wind, but wow, wow, what a sight. So this was four stories high and there are some of those walls at the cliff edge that still stand that high and a whole bunch of others stand to varying degrees two, three stories, and I guess, first of all, to say it's in this extraordinary, I mean this is regarded as, hands down, the finest architectural achievement on this continent well, certainly pre-columbian hands down and the, and the biggest structures for a thousand years, at least till the 19th or 20th century on this continent, and this is in a deformation, yeah, as some others of the the great houses are.

AJ: 18:24

Yeah, not all, they're all different in some way. Yeah, and the cliff side in this instance is the curved side right, and the canyon side is the straight wall. Yeah, and within, as we're looking at it, there's this plaza, and there are really two parts of this plaza now, because they ended up, over the 300 years of construction, putting a wall in the middle. Yeah, which will come to the direction yeah, you can pick it up.

AJ: 18:49

I know that's what I'm excited to talk about and uh, and we're looking at a whole bunch of. Well, it had 650 rooms, and I say had only because the cliff wall fell on some of it and took some out. Um, what was?

AJ: 19:01

that in the 40s, yeah, 42 43 something, and we're looking at a bunch of keevers that are built into the structures and some particularly enormous ones in the plaza, and they were I'll just use a little loosely the the churches as we might understand them that the temples, prayer centers maybe, yeah, ceremonial sure ritual centers built into the ground and I'll obviously have photos of these that that I can share.

AJ: 19:32

They are spectacularly beautiful in themselves and and if we just walk to one, if we can venture to the one, yeah, with the, with the opening, yeah, they had my body we're going to venture into the wind and hopefully it holds up. But when I walked over to this west, western half of the plaza now, so we've just come through that wall that they built later on, when we come to the entrance incredible entrance down into, yeah, this kiva, which I think is the Great Kiva of Pueblo Bonito A quick intercession on this I was reminded on our return to Albuquerque that in fact, the Great Kiva has been left filled in, as the Chuck Owens had meticulously done before they left those centuries ago. Filled in, closed up, right next to where we were walking and talking as we approached the open Kiva. This is part of what Dana was alluding to earlier about indications of their conscious departure.

AJ: 20:30

We delve into that story further later on and, just as a side note, we were reminded of this back in ABQ because, would you believe, the documentary we'd most recently watched about Chaco, a few months earlier, happened to be replayed on PBS New Mexico the very night of our return, which I knew because I got on the email list of the Solstice Project founded by filmmaker Anna Sofair, links to this extraordinary project and production in the show notes. Okay, on we go. It's certainly one of the big two and when I stood here I just I almost shook is the word. There was certainly some kind of nerve tremor thing that I experienced standing at this point the other day when we came here for the first.

Dana: 21:13

Well, and this is what we've been talking about, right, the echoes. I don't know, at the risk of sounding sanctimonious again, maybe if you, if you tune your antenna to those kind of spiritual frequencies, you can, you can walk into a place and feel it, and I think everyone maybe feels it, maybe differently, in their body. I'm wondering if you feel it in shaking. For me it was tears In a couple of other spots, oh yeah, well, just I mean coming up, I mean one, the anticipation of, you know, 25 years of wanting to know about this space and, you know, wanting to hear more about it and see it and be with it, be in it, but just the tears. For me that's what came up. It felt like I was reuniting with an old friend or you know somebody. It's just something cherished. You know, that's interesting.

AJ: 22:04

That comment you just said, then, too, connecting to something. It's probably a good enough point, then, for you to take us on some of the story of the orientations.

Dana: 22:14

Sure, well, gosh and I don't even pretend to be an expert your listeners, if anyone is interested in Chaco Canyon, and this is the first they're hearing of it, do the dive. It is so fascinating and so worth learning about. But I think the thing that got me maybe the most excited about this was the alignments to the uh, which I guess the field is archaeoastronomy. So when you look at the, if you imagine the d shape, uh, with the long wall of the d, the long line of the D, the long line of the D being oriented towards the east and west axis of Earth, what they know about this place is that the east and west walls are aligned perfectly to sunrise and sunset on the winter and summer solstice, and that imagine a sort of a wall bisecting that D that is perfectly aligned to the north-south axis, so perfectly aligned to cardinal directions. On those dates, yeah, on those dates.

Dana: 23:12

But I think I mean we're in Pueblo Bonito, which is a remarkable, unbelievable, powerful structure, but it is not the only thing in this canyon by any stretch. Not the only thing in this canyon by any stretch. And you know, when you talk about Chacoan culture, when you talk about Chacoan, just sort of history. We talk about this place as a system, I think you know, or that's how I've heard it referred to anyway. And so to our west is Pueblo de Arroyo, to our east is the Chetro K and uh, these are two structures that are aligned perfectly with the east west, kind of great main wall of pueblo bonito, and both of them align perfectly to the solstices, both winter and summer and then they further align with chimney rocky in southern colorado.

Dana: 24:02

well, sure, so that's the thing. And, like I said, your listeners should absolutely do the deep dive, watch the podcast. I don't know if you can link things in your notes, but you should. Yeah, totally, I mean, it's the alignments of Pueblo Bonito, at the middle, at the center of this complex extend for miles and don't just extend to the solstice alignments, they extend to lunar alignments as well. So the, the moon has a kind of an 18 and a half year cycle, and so and I'm getting a little bit beyond my full understanding of astronomy here, but you know, my understanding is that some, many of the great houses that are placed throughout this canyon, that were constructed throughout this canyon, are aligned to those southern and northern maximums of those lunar cycles as well.

AJ: 24:55

One last interruption. This phenomenon is called the maximum lunar standstill, and would you believe it? It occurs this year in December, which we learned on our visit to Chimney Rock in Colorado, another extraordinary place we'll share more about soon.

Dana: 25:10

For now, on with the show and I think that's what I remember reading about that among the Puebloan belief, systems like the sun and the moon are just as important and so. But when you're building a structure like this, if you're going to put the time and effort into it, it's not just the sun that's honored, it's all of the above. But I mean what's been blowing me away is as we hike around through these structures. I mean, so many alignments show up. That's almost been like fun for lack of a better word is as you come up to a new structure, sort of you. You know where were we yesterday? At la rinconada, yeah, and across the other side of the canyon, across the other side of the canyon, across the, the wash, I guess, uh, chaco wash, or arroyo, arroyo, arroyo, right, arroyo. So on the other side, the great kiva, which is the greatest, the largest kiva, I believe.

