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and I did.
It's a place that gets to you.
We
know a good deal about the Chaco Anasazi culture now, thanks to the
fine work of many Southwestern archeologists. The Chaco Canyon elites
solidified their status and authority by solving a crisis throughout
the San Juan Basin in the late 900s. Or, closer to the truth, they
provided a partial solution and the climate did the rest. The problem
they addressed grew out of the relationship between population growth
and the resultant scarcity of resources, worsening over a long period
of time.
From
about 300-900 CE, the number of settlements in the region grew tenfold.
Up until about 700, the small villages hugged mesas or mountains, so
that when the intermittent rains faltered and crops failed, people
could resort to hunting and foraging. They had a workable back-up
system. But, after the population grew past a critical point, people
began to settle on any land with rich soil and access to water, and so
the back-up system fell away. On top of that, between 900-1100 the
number of settlements increased tenfold again. The back-up system was
not only gone; it was annihilated.
right
solution to them, and it was surely backed up by their ideology and
rituals. But, in the face of the more complex circumstances they now
faced, it was a stereotyped, irrelevant solution. When a subsequent
drought hit in 1130, their system fell apart and a generation of war
and chaos ensued. (See the chapter "Power, Complexity, and Failure," in
David E. Stuart's book, Pueblo Peoples on the Pajarito Plateau).
I
can't help thinking there's a similarity between the kind of solutions
the Chaco elites churned out in response to their massive crisis and
the way our own elites have thus far responded to climate change.
First, both the Chacoan and American honchos chose to ignore the actual
dimensions of the problem they each faced, despite plenty of evidence
on the ground. Second, their respective problems threatened their
economic well being as well as their status within their respective
systems. Third, both the Chacoan and American elites were only willing
to implement off-base solutions that their respective ideologies told
them were acceptable.
I
guess we shouldn't be surprised. For the Chacoan elites, a workable
solution would have meant dissolving their society altogether and
telling their people to migrate elsewhere, namely the uplands
surrounding the San Juan Basin, where they had a better chance of
finding rain. And, for our own elites, a workable solution means
accepting that rapid reductions in CO2 emissions will change the way
the economic system functions, especially its relationship to natural
resources, and that their own place in the system, especially for those
on Wall Street, will change as well.
What's different is that our own elites may still have some time to forestall a disaster.
But I'm not betting on their acumen.
I
can't help thinking there's a similarity between the kind of solutions
the Chaco elites churned out in response to their massive crisis and
the way our own elites have thus far responded to climate change.
Note
-1 quoted from James Hansen et al's thoughtful article, "The Case for
Young People and Nature: A Path to a Healthy, Natural, Prosperous
Future," pp. 2,17, as found on Hansen's website,
When
the rains failed in the late 900s, after the villages ran through all
the corn they had stored, there was widespread malnutrition and
violence broke out. The Chaco Anasazi took the lead by building roads
and establishing a network of great-houses across the San Juan Basin,
each of which contained multitudinous storage rooms—thereby setting up
a trade system that included thousands of farmsteads across the Basin.
Under this system, if a village's crops failed on a given year, there
was a back-up supply. Now there was a true growth economy, based on
trade, regulated by the Chaco elites, which allowed the population to
continue to exponentially grow. Not unlike our own growth economy.
The
Chaco elites also seem to have administered a highly structured system
of religious rituals, performed in kivas at the great-houses, including
those in Chaco Canyon. The ritual system and economic system reinforced
each other, in much the same way conservative churches today avidly
support the ideology of free market capitalism.
While
the trade system did help re-establish stability, the truth is that the
Chaco elites lucked out, because circa 1000 CE the rains stabilized
for another ninety years. Not surprisingly, their system reached its
peak of power and influence during this time.
Beginning
in the late 1000s, however, the bills for exponential growth came due.
Good fields that had been farmed for corn for generations began to lose
their fertility. Meanwhile, people increasingly turned to farming
marginal lands as the population continued to grow. Life became a
fearful struggle for many. Then a drought hit in 1090. The elites
responded by building more roads and great-houses, as they had done a
century before. It must have seemed like the
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