Pestilence or just a pest?

    We are in the grips of a major catastrophe.  Whether you believe Covid 19 is really a disease of deadly import, China has attacked with a biological weapon or governments are merely using it for regime change, one thing is true: we have no idea where this will take us.

    Additionally, travel as we know it will be suspended for some time and so will this blog.  Travel is the basis for this evaluation of humanity and without it, there is no fodder for articles.

    As we begin this first pandemic in the media driven age - on the cutting edge of the hysteria our ratings driven news outlets are inciting, let's look at some statistics which will be swept under the table as this situation develops because they are just too inconvenient to acknowledge: 

160,000 - The number of United States deaths from the common flu in 2019 (NiH statistics).

650,000 - Approximate number of deaths worldwide, annually from flu related illness(WHO statistics).

659,000 - Approximate number of United States deaths annually from heart disease (CDC statistics).

17,900,000 - Approximate number of deaths worldwide annually from Heart disease (WHO statistics).

$363,000,000,000  

       Costs in services, medicines and lost productivity due to heart disease deaths in the United States for         

       the calendar year 2017 (CDC statistics).

The first chemos-bio suit invented by plague doctors in the Middle Ages.

A Land of Myth, Mystery or Men?

 So if this Golden Fleece thing was just a smash and grab job, why is Georgia so important?  

    It would seem that Georgia has been a crucible for mankind since before we were mankind.  As related in an earlier edition, multiple Pre-Homo Sapien specimens have been found in the region of Dmanisi.  Under present anthropological understanding, the importance of this find would have been meaningless - or worse, mis-interpreted - were they not found in such close proximity to each other, as in Dmanisi.  As I understand it from reading in the Georgian National Museum, this has never been found before.  Why were our earliest humanoid species discovered together outside Africa in Georgia?  A distance of at least 1,600 kilometres (1000 miles).  Could they have been at the meeting with God (entry 24 February 2020)?

Skull, Homo-erectus(Author's collection)

    As noted in the last several entries, evidence of contact between Hellenic Greece and western Georgia was effected in approximately1200BC through Jason and his Argonauts but their knowledge of the Golden Fleece in Greece begs the question: who told them about it?

    In Greek Mythology we encounter Prometheus.  A demi-god of the heroic nature but one that ran afoul of his full-blooded cousins by stealing the secret of fire and giving it to mankind.  For this transgression, he was chained to a mountain top where an eagle pecked his liver out by day and it re-constituted itself by night.  That mountaintop was non other than Mount Kazbegi located in Georgia on the border with Russia along the Georgian Military Highway.  Georgian mythology has a similar character who suffered the same fate named Amirani.  Did Jason return with that bit of information too?

Mount Kazbegi centre image (Author's collection copyright 2020)

    The concentration of unique languages is prolific in the Caucasus as well.  It seems that every mountaintop speaks a different language (not dialect) and most are too old to have an alphabet.  The Georgian alphabet itself is among the oldest in the world.  Interestingly, mythology comes to the rescue here as well.  Local legend has it that while distributing languages to the world’s people, God placed all the languages in large panniers and mounted them on a donkey for easier transport.  While walking over the Greater Caucasus Mountains, the high, jagged peaks tore the bottom of the panniers and many languages fell across that small area before the holes were patched.

Georgian village in Svaneti Region of Georgia
(Author's collection copyright 2020)

    Life in the Caucasus has never been easy and it takes a hearty breed to survive.  It stands to reason that anyone standing out in a crowd like that would be legendary in their exploits.  This holds true for Georgia.  Many larger-than-life characters have existed throughout time.  King Vakhtang Gorgasali was said to have been deer hunting one day in the fifth century AD.  He was in an unfamiliar region, a bog-ridden area next to the Mtkvari River when he wounded a stag with an arrow.  King Vakhtang chased the wounded deer into the bogs where it disappeared from site through the morning mist but he heard it fall into the marshy waters.  So sure was he that the animal was dead that he ran forward unprepared, only to see the stag emerge from the waters unharmed and run away unscathed.  Bewildered by this, he investigated the reason for it and is credited with discovering the curative waters which gave rise to the city of Tbilisi: the capital of today’s Georgia.

