Table of Contents
Thomas Wayne Riley’s podcast answers the Ancestral Pueblo leaving with spirals and a move south, not a disappearance. A Mexico City grave of about ten mixed ages, laid as a spiral long before the Aztec capital, opens the case. Spiral carvings at Plazuelas and at Las Labradas, near Stephen Lekson’s Chaco meridian, look related but not identical, and he refuses to make one people the builder of every site. Ideas and migrants, he says, traveled constantly. Pit houses, crops, cacao, and thin pottery came north. Turquoise went south. By about 1300 that exchange ran mostly southward. Drought and a conflict he calls a civil war split communities toward Hopi and Zuni country or down the meridian to Paquime and the Sierra Madre. Spanish reports of farmers, ballcourts, and marked human bone are his late echoes. An email from Lekson puts the line’s far end near Culiacan. Riley’s heirs are Hopi, other Pueblos, and peoples of northwest Mexico.
Key points
- Riley opens with a spiral burial in Mexico City and with spiral rock art far south of the Four Corners.
- He treats the Chaco meridian as a corridor of influence, not as proof that one group built every site on it.
- Goods and ideas, in his telling, moved both ways until about 1300, when the flow turned mostly south.
- Drought and a conflict he calls a civil war send some people toward Hopi country and others toward Paquime.
- Spanish era towns in the Sierra Madre, including reports of processed human bone, are his candidates for later echoes.
- He reads an email from Stephen Lekson that puts the meridian’s southern end near Culiacan.
Short quotes
around 10 individuals were arranged into the shape of a spiral
Thomas Wayne Riley, Spiral migration and the Anasazi
He begins with a Mexico City grave laid out as a spiral. Watch at 1:01
you can't understand what's happening in the American southwest without understanding what's happening in the areas to the south
Thomas Wayne Riley, Spiral migration and the Anasazi
His thesis is that the Southwest only makes sense together with Mexico. Watch at 22:23
the great drought definitely helped fuel further migration
Thomas Wayne Riley, Spiral migration and the Anasazi
He treats drought as a push that kept people moving. Watch at 54:09
the Americas are really just one big land of migration
Thomas Wayne Riley, Spiral migration and the Anasazi
He frames the continents as a single field of movement. Watch at 2:18:02
modern researchers have discovered both pot polishing and the fleshing marks on human bones
Thomas Wayne Riley, Spiral migration and the Anasazi
He cites bone marks from northwest Mexico as a late echo of the same history. Watch at 2:42:33
Video by Thomas Wayne Riley. Watch on YouTube.