Re: The joy of actual numbers, was Democracy

On Thu, 31 Oct 2024 09:16:32 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

The culture is gone. The same can be said for the Mound Builders in the
eastern US. You might say civilization was alive and well in
contemporary Europe, but it was vanishing in the Americas about a
millennium ago.
 

Yes. The usual explanation is climate change.
 
Horses are a sort of 4x4 I supposes.  So it was emissions from horses
asses what done it, presumably.

Can't blame the horses; they came with Cortes in 15 something. A Hohokam
site like Casa Grande was abandoned around 1450. It was a ruin by the time
Father Kino got there in 1694.

The explanation for that one is the irrigation ditches silted in and the
Gila changed course, as rivers will, making the site untenable. The
mysterious part is they didn't pack up and move to a more favorable
location. The culture apparently disappeared.

When I visited Chaco I talked to a Navajo (Dine) ranger. The Navajo
themselves were late arrivals and didn't have a clue. When he took the job
at Chaco his family was upset since they considered the site bad juju.

The east is the same. Some of the mounds had intrusive burials by later
cultures. They didn't know what had went before but figured the mounds
were an appropriate place to plant the dead.