Hamams in Old Towne Tbilisi (Author's collection, copyright 2020)

 

    Later, after a war with the Ottoman Empire, Tsarist Russia was trying to “Tame” their recent acquisition called Georgia and many a hard man was drawn to the Caucasus to test his mettle and make his fame.  In fact, a large body of Russian literature is linked to the wars of oppression in the Caucasus and one of the greatest insurgencies ever fought took place there: driven by the unbending will of its best known leader, Imam Shamil, an Avar from today's Daghestan.  With drive in mind, history would soon recognise another Georgian: Ioseb Dzhugashvshvili.  We remember him as Josef Stalin and he killed millions of people trying to impose his will on the world under the guise of communism.  

     Perhaps, unbending will is the true mystery of the land God reserved for himself.  Each individual I met there, over decades of interaction, was a force to be reckoned with - men and women both.  So if the region's mystery is, indeed, the unbending will of men, Caucasians most likely created the circumstances from which myth emerged and with this en-ending supply of wilful people, the Caucasus has remained prominent in the development of mankind since the dawn of time.

So what really happened?

      Legend tells us that a generation before the Trojan War, in ancient Thessaly, King Pelias stole the throne from his half-brother King Aeson.  In doing this, Pelias made a dangerous enemy in Aeson’s son, Jason, but sent him off on a quest to the empire of Colchis (modern day Georgia).  If completed successfully, this quest had the ultimate pay-off - Jason would be crowned king of Pelias and if he failed, Jason would pay the ultimate price.  To this end, Jason surrounded himself with some of the greatest heroes of the day and it was these heroes and their exploits that grew into legend.  This is the story first related in the third millennium BC by Apollonius of Rhodes entitled, The Argonautica.

All legends are based in truth and this one is no different.  It would appear that wealth and nation building were paramount to would-be-kings even thousands of years ago.  All empires need a financial reserve as well as sustained revenue and it was well known that Colchis was rich in gold. What made them so rich was their particular methods of acquisition.  The Rioni River and its tributaries were populated with wooden vessels outfitted with sheep skins that would take advantage of the rivers’ currents to sift the gold particles as they flowed out of the Greater Caucasus Mountains.  It is not hard to believe that over the millennia, such a simple but revolutionary technique would become the myth of the Golden Fleece.

Colchian earrings - circa 1st millennia BC. (Author's collection, Copyright 2020)

If true, it would seem that the real reason for this exploit was the acquisition of technology - not a simple smash-and-grab robbery.  Think of it like the old adage, “give a man a fish and feed him for a day.  Teach him to fish and you’ve fed him for life.”  Is that the real reason Jason surrounded himself with demi-gods?  How else could one expect to acquire such sensitive information?  

Jason knew that he had to have every skillset possible in order to have any chance of success.  

       Historians and storytellers differ in their passenger list aboard the Argo but generally agree that 50 crewmen were necessary and among the crew there are a few names that always appear: Heracles, Castor, Pollux, Peleus and Telamon.  It was these men, with their varied specialties and capabilities, who had been brothers in arms for such a long time that made Jason's success nearly a forgone conclusion.

Necklace from Vani, Georgia - circa 1st Millennia BC. (Author's collection.  Copyright 2020)

So we see that financial stability and corporate espionage were most likely the basis for the exploits we call the Quest for the Golden Fleece and in an effort to ensure success, Jason surrounded himself with men capable of a variety of skills - skills like; cunning, strength, intelligence and endurance.  Skills that may or may not be required for success but whose lack, when needed, would ensure failure. 