AJ: 26:03

Yeah, it's hundreds of people, hundreds, hundreds of people. Each pylon was over 1,000 pounds, and the four of them, I believe, and then timbers on top which they had to haul in from over 50 miles away, about a quarter of a million timbers for the roofs of these kivas, without using beasts of burden or the wheel. They organized and there was a master plan. They knew what they were doing a long way out, yeah, yeah, a long way out from when they actually burst into this action. It's extraordinary. Anyway, so back to La Riconada, which is the biggest kiva across the other side of the canyon, yeah, which actually is sort of a focal point between Pueblo. Bonito and Chicharro. Quetel is the two biggest great houses here, because there's sort of an amphitheater structure on the cliff face between the two and it sort of zeroes across to that. And just finally, there was sort of what they call small houses, but not that they were that small, they're just not the the great ones.

AJ: 26:58

they weren't great right, it's all relative where people are shacked up at times when they're in here, but we'll come to more on that too. Around there, as there were around here, but yeah, go on then.

Dana: 27:10

No, I just, I mean it was a lot of background to say, like, as we were exploring La Rinconada, la Casa Rinconada, la Rinconada had this odd little culvert in the middle of the Kiva sticking out in an odd direction and we spent, you know, I mean you know, 10 minutes sort of talking about, wonder why it goes that way. That, you know, doesn't seem aligned to any of the other things in the Kiva, this is our amateur analysis.

Dana: 27:32

Yeah, I mean we are not archaeologists, we're certainly not archaeoastronomers, but it stood out, but it stood out. So we sat there and looked, and you, when you stand at the back of it, it does seem to bisect that amphitheater structure on the other side of the canyon directly to the midpoint between Chetra Kettle and Pueblo Bonito, whereas the entrances and there were two, which seems different were aligned north-south, north-south right, exactly which?

AJ: 28:01

this is here too, the Kiva. We're standing at the one big entrance. Yeah, follows the wall that's're standing at the one big entrance. Yeah, follows the wall that's next to yeah. Straight south For sure.

Dana: 28:10

Let's wander over to the other side of the structure, yeah no, and some of these little rooms and things are just so magical.

AJ: 28:16

So the east side is particularly intact and this is where we're allowed to go into some of the rooms. So let's do that, yeah, while also. But don into some of the room. So let's do that, yeah, while also don't touch the walls while also drawing it like commenting a little bit on the other extraordinary aspects of the physical manifestation, before we go back to the astronomy and stuff, I reckon is the fact that it had it had agriculture, so a little bit of farming, a little bit of water, a little bit of farming of maize. Indeed, it was the, the maize farming, that broadly built up the culture to to this particular material height, let's say, and that started just at about 100 bce, as I understand it. And what fascinates me as much is that and this would be of real interest to people who've listened to this podcast and been interested in regenerative agriculture- and holistic management and some of that terminology.

Dana: 29:07

Yeah.

AJ: 29:07

Because the people who preceded this big stuff were living in here for periods of time like 20, 30 years and then they were moving on to other patches for that period of time, so sort of semi-mobile for that period of time. So it's sort of semi-mobile. And I say it relates to that sort of holistic management idea, because the whole idea of that is moving animals in that way where you then give the land rest so you're all in one spot and you're all in another spot and so it can come back. It's fascinating to me equally that that was sort of happening through the 700s and then it led to this explosion in the 800s. And let's keep walking so we get out of the wind, hay For sure We'll get to our entry point. So we're passing through the eastern half of the big plaza.

Dana: 29:56

Now We've crossed the. This is the wall here, right.

AJ: 29:58

Climbing up through a maze of keevers. I mean just extraordinary. Which touches, then, on what appears to have been the main function of this entire complex. The entire chaco canyon and those other great houses beyond were apparently not to live in right. There's scant evidence of burials. There's scant evidence of refuse.

Dana: 30:28

Right. So there's a handful of burials from kind of the research that I think you and I have been doing right and they have found some, I guess, genetic. The skeletons they have found were genetically related. They have found were genetically related but really for the size of this structure there's almost no one living here. Yeah.

AJ: 30:53

We've had low bridge. Yeah, now we're into the rooms. Now we might keep going and get some of the end?

Dana: 30:59

Yeah, keep moving.

AJ: 31:00

So we're really stooping through some of these entrances, and this is particularly narrow too, this one.

Dana: 31:05

So right, this is the eastern side side of it, and we came all through here yesterday with the kids. They had a just an amazing time running through and they fit right through these little doors we have to.

AJ: 31:20

I have to crouch. I don't fit through the little doors and so we look out on an open sky. I mean there's three stories as I look up here, as we get towards the back wall, towards the back wall still not quite there, and three stories that they had again suspended by all these timbers, and at the time they were largely enclosed, so again they were very. There's 650 rooms here, let alone everywhere else. There were never more, apparently, than a couple of thousand people around these structures at any time.

AJ: 31:50

So they found some were used for storage, like one very small room I think it was room 33, had 50,000 pieces of turquoise. Yeah, there was a whole other bunch, yeah, a whole other set of materials that were stored in that way, that were stored in that way. But it really highlights the fact that this, I mean this, was talked of as the centre of the culture, the centre of the world for all intents and purposes. Certainly, what we've been reading, this particular one and then the other ones were related to it in this broad area. So people would come in to be here and to add sort of layers to the mystery and the complexities. There's no sign of war or defences. So there was, like this confluence of people from, I think, up to 200 miles around I mean, we're talking an area of around 60,000 square miles that was active, with this as the centre that they would come in periodically and seemingly for these observation events, bring materials with them from those distances and build in reference and reverence to the cycles and to the very nature of coming together.

Dana: 33:00

What it sounds. I mean, some of the podcasts we're listening to related to Chacoan culture. It was related to the building cycles as being timed with lunar cycles as well, so you had, like the lunar maximum, the 18-year cycles. That would kind of welcome a new burst of construction. And the theory from that podcaster, Ed, I think I can say his name.

AJ: 33:29

Yeah, totally yeah, ed Barnhart. We'll come back to Ed because that's part of the layers to how we come to be here at all. But Ed Barnhart on the Archeo Ed podcast does an episode on Chaco. It's well worth a listen and I think I've referenced him before, if only in the sub stack pieces I've written on. Uh, on copan, yeah, he cut his teeth a bit too sure, and that was related, bizarrely, to our visit to philadelphia, but that's a whole other issue I, yeah.

Dana: 33:56

so I mean, we listened to ed's podcast just driving down here on the dirt roads as best we could, over the rumble of the roads and everything, with the kids screaming in the back, screaming with excitement. Yeah well, they were so excited to connect to ancient cultures and also play cards. But yeah, he talks about the building being the activity. That's the working theory. That's his theory.

