Chaco Canyon, And The Problem Of Water

Here is an excellent blog post that explores the question of water use during ancient times at Chaco Canyon. The author makes the important point that the cultural flowering there was achieved under today's adverse water conditions - a real triumph of ancient civilization!:

Looking at the remains of the great houses in the canyon today, it’s hardly a surprise that many of the most common questions visitors ask are about water. Where did they get it? How did they store it? Was it wetter then than it is now?

The answer to the last question is no, which comes as a considerable surprise to many visitors. Some of them even seem very skeptical, like I’m trying to trick them. It defies common sense to think that anything like what we see at Chaco could have arisen in an environment as dry as what we see today. And, indeed, many early archaeologists who worked on Chaco assumed that the climate must have been more favorable, and there has been a considerable amount of research into this topic over the past few decades, much of it using the precision available through tree-ring studies to great effect.

Rather surprisingly, what that research has shown is that the climate has not changed significantly in at least the past several thousand years. There were variations in the amount of precipitation on the order of decades, but always within the range seen in modern records.