        Yet, in the end we see that for all his planning, preparation and coordination, it was an unforeseen capability that won the day for Jason: magic.  The magic of love when Medea fell for Jason and agreed to help him steal the Golden Fleece from her father, King Aeetes of Colchis.

Bracelet from tomb in Vani, Georgia - circa 1st Millennia BC.
(Author's collection. Copyright 2020)

Origins of the Golden Fleece Myth

    In European culture seeking wisdom - especially hidden knowledge - finds its reflection in the symbols associated with gold: the Golden Fleece, the Philosopher’s Stone and the Holy Grail.  For all the qualities it embraces - this eternal and most noble of metals - gold was recognised as the metal of the sun.  It has become the foremost physical medium for the expression of men’s spiritual endeavours and the scientific knowledge about working gold is seen as one of the revelations of wisdom itself.

Detail on a 18th century BC cup from Trialeti depicting a religious ceremony.
(Author's Collection. Copyright 2020)

  The two phenomena: gold and knowledge, especially the knowledge of gold amongst the Colchians, were the genesis for rationalising the myth of the Golden Fleece.  It was this Golden Fleece that was the main goal of the first long-distance maritime adventure in mankind’s recorded history.  The Greek philosopher and mythographer Euhemerus went so far as to interpret the Golden Fleece as a technique of writing in gold on parchment or a book written on skins which describes the method of obtaining gold by means of chemistry.

Fourth century BC example of Colchian goldsmith techniques.
(Author's collection.  Copyright 2020)

  Why is the myth of the Golden Fleece - which emerged from the culture of classical antiquity and pursued its life in the alchemy of Medieval Europe - connected to Colchis?  The answer to this question may be found in Greek written sources that mention Colchis as “rich in gold”, similar to the cities of Mycenae, Sardis and Babylon which were all famed for their wealth.  Perhaps more significantly, the answer lies in the knowledge of obtaining, working and using gold for high spiritual goals - the wisdom that was continuously refined, preserved and passed down throughout the centuries in the territory of Colchis and the entire country of Georgia. Today we witness the demonstration of this wisdom in the golden artefacts found all around the country we call Georgia and we continue to re-discover these techniques and knowledge through our study of these pieces of history.

Colchian fourth century(approx) plaque depicting bull, boar and lion.
(Author's collection. Copyright 2020)

Why Colchis?

"The wealth of the regions about Colchis, which is derived from the mines of gold, silver, iron and copper, suggests a reasonable motive for the expedition of Jason."

Strabo, Geographica, 1.2.39

Excavation at Vani, Georgia - Colchian city.  (Author's Collection. Copyright 2020)

    In today’s “age of reason”, we use science to explain our world.  In the previous world it was religion that explained how things worked and before that, it was myth that gave reason to our world.  

Strangely, even today, the Caucasus is a world of myth.

    Myths and legends carry a powerful message through time - how the tellers of these tales view themselves.  Every tribe under the sun has these stories - each rooted in a time too distant to remember and each of them fascinating.  Yet all of these legends have one thing in common - they stand the test of time.  We, as people, are inextricably bound to the past: it makes us what we are today and shapes what we will become tomorrow.  One could even say that without the past there would be no future.

Waterfront in Batumi, Georgia - eastern Black Sea (Author's Collection. Copyright 2020)

    Strabo describes the wealth of an ancient civilisation as the plausible impetus for one of history’s most enduring myths but perhaps the wealth described by Strabo above can be explained by an even older Georgian myth.