Dana: 34:22

Yeah, but I'm quite partial to it. Well, I'll tell you what. If it's right or wrong, I love it, you know, like I mean. Ed's also not, you know. And Puebloan, none of us are.

AJ: 34:34

No, and so we're left with. And his focus is Mayan culture principally.

Dana: 34:37

Yeah, as sort of the Western sort of you know, people living on Turtle Island right now can can can learn from these things is, if we're going to keep living here, we have to learn how to live with the land, we have to learn how to what worked here and this is clearly something that worked and it worked for a long time, but for a long time.

AJ: 35:05

And something that worked. And it worked for a long time. But for a long time and um, because if you take, if you take the stretch, yeah, of the 300, 400 years that this particular center, yeah, was functioning in in that live way, I mean they still say it's a reference point, a sacred spot, sure, but yeah, you know what I mean, just walk in, you feel, yeah exactly.

AJ: 35:23

And then there were the preceding centuries. It's a broader civilization that puts our industrial one in the shade still, and so does, for that matter, where we've come.

Dana: 35:36

another story through Poverty Point the mound structures, yeah, the Mississippian cultures, the Hopewell cultures and what preceded them yeah, huge structures, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, each one right.

AJ: 35:49

So we visited Poverty Point that dates back 3,500 years to be pyramid mounds, earthen pyramids, effectively that scaled like the Egyptian pyramids. And again, hardly anybody knows. But I only know this thanks to, again, ed. Shout out ed.

AJ: 36:07

Yeah, he's getting a lot of love today 600 years spanned that particular culture at poverty point as well, yeah, puts this culture we're in right now in the shade and we're sort of we're facing our threats, as they did too, but amongst their conscious decisions were certainly droughts and whatever. So it's fascinating to. I get a big dose of humility, mm 100%, yeah, a big dose of admiration, a big dose of the beauty of people on the planet, the possibility of beauty, and to think so many people centred here in such a way, largely without conflict, without evidence of conflict and without want, like they didn't have to live here. This was seemingly a ceremonial point. It wasn't. We've built it. Now I shall sit on top and rule Right, right. I mean, we don't know what the structures of organization were.

Dana: 37:02

Maybe they were very hierarchical, but that didn't manifest like that, which is a Not in the way we would conceive of hierarchy Typically, I think the way I don't know if you listen to other archaeology podcasts and do reading, you know it does seem like when you have those hierarchical structures they tend to be more kind of bellicose, you know, and sort of keeping the workers in line and that sort of thing.

AJ: 37:21

It's part of the Mayan story, it in line, and that sort of thing. It's part of the Mayan story. It's part of the Inca story. Sure, I think it's fair to say yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, and perhaps the European one we could talk.

Dana: 37:29

Yeah, yeah, right For sure.

AJ: 37:36

But yeah, when I say European, you are Western, western, sure, let's agree on that term we are. We should also say we are standing at a what?

Dana: 37:42

how would you describe it? Yeah, I mean, this looks to me like a millstone, so, or like a gosh, what do you call it? The corn grind, they grind the corn on it is what I'm assuming. So a large stone gosh, maybe about two feet by a foot and a half. You'll have to do the metric conversions there. My brain doesn't work that way, I'm giving up, yeah okay, with a large white.

Dana: 38:01

you know harder stone, so you know the harder stone. So this is the base stone. Seems like the sandstone that we have around us everywhere in this gosh I don't know, I'm not a geologist, but harder like a quartz or something to grind the corn and like it stands out in these little rooms because really these rooms are pretty barren. You know, there's nothing else in these rooms and in any of the structures we visited. This is the only piece of gosh furniture, if you will, although many walls, apparently, were plastered and painted, decorated in some form.

Dana: 38:36

Sure sure.

AJ: 38:36

So it was certainly a I mean the sketches of what it might have looked like, the closest we could I mean? It's a bona fide. You could use terms like palace, couldn't you? No yeah, extraordinary Cathedral, right, and to imagine the colour and the hub of activity, and then, similar to Poverty, point that the trade, so tons of materials coming in from the Pacific down to macaws and cacao, from.

Dana: 39:03

Mesoamerica yeah, the macaws, right exactly.

AJ: 39:05

And from up north too, stuff from up north, but it wasn't considered a trading post. It was like stuff came in either in tribute or whatever it was. Yeah, but it was largely one way, and that happened in Poverty Point centuries earlier is a really interesting thing. Since learning about this stuff, I'm considering so whatever that? Again, the functional purposes seem light on the ground, but the ceremonial ones are, like really apparent. Is that Raven again? Yeah, it's kept us company. Yeah, let's walk a little further on.

Dana: 39:39

Yeah, for sure.

AJ: 39:39

Yeah, yeah. The room that's almost the original one. The closest to how things might have been is through here too.

Dana: 39:49

And then just each door we walk through, I mean just for your listeners, gosh, maybe four feet, metre and a half, you know yeah. And you really have to.

AJ: 39:58

And like a foot and a half wide. Yeah, crouch down low. This is an interesting time of day to come, actually, because through the windows because we're not, we don't have a ceiling above our heads you get the window. That, in this case, was on the second floor, where the sun's streaming through and illuminating part of the opposite wall in a quite beautiful way, and above that they actually had, well, let's say, windows, but through like a two-metre long wall structure.

AJ: 40:26

Yeah, I mean through this two meter long. Yeah, I mean through the wall structure unbelievably thick wall unbelievable.

Dana: 40:29

And on a diagonal, yeah, it's fascinating. I mean, you can only wonder what's lying to and you know I'll tell you. This is what I was talking about yesterday those charred, oh yeah blackened, blackened but those only because you look at the window right next to it.

AJ: 40:41

It doesn't have it not charred when the fact that these timber beams are still hard and holding this thing up is amazing in itself too. All right, we're stooping through an even smaller one. There we go, and possibly I mean now we're looking at the four stories here, which is, I mean, I'm looking straight up and you can see the curve of the D, so it looks like we've gotten to the.

Dana: 41:07

I think that's what that is right. No, you're right. No, no, never mind.

AJ: 41:10

Yeah, not even the outside wall.

Dana: 41:11

No, not even the outside wall, it's just a bow in the structure.

AJ: 41:14

Yeah, yeah, let's come through here. And what's also of note in the physical structure we haven't mentioned is the road systems. Yeah, like 400 miles of road systems around this canyon and again, some of them barely used, it seems. Yet we're talking engineering precision, of modern highways 30 foot wide or beyond and some sort of appear to go nowhere. They go for a period and end up in a ravine.

