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The Mystery of Chaco Canyon

The Mystery of Chaco Canyon examines the deep enigmas presented by the massive prehistoric remains found in Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico. It is the summation of 20 years of research. The film reveals that between 850 and 1150 AD, the Chacoan people designed and constructed massive ceremonial buildings in a complex celestial pattern throughout a vast desert region. Aerial and time lapse footage, computer modeling, and interviews with scholars show how the Chacoan culture designed, oriented and located its major buildings in relationship to the sun and moon. Pueblo Indians, descendants of the Chacoan people, regard Chaco as a place where their ancestors lived in a sacred past. Pueblo leaders speak of the significance of Chaco to the Pueblo world today.

The film challenges the notion that Chaco Canyon was primarily a trade and redistribution center. Rather it argues that it was a center of astronomy and cosmology and that a primary purpose for the construction of the elaborate Chacoan buildings and certain roads was to express astronomical interests and to be integral parts of a celestial patterning.

While the Chacoans left no written text to help us to understand their culture, their thoughts are preserved in the language of their architecture, roads and light markings. Landscape, directions, sun and moon, and movement of shadow and light were the materials used by the Chacoan architects and builders to express their knowledge of an order in the universe.

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  1. Chaco canyon video is a short trailer not the full documentary. Tom

  2. Bullshit!! This is not the full Documentary, it’s just a trailer basically. Major disappointment

  3. great documentary, beautiful and awesome, Robert Redford´s voice very appropriate, and all the archeologists, historians, artists, etc., that intervened are all supreme and so willing to share their knowledge. Fantastic place, photography and animated graphics (all those moon and sun sky routes, paths, markers and allignments are out of this world!)

    Its all a superior and mysterious site. I keep thinking that documentaries should have the option of being viewed with english subtitles for the sake of clarity, remembrance and accuracy. Documentaries are in fact a new tool for learning, and subtitles would close the learning cicle from books to film. Written words and video are wealthy modes of grasping and studying the world around us. Thanks to everybody that made posible all this.

  4. I have never heard of the chaco Canyon even though I lived in New Mexico for a while. I feel lucky to have found this documentary, and will do some research on this. Thank you for making it available!

  5.  http://www.putlocker.com/file/BCEE3BB8D4632148#

  6. looking forward to watch, and putlocker had to throw in some 3rd party registration, sign up and to accept an offer before continuing . no thanks !.its crap like this that spoils other wise great viewing on this docu channel .

  7. its a real mystery you cant see anything,no video