In the beginning, God created the Earth and all its people.  He then asked all the people to attend a gathering so that he may parcel out all the lands of the Earth to them for habitation.  On the appointed day, all the peoples of Earth gathered and received, from God, what we call today their ancestral homelands.  Conspicuously, one group of people was not present, but God went ahead and gave the lands out as gifts to those that were.  Once all the lands were dispersed and the people departed from the gathering, the one missing group arrived.  God said unto them, “My children, I’m sorry but you are late and no land is left to be given unto you as a home.  Where have you been?”  The group replied to God that they had been feasting and toasting God’s good name and his benevolence and, according to their traditions, could not stop the feast in order to attend his meeting.  They apologised profusely but re-iterated that they were late because their particular form of worship had deterred them from arriving on time.  So the Lord spoke to this group of people and said, “You are a genuine and pious people who deserve a good homeland, as such, I will give unto you the place on Earth I had reserved for myself: Georgia.

10th century AD (approx) ruins overlooking Rioni River 
from Bagrati Cathedral in Kutaisi, Georgia
(Author's collection. Copyright 2020)

    God’s reservation of Georgia as his own refuge could be an acceptable reason for us to believe in the incredible mineral wealth of the region and through time, this could have manifested itself in the great wealth of the empire of Colchis.  This empire on the eastern end of the Black Sea in today’s Georgia was the target of Jason and his boatload of adventuring heroes.

Colchian anthropomorphic figures in main sqaure fountain. Kutasisi, Georgia
(Author's collection. Copyright 2020)

Preparation Never Ends

For the last week, I've been studying a new topic and it has only gotten larger as I study harder.  Bear with me - I'll get there.

Feats of Engineering or Imposition of Will?

  Flying over the Rhine River last week I was struck by its size.  It is truly a massive obstacle, one that slowed the Allied advance into Germany only 70 years ago, despite their modern technology.  They were forced to be creative in their river-crossing techniques and even had to resort to boat crossings in some places.  

    Caesar writes that in 55 BC boat crossings were beneath him, so he had his field engineers build a forty foot wide wooden bridge across  the Rhine in ten days - including the time to fell the trees!  Scholars believe this crossing to have been accomplished somewhere between Andernach and Coblenz where, today, the river is between 250 and 300 metres wide.

Author's image of a drawing from Caesar I Gallic War, Loeb Classical Library, 1917.

     

    The Roman engineers devised a method of re-enforcing the supporting timbers using the strength of the river’s current while topping it with a paved road as well as building defences upstream to deter and defend from waterborne attacks.  Caesar doesn’t mention any attacks from the Suebi Tribe - whom he invaded Germania to subdue.  In fact, Caesar never engaged them in combat.  He conducted punitive raids against their villages and signed treaties with their enemies: demonstrating that the Rhine was not Rome’s northern border.  So after 18 days in Germania, Caesar decides his goals have been met, whence, he crosses his bridge back into Gaul and destroys it behind him.  

    It is this willingness to do the impossible which made Rome great.  Whether involved in 360 degree siege/counter-siege warfare - as was the case at Alesia - or imposing their will on rebellious natives; Roman technology, accompanied by Roman courage built the world’s largest empire to date.

    Looking at today’s bureaucracy riddled command structures one must wonder what an unencumbered will, like Caesar’s, might impose on a less committed foe.

Time and Patience: the Most Powerful Warriors. Conclusion

    Through all these examples we see that sky watching played a large part in the daily life of Ancestral Puebloans.  The only question is, why? Why was so much effort put into building these great houses with so much care and to such exacting standards?  Why were tens of thousands of trees brought from as far away as 100 kilometres (62 miles) without the aid of animals or the wheel?  Why does it seem the mid-twelfth century was a dividing line in Chacoan culture?  Remember, it was prior to 1150 that the south/southeast (S/SE) orientation was predominant in local architecture and after that cardinal alignment took precedence.  During this same fluorescence period calendrical stations seem to have become very important but they were typically located on sites important to their ancestors.  If that weren’t enough, it seems Chaco Canyon itself may have been occupied due to its alignment with the 19 year greater lunar standstill through its southern mesa topography.  