Dana: 41:51

I mean, that's the thing it's like when you start doing a deep dive on what we know about Chaco Canyon. I think it's like what we don't know. There's so much more that we don't know about this system than what we do, at least from what I've been able to read. But yeah, roads, we think of roads as going somewhere and as being used for commerce and being used for these very sort of quotidian. You know, like I use the road because, or I build the road because it makes my life easier to achieve the purpose of me getting, you know, my groceries or whatever. These massive roads just extend almost like a, I mean, if you imagine, like throwing a rock in the glass, and Pueblo Bonito's at the middle, and it's just the striations that extend out. Yeah, well said, for I mean what hundreds of miles here I mean?

AJ: 42:43

yeah, and then that I mean this is the thing like some of the alignments over hundreds of miles here. I mean yeah, and then that I mean this is the thing like some of the alignments over those hundreds of miles to these structures here.

AJ: 42:52

So the level of master planning, if you will, it's yeah, it blows the mind and to think I mean so. This relates to where we went today, which I mean particularly, perhaps, those people who know this place, but those who may delve a little further. We went up to a place called Pueblo Alto. It's a high town, yeah. It's up on the cliff top, on the plateau, yeah, and as you come to that, you look out like it's a thin, relatively thin plateau.

AJ: 43:19

So you look out on the other side of sweeping views and that's where a lot of the roads continued on and right up to that, just out into the horizon, beyond vision, where you know yeah, that was another point today, so I've ended up with three points where body was shifting and exactly that was one at puerto valdez as much, because we were finding ancient pottery shards with exquisite painting.

Dana: 43:42

Just everywhere it was. It's hard not to be moved um by what you're finding up there when we or anywhere around here. But yeah, those pottery shards.

AJ: 43:54

It's breathtaking, it really is it really is, and you know, to see the kids enlivened by that. Yeah well, it's more than we were. It's just that's interesting too well, I'll tell you.

Dana: 44:04

So one thing they do a really nice job of at this park anyway is, you know, reminding you that the shards, the rocks, the vegetation, the birds, everything this is all part of a living sacred site, sacred system. And you know the shards. It would be extremely easy to pick up a shard and put it in your pocket, and I imagine some folks have done that over time. But they do a nice job, I think, at the park of reminding us that these are sacred items. The folks who lived here centuries ago, those pottery shards weren't just left, they were intentionally broken at the end of their life because, you know, they were whatever qualities they had, to honor the life of that pot, return to where it came from, return to where it came from right and allow that process to occur and so being able to point to those signs. You know, when the kids were running around who were so excited about the shards and understandably wanted to take them home.

Dana: 45:10

Hey, but this is not. This isn't that kind of a place. They got it yeah they got it.

AJ: 45:16

It was cool. So there's two things I want to bring up before we go into this would-be original conditioned room and then circle back to the astronomy, because this is related. Right, we are standing in a room here, that's we can't see the outside wall from this one, because the doorway is filled in, yeah, with more rock and mortar. Yeah, this is a critical point that the great Kiva, even in this great house, pueblo Bonito, was filled in as they left, so they closed the portal. If you will, and I want to give another shout-out then at this point. And then I want to reference to where this all came from. Some more of the backdrop that goes back to our Guatemala time. I think this is the time to do it.

AJ: 46:06

So a filmmaker called Anna Sofair has made a few films on this place, the most recent being Written in the Landscape. And that closes I think more or less closes, with some elders descendants talking about this feature that they sealed it up. It wasn't abandoned, it was consciously sealed up and left. You can see it in a lot of the doors and windows, and I don't know if that means not all were done. Particular ones were done, maybe the other ones have fallen out, I don't know, but the great Kiva was filled in and a number of these were filled in and in the film it's presented as it was a conscious closing of the portal of the spiritual material. Like all connected up power, they were accessing that. They perhaps, one elder says, perhaps found that accessing that power was actually actually. I've got his words. I want to come to this.

Dana: 47:06

I want to come to this.

AJ: 47:07

I want to use his words. So it was an elder called, if I pronounce this right, petush Gilbert of Acoma Pueblo today, telling the story of Indigenous and white sisters having parted ways, but they were now back together as prophesied. This is here today. This ended that documentary and now is our choice as to where we go from here. Mmm, this was after having said that the power in this place ended up constituting a story and this is just one view but ended up constituting a story of arrogance and domination and they decided to leave that power of mastery over nature, for it succumbs to evil, which was actually a similar story.

AJ: 48:00

I've said a couple of different angles in there, but let's sort of delve into them. It's a similar story out of Aboriginal Australia, at least in the Kimberley region, and I think films are being made of. Delve into them. It's a similar story out of Aboriginal Australia, at least in the Kimberley region, and I think films are being made of that right now. It was a podcast guest way back, so I don't know where the films have come to. It was a pretty epic undertaking but where Aboriginal culture, going back you know, the tens of thousands of years in this case had a similar moment where apparently there were lots more representations of humans on the walls and so forth but they encountered the same sort of insights and it went back to depictions of connecting to cycles and what's around, and kin.

AJ: 48:36

Yeah, so there was that lesson learned of the folly of arrogance and superiority to think that they might have consciously come, and superiority to think that they might have consciously come to that decision here and left it for the well-being of all things.

Dana: 48:53

I mean not just left it, packed it up. Packed it up, yeah. Turned off the switch. Yeah, as I'm hearing you talk, I'm just reminded of an opportunity I had a few weeks ago actually to attend through my daughter's Hebrew school. We attended a burial of the, you know, just religious texts, and this is, you know, part of the Jewish tradition where, you know, we don't just throw books away. You know, books that are used for a holy purpose, for a sacred purpose, are buried, interred, and we say, you know, gosh and I'm not Jewish, so I don't want to say the wrong words, but you know there's prayers offered.

AJ: 49:34

Yeah, just quickly. This is your wife's journey as her heritage Sure Coming back to it, and while you're on sort of this journey, I really admire you both and how it's connecting as a family.

Dana: 49:47

Well, yeah, and it's this idea of connecting to spirituality in a way that feels meaningful and feels right and feels genuine, and for her it's connecting a story that was turned off and she's trying to throw the switch back on. Let's put it that way, haven't many?

AJ: 50:13

cultures experienced it, including the descendants of where we stand, absolutely so it's a shared story in many respects.

Dana: 50:22

But what I was saying we were able to. You know, I was really touched by this ceremony of burying these religious texts as sacred and walking around through here and seeing the windows sealed up, any claims for cultures that I don't identify as my own culture, but they felt very similar, like a reverence that this wasn't just packed away like oh crap, we've gone too far. This was very carefully put to seal off and I can imagine the reverence of building a structure as magnificent as this, a same level of reverence in the sealing it off and understanding of why we're doing it. And it's a mystery and it's something that our Western minds have a really hard time Like. When you build a cool thing, you keep rocking with it, you know.

