Some Guessing About Chaco

 

All the Chaco material I have been viewing has really got me guessing and dreaming.  I try to put myself into the world of these people, by applying what I understand about ground level human nature. I find it interesting to consider.

I think Dr. Lekson is probably mostly right.  

Being up here in the land of Potlatch, I naturally wondered if there was some form of conspicuous consumption going on in a different form. I found the number of storage rooms suggestive. Who needs all those storage rooms for their own use? Or were they some sort of merchants?

I try to imagine going through the motions of living in a situation like the canyon.  What would it take to get by? Did they really live on corn? Corn is not enough. Their health would deteriorate.  Beans were not mentioned. Did they have access to meat? Lekson says the noble class did.

I wondered about the high-caffeine herbal drink he mentioned that made you "see things." I began to try to imagine a form of culture that had a strong strain of drug use built in.  What would that look like? 

I believe that people have the same needs no matter when or where, in a very basic way. So, the Chaco people can't have been impossibly exotic. Parrot feathers notwithstanding.

Any thoughts?