Tower kivas (gateways to new worlds) in Kin Kletso Great House (Author's collection, copyright 2019)

    This demonstrates the great value Ancestral Puebloans placed on commemorating the cycles of the sun and moon.  Chacoans built the azimuths of sun/moon rise and set, its mid-points and extremes into their architecture on micro and macro scales.  Over the centuries this reverence for time became heirophany and, therefore, impossible to ignore but not impossible to walk away from.

Clusters of kivas inside Pueblo Bonito (Author's collection, copyright 2019)

    All these deliberate activities help to integrate the canyon into a meaningful unification of heaven and earth - but this only brings us back to why.  Why go to all this trouble?  We can see the organised and predictable nature of  Chacoan worship and how it lent itself to creating large festival opportunities: most likely the backbone of a vibrant economy.  This economic well-being was probably based on the commerce created by the well planned arrival of pilgrims attracted to these rituals.  These markets and fairs would have been large enough to allow the Chacoan system to become a clearing house for not only a variety of goods, both foreign and domestic, but also ideas and ideologies, both political and social; all of which would have helped shape the Chacoan world.  This well-organised system would have created political stability for the Chacoan elite and so it was imperative that they remain relevant to their population in order to stay in power.  Its not hard to see that the introduction of new traditions and the physical changes associated with them may have been one manifestation of this quest for relevancy that we can see today.  

Time and Patience: the Most Powerful Warriors. Part Six

    Our quest for calendrical stations continues on the western end of Chaco Canyon.  Peñasco Blanco was rumoured to have a calendrical station marked by standing stones (according to Cosmo Mindellef in 1891) but the area can’t be found today.  Even further west, approximately five kilometres, is another great house: Casa del Rio.  This relatively small house (21-27 rooms), strangely, has produced the largest refuse pile of any other Chaco Canyon house.  It is along the Great West Road and has signs across the site of increased pedestrian traffic which may indicate avenues of ritual procession.  Additionally, the amount of refuse being dumped here decreased in/around 1100AD - just when a resurgence of building in Chaco Canyon proper began.  This all may suggest that Casa del Rio was a very important early festival site.  Visually, from Casa del Rio the Winter Solstice sun would have risen over a shrine on West Mesa named 29SJ 1088 - which sits on the highest feature on the southeastern horizon from Casa del Rio.  Additionally, use of selenite reflectors or fires would allow for instantaneous notification over the eight plus kilometres distance into downtown Chaco(Signal Towers, another topic for another entry).  

    The last category has to do with the larger application of Chaco Canyon itself as an observatory.  Recent data concerning this was uncovered by Anna Sofaer, Robert Weiner and William Stone and published in 2016 in The Science of Time 2016, entitled, Inter-Site Alignments of Prehistoric Shrines in Chaco Canyon to the Major Lunar Standstill.  

Satellite imagery showing location/inter-relationship of Chacoan shrines relative to the major Lunar standstill (taken from Inter-Site Alignments of Prehistoric Shrines in Chaco Canyon to the Major Lunar Standstill, 2016)

This paper outlines the discovery of numerous masonry shrines spanning the distance of five to 15 kilometres which are aligned to the major lunar standstill.  This hypothesis is re-enforced by Geographic Information System (GIS) analysis of the spatial distribution of these sites and includes precise geodetic coordinates determined by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geodetic Survey.  This data clearly shows these shrines and their inter-relationships along azimuths to the rising and setting moon at its major standstill. 

Azimuths between Chacoan shrines in previous image ((taken from Inter-Site Alignments of Prehistoric Shrines in Chaco Canyon to the Major Lunar Standstill, 2016)

    Overall, the evidence for calendrical stations in Chaco Canyon is overwhelming.  It is for us to try to decipher what they mean and what their role was in Chacoan culture.  It would seem that Chacoans did their best to improve calendrical precision by increasing vigilance in broader patterns across the ground while improving the speed of reporting to the central authorities.  With this in mind, we should ascertain that calendrical reporting was of paramount importance in the canyon.  Whether this was simply for projecting best corn and bean planting dates or used as a force multiplier in their quest for regional economic dominance may never be known.