AJ: 51:25

Well, that's what one of the elders said in the film that's presented here hey, that the level of security in the people to have yes, to have just said this is amazing. We put so much into. I mean, how did they do it? Yeah, and we're going to leave it now and it's describing that point. It's just they've never stopped. Like the cloud, she said.

Dana: 51:44

You just move to the next thing, move on to the next thing Like the main calendar, the wisdom in that, the deep yeah the security, the peace, the faith, you know, similar to when we're working in a job where we feel so buried and tied to our salaries and our 401ks and our health care plan right exactly when you see that path is not aligning to the person.

Dana: 52:21

You want to be to the world, you want to live in the world. You want to build. The courage it takes to walk away from that is massive right. So I'm seeing this here like. This is such an amazing monument to the achievements and the capacity to move on. And the capacity to say and now it's done, yeah, now it's done, you know, and this part is over.

AJ: 52:47

Yeah, it's heavy, and it's meaningful and emotional all right, it's so much so I want to weave back. There's a few threads alive, isn't there? We've got that room beckoning. Yeah, I said the thing about this moment of choice, which I want to come back to as well what do we do from here?

AJ: 53:06

But relevant to this story, and it's really what's it done, it's been incredibly moving and possibly bemusing how a lot of these threads have come together through this journey of ours, since we've been on this continent for almost a year now, and that is that I came across Ed's podcast, archeoed, through a listener to the podcast back in Australia who I knew when I was a touring rock musician in the 90s, back in Melbourne, based in Melbourne, australia, and we didn't have contact for a long time after that too. I mean, I came over to Guatia and then back home to Perth, so that relationship has come around. He ends up he's a big listener and supporter of the podcast, messages me while we're over here and says, hey, I found a good one, here you go. I was like, as a lot of this journey's been so full of just what we're encountering, you know what drew us in the first place, in a conscious manner, like what we were hitting up first, yeah, and then going through the Pueblo centres and I mean full amazed and trying to still produce and put podcasts out and whatever.

AJ: 54:15

So it was like, okay, as I do with most things, I take note, I never throw anything away there it's at. And then one night I actually took the time to look through thoroughly and amongst all the episodes I mean I look ent thoroughly and and amongst all the episodes I mean look enticing enough. But all the episodes I'm looking at I see a name and it was moises morales and I didn't remember fully who that was. Yeah, but it triggered something, yeah. And then I thought, jeez, I'm pretty sure that's the old guy who took us in when I was traveling with my partner at the time, another podcast listener and supporter these days.

AJ: 54:52

Irene, who I've also reconnected with because she now lives in New Mexico.

Dana: 54:56

I mean I could go on with the latest, but I gotta write a book or something, but anyway so we're.

AJ: 55:02

We're heading to this idea, uh, of where's going to be a home, potentially and again, listeners over the journey will have heard a bit about this already but palenque, mexico still mayan territory and culture, sure, but across that mexican border was where we ended up at what was effectively a sort of a second stop, and we did stay there a while because we were invited out the back of this place, alpanchan, where people stayed sure to join in the community that was out the back, full of archaeologists and anthropologists and whatever, and stay in moises like in a downstairs room.

AJ: 55:38

Yeah, I love that not even this big where we are right now and like absolutely sure, thank you. So we took that on and then in the end, after two, two and a half months, it was like no, it's not quite for them or for us. So so it's sort of we, we moved on and guatemala became guatemala. But, interestingly, as I tuned into this podcast, then it was affirmed that's the, that's the guy, that's the guy. And ed said yes, he had a penchant for inviting pretty young travelers in, so that wasn't me no, you're the one.

AJ: 56:07

Yeah, you're a beautiful man, but maybe not Moises' type I don't know, but we did meet beautiful people around there, and amongst those people were Alonso and Susan, and these will lead to other stories because I've just reconnected with Alonzo and Susan. Oh lovely. They live in New Mexico now and he appeared in that documentary written in the landscape. Yeah yeah, they are good friends from those times of Ed. Oh great, so the layers were coming in.

AJ: 56:42

Yeah, for sure no yeah, and I'm going, okay, I've got to keep following this. And then I listened to Ed's palenka stories and he was there making a big name for himself, in fact, uh, just before we arrived. So it was very contemporaneous, yeah, our experiences. And so I'm writing ed and I'm trying to find at that stage, I'm trying to reconnect with alonzo and susan, but an old email address wasn't working and and I'd almost given up. But Ed said oh, you want to have a look at the Solstice Project? Because I got in touch with Ed, yeah, have a look at the Solstice Project. Yeah, alonzo's involved. Yeah, and I've looked that up. Yeah, and that's what Anna Sofair, the maker of these, set up.

AJ: 57:22

Yes, we'll come a bit more to why, but she set that up and so I've looked at these documentaries and stuff and through that I find alonso, but I wasn't able to find. Through google searches or whatever, or kosher searches or or through the old email ledgers and eventually find them and through all that, the documentary she made about this place. Yeah, and that's the time where we've reconnected and we start talking full circle back to the start of this conversation and going well, fire out, let's go, let's do it, let's do it, let's do it.

AJ: 57:56

Yep, and we tried to actually because the Solstice Project runs camps here and there was going to be one next month but it's just recently been called off. So I won't get to join them in company here, which would have been something else. But I will visit alonzo. I believe anna lives in near town or santa fe as well, so maybe we'll get to visit her too, or she might be doing the next documentary which is going to bring together international threads around this stuff, and she's in her 80s and going strong. But suffice to say how does that trip as a 20-something year old come back to life through this call? I didn't even really understand to come here to the States right now, but just trusted and went. It all comes back to life and it's still obviously in motion. It's just by virtue of turning up and then one thing sort of prompted another and it's just sort of bouncing around and firing off.

Dana: 58:48

I mean, that's when you're close to the source, man, that's when that happens right in these connections. It's just you have to have your, you have to be tuned in, you know to know when the universe is calling, when the spirit, when the source of life is saying to you. Just trust, you know, go, follow this, follow this. And I'm going to shout out my friend, Angele, who you know, says follow the feathers. That was something I picked up from her and, Angele, if you're listening, I stole this from you and I'm using it because it's such a good thing. But I mean, the feathers are that feather in your pathway is an acknowledgement that you're on the right track. Put those feathers. It's a metaphor for that feeling. You get Like, ooh, this is special, Ooh, there's something here, Follow it, See what's around that corner.

