New Mexico L.O.W.F.I

Posts Tagged ‘Anasazi’

New Mexico has made it onto another list that it doesn’t want to be on. This time it’s the Chaco Canyon region and it’s on the National Trust for Historic Preservation annual list of endangered historic places.

It’s not the park itself that is endangered. It’s the vast area around it, with hundreds of archeological sites and ancient roadways.

The National Trust advisor Theresa Pasquale said the threat comes from increased drilling for oil and natural gas.

“The development of those resources cannot come at the cost of destroying such a rich and diverse heritage,” Pasquale said.

Oil and gas industry leaders have argued for years that more limitations and restrictions hurt the industry and the economy, and increase energy costs.

“Once an archeological site is damaged or destroyed there is no restoring it the way it was,” said Barbara Burrell, a visitor at the Chaco Culture National Historic Park.

Park visitor, Albert Lowenstein, said today’s society is very materialistic and very shortsighted.

“I don’t know that we always recognize what we have while we have it until it’s gone,” Lowenstein stated.

Other historic places on this year’s endangered list include a Confederate fort in Alabama, jazz musician John Coltrane’s house on Long Island, and a huge 19th century Pillsbury flour mill in Minneapolis.

5/22/11, Sunday
2:00pm — 4:00pm
The Best of New Mexico’s Petroglyphs
Lecture sponsored by the Friends of Coronado State Monument

Mr. Barron “Bear” Haley is a retired community college instructor of Biology, Marine Biology and Botany. After his retirement 10 years ago, he brought his lifelong avocation as a photographer to the study of petroglyphs and the Native American rock art images of New Mexico. Mr. Haley is an award winning member of several rock-art associations including the American Rock Art Research Association. He is also a recorder for the Bureau of Land Management and as such he has been up close and personal with rock art images as he photographs, logs and graphs images that remain as an 8000 year old record of the prehistoric peoples of Las Cruces up through the Rio Grande Gorge. The self-proclaimed “rock-art bum” will present a slide show of rock art images he has studied, many of which are not accessible to the general public, either because they are considered sacred and may be on Native American lands or on undeveloped areas. These signs and symbols speak to us of an ancient past that continues to have significant meaning for current native inhabitants. Please join us for what is sure to be a fascinating and speculative look into the “face-book” of the past. Lecture $5/adult, free to Members of the Friends of Coronado State Monument. Event will be held at The DeLavy House (Sandoval County Historical Society), 161 Edmond Rd, Bernalillo, NM. Located off Rte 550, 1.7 miles west of I-25, Exit 242 (Just west of Coronado State Monument; turn north on the gravel road between the Phillips 66 station and the new IHOP restaurant). For info: 505-867-5351, www.nmmonuments.org, http://home.comcast.net/~friendsofcsm

Aug. 9, 1899: “With the trophies of his summer’s explorations spread out about him, Dr. Cole has turned his parlor into an anthropological museum. One table is covered with water jugs and incense pipes, the sofa hidden under stone axes, mortars, pestles, weaving shuttles and pottery; another table is decked with a row of grinning skulls and huge crossbones; beneath it comfortably repose all the parts of a skeleton, from the toe bones to the shoulder blades, waiting to be wired together, and strewn about are bows and arrows, baskets, jugs of twisted twigs made water-tight by pitch; modern Indian pottery, photographs by the score, and a hundred-pound stump of petrified wood. The skulls are a particularly valued possession.”

The Rev. George L. Cole of Los Angeles tells amazing stories of a weird, ancient culture that flourished in the cliffs of New Mexico. A race of people 7 feet tall (this grew to 8 feet in later stories) with curious teeth who worshiped the sun and considered the turkey to be a sacred animal. They also played flutes made of pelican bones, Cole said. (Pelicans in New Mexico, eh? I wonder how that happened)

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I watched the Dulce Base episode of UFO Hunters earlier.

People out there can believe there is a base under Archuleta Mesa or not, but it can’t be denied that some really weird stuff goes on around Dulce and in the 4 corners area in general.

UFO sightings, cattle mutilations, skinwalkers and other fortean occurrences seem to happen far more often than in other areas.  I don’t think it is coincidence that Mesa Verde and many other ancient ruins are also in that area.  Right in the town of Aztec, where a UFO crash is said to have taken place, are ancient native American ruins that are at least 800 years old.  Really there is a huge concentration of ancient ruins in that area.

I am not going to pretend to know why the fortean and ancient ruins are connected, but I am sure that they are.