Time and Patience: The Most Powerful Warriors. Part Five

    The calendrical station is our last subject concerning archaeoastronomy in Chaco Canyon.  This most recent subject is one of great controversy due to the willingness (seemingly) of some investigators to use irrelevant information in a relevant manner in order to aggrandise the Chacoan culture (alla Keynesian economics).  There is no need for that as Chacoan astronomy and its resultant culture are mind-boggling.  We will stick to facts alone in this article.

    Chacoans watched the sky, day and night.  Ethnographic proof is evident in every Pueblo tribe extant today and some are more ardent watchers than others but every tribe has astronomers.  This overwhelming commonality speaks volumes about the importance of the sky to Ancestral Puebloans.  

Super nova pictograph below Penasco Blanco.  Thought to be from an event in 1054 when an imploding star was visible during the day.
(Author's collection. copyright 2019)

Calendrical stations, simply put, are specific locations from which to track celestial activity across the sky.  Besides being a nice, relaxing pastime, this activity is the key to successfully charting solar activity as it relates to the time of year and - in a larger sense - when to conduct certain activities, like the planting of crops.  Properly conducted, this activity also allowed the Chacoan hierarchy to prepare the masses for upcoming festivals.  This would allow pilgrims travelling from satellite regions to be on time as well as markets to be prepared for the pending events: markets which strengthened the economy of the Chacoan World and re-inforced the validity of its ruling class.

    In Chaco Canyon there are several examples of calendrical stations and they are all linked to the fluorescence period.  In large part, these sites are associated with winter solstice prediction and are located near the Wijiji and Kin Kletso Great Houses as well Headquaters Site A (a backfilled site near Una Vida Great House).

   The original construction of Kin Kletso was completed by 1130AD (approx) and contains both anticipatory and confirmatory markers of the Winter Solstice.  Aligning the southern wall of Kin Kletso with the base of the cliff to the southeast gives a 16 - 17 day anticipation of the solar event and sighting the northern wall against the same cliff base indicates the day of the solstice itself.  Additionally, a large boulder near the north wall may have been the original calendrical station prior to construction.

    

Kin Kletso looking SW from canyon rim.  Previous calendrical station is the large rock (on canyon floor) in upper right picture in line with structure's north wall (Author's collection.  Copyright 2019)

    In the eastern end of Chaco Canyon is another great house: Wijiji.  This location was apparently built in one effort in 1110AD (approx) and was never occupied, lending credence to the supposition that it was created specifically as a calendrical station and fuelling speculation that this was an effort to revitalise a faltering religio-economy.  This great house exhibits signs of both anticipatory and confirmatory  stations in its architecture as well as in the surrounding terrain.  When standing at the northwest corner of the structure looking southeast, there is an apparent notch on the distant horizon.  16-17 days prior to the Winter Solstice sees the sun rising from just North (left) of this notch and the sun rises just to the South (right) of this notch on the solstice itself.  It is the preponderance of these visual astronomy references in Late-Bonito Phases great houses that is most interesting.  This site at Wijiji is impressive due to the number of calendrical stations in its vicinity.  To the East of Wijiji, there are boulders at three different locations that, coupled with a horizon foresight, act as calendrical stations for Winter Solstice, both equinoxes and Summer Solstice.  There is evidence that these sites were used subsequently by Pueblo tribes as well.

Time and Patience: the Most Powerful Warriors. Part Four

Another manifestation of Archaeoastronomy extant in Chaco Canyon is Cardinal       alignments.  North-South and East-West building orientations predominated during the flouresence period in the canyon (1000-1175 AD circa) and were so important by that stage that, in the case of Pueblo Bonito, an existing great house was expanded upon and re-oriented from the original S/SE floorpan to North-South alignment.