AJ: 59:34

Okay, yeah, so Anna's journey, we've got to bring this up, yeah, it's so relevant. So the story behind these documentaries, the core of it, anna's an artist in 1977. She's, and as an artist in 1977, she's here as a volunteer to draw up some of what they're observing and uncovering and they go out to a place called the Fajada Butte which is like a big well. It's essentially old cliff face but it's eroded and now it's a pylon.

Dana: 1:00:00

So Australians don't know this word.

AJ: 1:00:02

We thought it said butt.

Dana: 1:00:03

Well, I'll tell you what the East Coast people don't know what a butte is either. I had no idea either I was like oh, it's a big pile of rocks, Okay cool, it's a giant Impressive. But I didn't know either.

AJ: 1:00:15

That's right.

Dana: 1:00:15

It's like a tower of rock that used to be obviously adjoined to these cliffs and now it stands alone as a hell of a centerpiece to this canyon oh, it seems like I mean when you think of the canyon as having kind of an entryway, or almost as maybe a sentinel, for lack of a better word, but the fahada stands right there, preeminent um as as is the entryway to the canyon.

AJ: 1:00:36

I like that word actually sentinel and she goes up to draw this area at the top of top of fahada butte and sees a shaft of light happened to come through onto a spiral petroglyph up there and got curious and then went back and the short story is, went back and tested it to see if it aligned with solar cycles and so on, and she found that it extraordinarily did.

AJ: 1:01:00

She had stumbled on the three rock panels at the top of this butte that would then shine a dagger of light in different parts across this or or bordering this spiral, at the equinoxes and solstices. And then she thought, well, does that apply to the great houses? And it wasn't quite working until the descendants pointed her in the direction of the lunar cycles that you were talking about before and that unlocked everything that you were talking about before and that unlocked everything that you were talking about before and beyond that we're just touching the sides of. So this becomes her life from that point. Now it's this world heritage area, obviously not just because of her work. But what an extraordinary contribution. And she's gone on to do the stuff that somehow you and I have ended up wound into.

Dana: 1:01:44

Yeah, yeah, sure, and I mean it's amazing that it was a story whose time had come to tell. We're entering, you know, we're talking about the different cross, you know indigenous cultures and things, and so you know, as we're talking about this, I'm thinking of the Anishinaabe prophecy of the seven fires, right, and this has been sitting with me a lot lately, and you know, and I Was that since you read Biting Sweet Ghosts, yeah, yeah.

Dana: 1:02:16

Well, I actually stumbled upon that. That's a funny story too right? I came upon that prophecy story while vacationing with my wife's family in Michigan and the cottage we'd been staying in the river level had risen and we weren't able to use the septic system. So we decided to take a day or trip up to the thumb of Michigan to just wait the water level to go down and we see this sign for a petroglyph and we think, oh, what's petroglyphs? I didn't never even thought about that, right, I mean, you know, we live in a very colonized Western mindset and you it's not that you are unaware that there was previous civilizations here, but it really is. It's not in your day to day until you sort of begin to connect to it, which is something isn't it.

Dana: 1:03:07

Sure that we've so marginalized.

AJ: 1:03:09

So much of our shared human extraordinary experience.

Dana: 1:03:13

Well, that's, yeah, I mean and I don't want to like talk negative energy in this beautiful space, but yeah, I mean, it feels like an intentional erasure in a lot of ways. And you know, you've got to wonder, like what was going on with those people, our descendants, when they landed on our respective continents? Well, and what?

AJ: 1:03:29

they were disconnected from in turn. That's where it comes around.

Dana: 1:03:33

Well, it's such a crazy, sad, tragic, awful, shameful story, but to the point, you know. So we find these petroglyphs up on the thumb and the tour guide who was just kind of talking us through each of the petroglyphs it's a stone, maybe about gosh, 12 feet, um, around, maybe in diameter, maybe a little bigger, and I honestly I think if you were walking right past it in the woods you wouldn't even notice that it was there. It just looks like a big rock. But when you, you know, when you really look into it, you see the petroglyphs, you're like oh, oh, this is something, this was here, this is a thing, and that story is fascinating, connected to gosh big fires that uncovered the rock and kind of opened up the story and everything.

AJ: 1:04:18

But that's a whole other story. That's quite common right. There's places like this in Australia where erosion from overgrazing of colonists originally exposed even human remains, right that have led to, and the Aboriginal people of that era I'm talking Mungo in this case, for those who know just inside New South Wales, from Victoria, and they will talk about it like the people didn't. A geologist actually found these remains that had been exposed. They say, and this is inherent in the worldview, isn't it that agencies invested in kin of various description that they came to tell us something, that they came to be found.

Dana: 1:04:53

Well, that's the thing I mean, and I feel like so much of an ancient world, of a human history, is kind of revealing itself at this time. I don't know if it's always been that way, but it feels like an acceleration now, at least in my life. But what I'll say is you know, with that petroglyph, that was the first time I heard of the story of the seven fires prophecy, right, right, anishinaabe so far from here, far from this land, but it talks about seven prophets who visited the Anishinaabe in ancient times. The fifth prophecy is the arrival of the white man and talking about some will offer a hand in friendship, but beware the false hand of friendship. The sixth is talking about the tribe itself moving away from the elders and the teaching of the elders.

Dana: 1:05:43

And then the seventh fire prophecy, which is where we are now, talks about your choice and gets back to what we were talking about earlier.

Dana: 1:05:52

We have a choice to make and we can follow a path that leads us into the rhythms of the earth and connecting our souls and our spirit and our communities to the landscapes we live on, or we can follow the mechanized path and we can follow the path of Domination.

Dana: 1:06:10

Domination, right and clearly, according to the prophecy, as I understand it, the path of mechanization leads to destruction of humanity, the path towards indigenous, you know, the kind of indigenous ways of knowing natural wisdom, connecting to the earth that leads to the longevity of our species. And so, yeah, so that was my first understanding of it. And then, for sure, gosh reading braiding sweetgrass by robin alkimer, life-changing book, and um mentions it there, and it keeps coming up and the theme of choice keeps coming up, keeps coming up and up. And I think you know, you and I are here in this space, neither of us identifying as Pueblo or connected in a genetic sense to this land, but the power you feel here is undeniable and the choice to connect to this history, I think is a moving experience. And I think what's calling to me about this space in particular too, the way that it exists, with the landscape so different from our Western ways of kind of moving into a space and bending the landscape to our will, everything here works and there's still manipulation.

AJ: 1:07:33

They brought in timbers from 50 miles away. Well, but it's a synchronicity, it's different because you're living with.

