Climate Chaos: Lessons on Survival From Our Ancestors by Brian Fagan & Nadia Durrani

Author:Brian Fagan & Nadia Durrani [Fagan, Brian & Durrani, Nadia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: political science, Public Policy, Environmental Policy, science, Earth Sciences, Meteorology & Climatology, Global Warming & Climate Change
ISBN: 9781541750876
Google: --UizgEACAAJ
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2021-11-15T23:45:22.752915+00:00

Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. Robertharding/Alamy Stock Photo.

But other factors were also at play in an increasingly complex, more politicized era when more emerging leaders became hungry for increased power and religious authority. By 1020 CE, Pueblo Bonito had potent spiritual associations. Building resumed after 1040. Within thirty years, Bonito had acquired a labyrinthine, indeed mesmerizing, complexity. It had started as a residential settlement but then became a great house, a ceremonial building with powerful ritual and political associations and plenty of storage space but few permanent inhabitants, though visitors crowded it at the solstices and other major events.

Chaco’s farmers relied on a variety of water-management systems to nourish their crops. They cultivated the wash’s floodplain and slope washes from the cliffs and relied on floodwater cultivation when there was enough rainfall. A battery of scientific methods, including airborne LiDAR survey, excavation into long-filled canals, sediment coring, and study of water sources using strontium isotopes, tell us that Chaco farmers used a wide variety of water sources obtained by channeling runoff.8 Complex systems of artificial channels and earthen canals formed part of a multifaceted irrigation system tailored to local conditions. Rapidly changing rainfall patterns and the unpredictable environment required nimble social responses to sudden abundances as well as to water scarcities through deployment of labor from the great houses and small settlements. Powerful ritual associations tied to the elite occupants of the great houses underscored both farming and water management. Descent through the female line, confirmed by DNA studies of burials at Pueblo Bonito, was a vital factor in the success of Chaco agriculture, for women had powerful voices in water management, as their ritual activities were tied to both fertility and to water.9 Kinship, inheritance, and conservation of precious water supplies were all-important in a culture where women were powerful members of society and often ritual leaders. Pueblo Bonito’s leadership was hereditary, religious, and powerful. The cultural order revolved around impermanent realities, such as unpredictable water supplies, and the sky, with its light and dark objects that showed up against the surrounding terrain.

Such centralization of Chaco leadership may have sustained a social system that constantly faced unpredictable environmental conditions and climate change. But it was lightly incised into the landscape. Social controls that ensured the monitoring of soils and changing water supplies, along with the deployment of labor at short notice, were essential elements in the risk management that lay behind long-term survival.

In the final analysis, Chaco society succeeded due not so much to its powerful leaders but to the flexible autonomy of the household, an autonomy guided by the belief that most labor was ultimately for the common good. No one could be self-sufficient in an arid environment like the San Juan basin, which is one major reason why elaborate ceremonial observances held society together. The observation of solstices and other major ceremonial events commemorating important moments in the agricultural year brought people together in an environment where kin ties and obligations extended far beyond the boundaries of the canyon.

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