Misunderstanding The Prehistoric Southwest: What Happened At Chaco?

AScribe ^ | 2-17-2003

[wardaddy]

What would Jared Diamond say?

/sarc

[wardaddy]

What else do they have the Ostrich Syndrome about?

In this age of political correctness and you have to ask?

I can't watch anything anthropology oriented on TV without seeing thru the revisionist agenda easy...trust me...they hate saying Indians ate each other....they would rather be forced to admit God exists or eat sh*t sandwiches

Now find some more Europeans who dined on one another and they will be lining up for honorary doctorates, prizes, grants and TV shows..maybe even a movie option

[blam]

Everyone hates unPC Christy Turner:

Did cannibalism Kill Anasazi Civilization?

"But Turner contends that a "band of thugs" - Toltecs, for whom cannibalism was part of religious practice - made their way to Chaco Canyon from central Mexico. These invaders used cannibalism to overwhelm the unsuspecting Anasazi and terrorize the populace into submission over a period of 200 years."

[wardaddy]

I can only imagine:

Turner speculates that members of a Mexican warrior cult headed north, where they found that killing and eating a few desert-farming Anasazi terrorized everyone else into paying tribute and building monuments to the Mexicans' religion. Eventually, the culture built on cannibalism collapsed–how, Turner does not know–and the Anasazi deserted Chaco Canyon. Today's Pueblo people are Anasazi descendants. Food for thought. Man Corn–named after the Aztec word for a sacred meal of human meat–provoked a firestorm. Critics have charged him with everything from shoddy science to racism. He countered with a widely distributed manuscript–rejected by American Antiquity–denouncing them as "professionally reckless," "politically correct," and "rude."

Turner's proposal that ancient Mexicans invaded from the south has aroused the most derision. "The idea of a [Mexican] goon squad is ridiculous," says Kurt Dongoske, an archaeologist for the Hopi tribe. While remnants of trade with Mexico exist–pottery, copper bells, and macaw skeletons–there's little evidence of Mexicans' living in the area at the time. Turner's theory hangs on one skull found with notched teeth, a practice common in Mexico but rare in the Southwest. "Turner stepped beyond his level of expertise," sniffs Steven LeBlanc, director of collections at Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.

Some archaeologists and Indians accuse Turner of recklessly ignoring native beliefs. "One of the worst things you can do in Pueblo society is to eat flesh," says Andrew Darling, an archaeologist with the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona. "That's how you become a witch, and the penalty for witches is death." Suspected Pueblo witches were killed and their corpses ravaged to find the so-called evil heart. Darling believes those actions could leave the same bone signature as cannibalism. He says Turner's theory revives racist stereotypes of savage Indians.