Dana: 1:07:39

It's aligned. It's aligned to the stars and the moon and the sun and it is built in with the caves and using the geology of this area to align, using the peaks of the mountains in the distance. When we were on that hike today, and just the shot, I got a picture of it. But just looking, I mean there's the two kind of cliff faces coming together, there's a gap in the southern pass and I guess that's where the southern Great Road led, and then there's this massive peak in the distance. Right, I'm not going to pretend to know what it is, but just like seeing the alignment of. How are you seeing the alignment of I guess that's Pueblo Arroyo to that southern pass, to that peak in the distance? It's built, it's all in there. It's all in there, it's all coded in.

AJ: 1:08:32

So what's interesting to me in that sense, they still well, potentially, felt the power had, you know, got out of hand, wrong kind of power, shut the portal, as we described. And I'm also conscious that these stories are coming to light, right, even the overgrazing or the beautiful archaeological work here. It's through our culture that for its you know, disconnections and and follies, let's say, developed the, the power to examine these stories and be able to share them. And here here, I am right now moved to do this. I hope, as ever, that it's the right thing to do and it serves a purpose contribute something through a podcast around the world, having been able to get to the other side of the world, et cetera, et cetera. So it's interesting that our culture, us in our culture, is at this moment where the power for all the destruction is also generating all this beauty. Yeah, and the choice. Then come back to your prophecy, what you're talking about, the prophecy here.

Dana: 1:09:35

It's not my prophecy. Yeah, the prophecy you're talking about.

AJ: 1:09:37

Yeah, and how it marries up with the one here that was told on Anna's film. Anyway, of choice this time, of choice, of choice, this time of choice. So there's, there's a time where, in other words, all these ancient cultural stories are surfacing and being understood to some degree, at a time when our culture is also confronted with similar dynamics that played a part in the transformation let's say not ending of these ancient cultures, why they're not still here, or still in poverty point, or whatever. So what is it for our culture then? To listen to that call and be up for a transformation of that kind, not see it as a collapse, even. Is this something I'm really coming onto at?

AJ: 1:10:24

the moment Well right, right Like, get out of that, just get out of that mindset. Even, I think the collapse narrative I mean you can understand it and many people listen to this. Probably I've explored it and I thought maybe we should, maybe that's what we should face. But the more I look into it and you know, the more I have guests on that show me extraordinary instances of regeneration from the ruins, in many cases, literally, and everything I'm feeling here, even and you're feeling of just uplift and reconnection and I don't know, a bit more emboldened to follow the what was it Follow?

Dana: 1:11:01

the feathers.

AJ: 1:11:03

All that. I don't take that as accident, but I give credit to my culture and what it developed for bringing that to the surface to be available to us. To giving us the choice and even the fact you listened to Robin Wall Kimmerer on an audio book in your car.

Dana: 1:11:20

Yeah, no, that's true.

AJ: 1:11:22

That brought it to you, that now brings it to others. So if we just take that as the sum of this moment, where there's an unparalleled convergence Because these guys here didn't have, oh, I'm not imagining such a convergence I mean, they had an enormous convergence, 60,000 miles of convergence, yeah, and ethereal or spiritual, whatever you want to call it, and maybe that's everything. Maybe there's no difference in that sense. But we've obviously got a literally a global convergence of stories everywhere. And here we are in australia and american having it, having a chat about those. But it does make me wonder, feel a sense of I don't know, all is okay. Is that too much? Too much Like all is okay? Open up, listen, learn, yeah, feel it, reconnect. Let's explore the choices.

Dana: 1:12:12

Well, I think that it's understandable that folks would feel a frustration with the destruction that I think Western culture has brought. But I think also you've got to wonder what's the end road of that path of anger and acknowledging that I'm a white man, right in America.

AJ: 1:12:37

Well, exactly so it is. I mean I should say yeah, go ahead, our own traumatised past.

Dana: 1:12:43

Sure which we could elaborate on Sure, sure, sure.

AJ: 1:12:45

Because the colonists didn't win much.

Dana: 1:12:47

No, Well, and gosh, I mean, what did we? I'm just thinking of like the slick back hair white man in the 50s, you know, like these guys were miserable. There's nothing to it. No, no, there was. No, I wouldn't trade places with them. They might have had all the money and all the things. But gosh, I mean, you know, I mean loveless marriages and alcoholism. I mean, I never watched Mad Men, but I'm imagining that kind of a you know lifestyle, not something that I definitely that I would choose.

AJ: 1:13:18

Well, this is something it also makes me think of. This is something it also makes me think of that I'm really enjoying the perspective of Denae woman, lila June Johnson, who's talking not only to her Navajo Denae heritage but her European heritage and the Indigenous traumas suffered there.

AJ: 1:13:38

Well, that's the thing, and we're on the colonist side here over in Australia but with those family dynamics and literally I'll share it irish catholic and alcoholism and you know, not all. It's not absolute. There's beauty in there too, but there were those things yep and absent fathers at best, and as much because of the system, not all on them, you know it's right, right, right right.

AJ: 1:13:57

So there's compassion, all that the compassion in there, but just acknowledging those contexts that we're frankly seeking to change the patterns of, yeah, so for all our privilege, geez, I don't know. I mean I can say, just made it through, just made it through at a certain age.

Dana: 1:14:16

I mean the point is that we all have the choice. This is the thing. Yeah, we all have the choice and we all have to make a choice. And you can choose. I guess to the point I was making earlier, the frustration makes sense and you also have to decide. There's the angry path or there's the love path, and you have to make a choice in your life about moving towards. What do I love? What is life affirming? What is the source of life? Back to the source, yeah, exactly, and that's where you have to move, and that has all kinds of historical and cultural context to it, depending on the time and place that you're born, but I think it's the essential choice that all humans of all time have had to make. You know about connecting. What path do I walk?

AJ: 1:15:07

Well, this is it. That's where I feel like I want to say, having explored our stories a bit, shared. Some of the impacts of this place on us is we're not special in that sense. It's the human experience. We're part of the cycle, Part of the cycle.

Dana: 1:15:24

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but we do have to. We are unique, I think, and that we have to make that choice to continue to engage with the cycle? Um, yeah, right on and see where that leads yeah you know and have faith that it leads somewhere or we can choose the other path. You know, know.

AJ: 1:15:42

Yeah, keep moving like the clouds.

Dana: 1:15:45

Right, exactly.

AJ: 1:15:45

Well, right now, I think it's actually a good time, the way this has worked out, to proceed to that room, because this was the room that's the would-be example of closest to original condition in this whole complex.