(Imagery courtesy of Google Earth)

    As opposed to the ancestral veneration as the basis for the S/SE orientation, I have found no clear ethnographic reasons for the cardinal alignment.  In fact, our concept of the cardinal directions would not have existed for the Chacoans; their understanding of the world was not like ours.  Perhaps the emerging reliance upon North-South alignments during the fluorescence stemmed from Chacoan understanding of the rotation of the cosmos through direct observation.  Long term observation of their revolving skies may have brought them to the conclusion that the cosmos rotates from a single point on either end of their world (North-South).  Their daily observation of the sun’s patterns - either through direct monitoring, horizon calendars or employment of a gnomonic device (see part two) - would have given them a good understanding of what we call East-West and, together, these concepts could have been employed to revitalise a flagging theocratic civilisation based upon this new cosmic concept.  

    These rumination aside, we are left with only the facts. The reasons for these orientations are not clear, there appears to be no utilitarian reason for the cardinal alignment (much less its sudden importance) and there are no topographical restrictions that would require construction to adhere so closely to these alignments.  The collection of solar heating may have been a factor in general south facing construction but there is nothing extant to insinuate such strict adherence to a cardinal azimuth.  Recent archaeological activity in Chaco Canyon suggests that even at the height of its fluorescence, Chaco Canyon had a rather small population that population surged at intermittent periods.  This suggests a religious employment of the site and would explain why the area was so well organised and such care was taken in its large-scale construction.  In this scenario (religious centre) the attention to detail would make sense if these great houses were built as physical manifestations of Ancestral Puebloan’s cosmic concept.  If this idea were true, even the act of building the great houses would have become an act of faith or contrition.  An idea like that may be reason enough for individuals without knowledge of the wheel and no beasts of burden construct an intricate road system over which to transport tens of thousands of trees from distances of up to 80km for use in construction of these houses.

    The question is what happened to cause a change in construction management? During this fluorescence period - when a surge in great house construction took place - almost every building exhibits signs of cardinal point orientation and there are several cases of inter-site alignment along the cardinal points as well, which indicates an even greater level of civil engineering on behalf of the Chacoans.  The construction of several buildings within Chaco between 1040 and 1160 AD (finish dates) demonstrate a clear premeditation on behalf of the Chacoan leadership to inter-relate their construction developments with regards to their cosmic concept.  Pueblo Alto, New Alto, Tsin Kletsin and Casa Rinconada are all flourecence era construction that are not only built with respect to the N-S alignment but are also aligned to each other despite their positions being separated by almost five kilometres.   Pueblo Alto, finished in ~1040AD, with an internal alignment of 178.9º is directly North of Tsin Kletsin.  Tsin Kletsin, finished in ~1115AD and due South of Pueblo Alto - constructed with an internal alignment of 178.7º.  Interestingly, these two great houses are outside of the canyon proper, on the mesas North and South of the canyon and in sight of each other; leading to conspiracy theories concerning warning stations and internal strife.  New Alto is a smaller great house within sight of, and directly to the West of Pueblo Alto.  This New Alto great house was constructed in approximately 1130AD and is directly North (and also within sight of) Casa Rinconada.  Casa Rinconada is located in Chaco Canyon (away from other great houses) and was constructed in ~1060AD and has an internal alignment of 180.1º.

    Through all of this the enigma remains (or deepens) because as cardinal alignment began to supersede S/SE orientation as the predominant expression of archaeoastronomy in Chaco Canyon, we see that same S/SE orientation become predominant in the Totah Region of the Chacoan world.  This region was at the northern end of the Great North Road and the destination for many during the initial abandonment of Chaco Canyon.  This simultaneous shift seems to indicate a rift in cosmic concepts.  Perhaps those that believed in the old ways moved North and built Aztec and Salmon Great houses along with their associated outliers while the “new” philosophy of cardinal alignment took over in the Chaco core.  

The New Year

We are off to a Big Bang this season.  Tune in next week for more on time itself...