Our ancestors were amazing people who navigated the entire continent through great river waterways like the Mississippi. When we say things like "We as Mexican/Mexican American people didn't cross the border, but rather it crossed us," the archaeological evidence suggests as much.
Even if we're not always taught this, know, or embrace it, today's United States is inescapably our ancestral homeland. There's ultimately nowhere "to go back to"—as we are often callously told by those that construct us as "foreigners," at best, and "invaders," at worst.
To be sure, the presence of a militarized border that is itself an artifact of a modern construction called the "nation state" belies this fact of our prior occupancy of these ancestral homelands. From this view, the truth is that as long as we emanate from this continent, we are always in our home—our ancestral homelands. Our ancestors never left the continent.
Palabra!
Angela Valenzuela
c/s
Ancient N. America connected to Mexico
Chaco, Cahokia were outliers of great empire, archaeologist says
Enlargephoto
The Associated Press
The ancient Mesoamerican city Cahokia, near
St. Louis, was larger than most cities in Europe 1,000 years ago.
Archaeologist Steve Leckson gave a presentation in Cortez last week that
focused on Cahokia and Chaco’s connections to the ancient cities of
Mexico and South America.
Modern borders have skewed how ancient civilizations are interpreted, says Steve Leckson, a University of Colorado archaeologist.
Enlargephoto
File photo
The people of ancient Chaco, in New Mexico, traded
for chocolate and macaws from southern Mexico and Central America.
Archaeologists are discovering more evidence that Chaco was linked to
civilizations far to the south.
Great North American civilizations
from 1,000 years ago, including Chaco and Cahokia near St. Louis, were
outliers of a vast Mesoamerican empire in southern Mexico.
“Forget
the international border, it was all one world,” he said during a
presentation at the Sunflower Theatre in Cortez. “After the U.S.-Mexican
war in 1848, the attitude here was that these were our ruins with no
connection to the south. That is absurd.”
North
American and Mesoamericans shared culture and goods in the
postclassical era, which began about 570 AD. The period had explosive
population growth and is known for exploration and long-distance trade
between city-states.
Cahokia is often overlooked.
Thriving
about the same time as Chaco, in 1,000 A.D., Cahokia was the largest
North American city, with 30,000 residents. All that’s left are giant
mounds that were once temples and pyramids.
“Cahokia
was larger than most cities of Europe; it was bigger than London,”
Leckson said. “It had the biggest pyramid north of Teotihuacan,” the
Aztec ruins north of Mexico City.
Chaco
and Cahokia were on the edge of a larger civilization, and leaders
traveled and brought back high-end goods to impress commoners, he said.
Chaco nobles wore blankets of macaw feathers and “knocked back chocolate” products originating 1,500 miles away.
“High-end
goods like cotton and perishables is what we should be looking for,” he
said. “It tells the tale more than things like pottery that
archaeologists are more comfortable with.”
Chemical
evidence in vessels of Chaco have revealed cocoa residue. It is also
likely Chaco traded in the Mississippi Valley for Black Drink, a highly
caffeinated energy drink made from holly.
“Everyone in this room who took Archaeology 101 was taught there were no city-states north of Mexico, and that is not true.”
When exploring Chaco or Cahokia, Bandelier or Mesa Verde, think about Mesoamerica, said Leckson. Forget the border with Mexico.
“I
would say the way to know about Chaco is to know about postclassic
Mesoamerica, because that is what it is, plus a lot of other things,” he
said. “The people of Chaco were trying to live like Mesoamerican
lords.”
Leckson’s talk was part of
the Four Corners Lecture Series. On Oct. 13 at 7 p.m. at the Anasazi
Heritage Center in Dolores, Dan Simplicio will give a Zuni tribe
perspective on the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act.
Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro, Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca (Spanish pronunciation: 1485 – December 2, 1547) was a Spanish Conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of mainland Mexico under the rule of the King of Castile in the early 16th century. Cortés was part of the generation of Spanish colonizers who began the first phase of the Spanish colonization of the Americas. I liked your blog, Take the time to visit the me and say that the change in design and meniu?
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