Dana: 1:15:58

So this is the original structure that was built like in their first phase. I don't think it was the first phase.

AJ: 1:16:04

I think that was built like in the first phase. I don't think it was the first phase. I think that was the other side, actually OK, which might explain why these walls stand higher today. So this was newer. I don't know. I was just thinking about that today, but it's the room that's still got cover. Remember that. Yes, yes, so we're coming through to a room that is more or less as it was and it's been touched up a bit. Uh, I think they replasted some bits, mainly to preserve the plaster underneath, I believe. But when I got to this room and I read the little sign out front that was explaining that well, I felt it all over again and frankly, I'm feeling it again now and it's a.

AJ: 1:16:40

It's a very low entrance. This would be all of maybe a metre high.

Dana: 1:16:48

Can I hold some of that? Stuff You're going to creak your old bones through that window thing, but I think I can do it.

AJ: 1:16:53

I think I can do it. I'm so moved here and in a sense Dana filled with I don't know fuel's almost a clumsy metaphor for everything we've just been talking about to go about that journey just by feeling the essence of this. So this is that enclosed feel. I get all my photos of all this and perhaps write it up on Substack too.

Dana: 1:17:21

But yeah, so you've got the wood pylons above and near the plaster on the wall well, and above the pylons even, you can see a sub floor or the ceiling of, yeah, the next floor, the next floor, yeah, above of some you know, thinner cuts of wood, yeah, above it. Yeah, plastered in and then plastered all around the walls. It looks, and when and when you look at this part that's chipped away here. Honestly, the home I live in Baltimore was built in 49. This looks I mean, it's stone, but for all intents and purposes this is lathing with plaster built in, so very similar technology to what we were using right up until not too long ago.

AJ: 1:18:04

That's the thing Not that special? Yeah, In that sense it's. And that's the other thing that's occurred to me as I clambered back out the extraordinary achievements of humans and to think this was, you know, had the other layers of no wars and stuff.

Dana: 1:18:22

How am I going to get out of here?

AJ: 1:18:24

Okay, Okay, to save us clear, let's venture out back out to the southern straight wall, as much as the wind will blow on us again.

Dana: 1:18:36

The east-west wall you're talking about, right.

AJ: 1:18:38

Yeah, that's right, exactly, southern facing east-west aligned. But hey, mate, as we move on and we get back towards the car, look at this light over the building as we go along the east-west wall.

Dana: 1:18:50

I mean, this is what we were going for yesterday, right? Oh my God, I'm pretty excited to drive up on the Fajada.

AJ: 1:18:55

Butte, right now Exactly, we're going to come to the sun. The Fajada Butte will have the western sun on the western side right, which we don't see from our campground when the sun's setting and we so we actually haven't seen this golden light on the butte at the end of the day, and it is perfectly clear over that horizon right now. Oh my gosh, so that will be a wonder, but yeah, data let's. I mean we might flick the switch back on for that. But while we're here, yeah, as we now pass the end of the wall, yeah I mean, we know that there were structures all the way along this cliff.

AJ: 1:19:28

Sure, right at the kettle, yeah, the second biggest great house within our well within line of sight, as they were set up to be. Yeah, there's communication across these lines of sight, within these great houses. But as we do that, let's wrap up the core of this conversation with them, as always. You know I close talking about a piece of music. Hey, yeah, is there a piece of music that you reckon weaves into the conversation we've had that's been significant for you, or come with you on the journey?

Dana: 1:19:57

I knew you were going to ask me this, because I've listened to your podcast enough and I should be prepared. I'm thinking of two. They're both Spanish, silvio Rodriguez. Oh, oh, you're talking my language yeah, yeah, yeah, he has a b piece and I'll tell you on my, in my mp3 list, that I downloaded in 2000, you know whatever. It's just track one, track two, track three so I couldn't even tell you the name of the song.

Dana: 1:20:21

I suppose I could google it, but I haven't done that because I just listened to it. But he has a song where he says love it. So that's. I am happy. I'm a happy man and I hope that you can forgive me for the was it the dead people today? This for this day, the death and my happiness, or something you know, and it's just the sense to me it calls to. There is tragedy around us and we have to acknowledge it and we have to keep going. You know and we have to, and I believe that the path to solving this, the path to the revolution or whatever you want to call it, leads through joy, leads through happiness. Yeah, beautiful.

AJ: 1:21:17

You sure you want to say the other one? That was pretty good.

Dana: 1:21:19

But that was pretty good. Well, you know, and I'm thinking of the Mercedes Sosa song.

AJ: 1:21:22

Not the Campesino.

Dana: 1:21:25

That's the Campesino. Que la guerra? No me sea indiferente. You know, that's the Capesino one too.

AJ: 1:21:29

It's the Capesino one. Yeah, because we've heard this live version from what was it? It was Managua, no.

Dana: 1:21:34

Yeah, abril en Managua. After the Sandinistas had won, they had this huge concert and all the like lefties from the you know Latin American elite came and gave a beautiful concert. So your listeners should totally download that album because it's life changing.

AJ: 1:21:50

Yeah, and there's a chant. I won't spoil it for you. Yeah, there's a chant in the middle of that song in the live version from that concert. That just shakes your bones.

Dana: 1:21:58

But yeah, but that line I just sang was what always really sings to me, is that I, I ask God that, uh, war not be indifferent to me. You know that I not be indifferent to war and you know I with what's coming here in this country. I don't know what's coming, but things are changing and there are policies that are coming out that are, feel, if, in violation to all the things that we've been talking about. You know, in terms of, you know just the silencing of the work that we've been doing to to lift up the voices of minoritized populations, yeah, and I hope that we never become indifferent to that, that we see that for the difficulty that it's causing and the pain that it's causing.

AJ: 1:22:51

We'll explore more of that on this podcast, what's behind that and, of course, the choices to be made. Yeah, mate, yeah, thank you, it was fun.

Dana: 1:22:59

Thanks for having me on Incredible to reconnect with you.

AJ: 1:23:02

It was beautiful, frankly, yeah, and to be able to do that in there.

Dana: 1:23:07

Beautiful, all right. All right, let's do it. Back to camp, yeah.

AJ: 1:23:19

That was Dana Scott. Some pics and links on the website, and there's always more for you generous paid subscribers soon, with great thanks for making all this possible. We'd love you to join us, if you can, by heading to the website or the show notes and following the prompts. I'll have a bonus episode out from Chaco Canyon next week that I hope you also enjoy. For now, the music you're hearing is Regeneration by Amelia Barden. My name's Anthony James. Thanks so much for listening. Thank you you.