Clue #3 – Fajada Butte

Fajada Butte is a striking central rock formation located in the middle of Chaco Canyon. It rises from the flat valley floor as a towering monolith.

In 1977 an artist, Ana Sofaer, working with a rock art research group climbed up this butte and noticed an unusual rock carving (a petroglyph). This petroglyph is a pair of spirals carved into a sandstone rock face that is nearly hidden from view by three massive, vertical stone slabs.

Previous scientists had seen the spirals, but the artist noticed something they had not. She observed that the spaces between the vertical slabs of stone cast daggers of sunlight across the spiral. She came back to visit the site many times with fellow researchers, and they discovered that on the Summer Solstice, the sun’s dagger of light is was positioned exactly in the center of the spiral at mid day.

When they returned at the Winter Solstice, there were two daggers of light, each on an outer edge of the spiral, to the left and right, at high noon.

And when she visited on the Equinox, the daggers bisected one spiral each – one in the upper left small spiral, and one on the main, larger spiral on the right.

This discovery became one of the most heralded realizations in Anasazi studies. It not only confirmed that this natural rock formation, the sunlight, and the human carved spiral were an intentional combination, but that they worked together to create a solar clock. This solar clock tells us that the Anasazi had a complete understanding of solar time and had the knowledge of an annual calendar that they passed from generation to generation. They did not live following the seasons as their nomadic ancestors had. They could PREDICT the seasons in advance with precision. This meant that they could prepare ahead for changes in weather, and also know when was best to plant their crops, to make journeys to distant lands, or to hold their ceremonies, festivals or meetings, based on a clock, not randomly through out the year.

In fact, two more amazing discoveries have since been made. First, the majority of the buildings built in Chaco Canyon, including Pueblo Bonito, are all aligned with a solar or lunar axis, based on positions that have a relationship to cosmological events. This means that nearly all of the buildings there were plotted out on the ground by astronomer-priests before the first stones were laid.

It has also been discovered that there is a network of signal stations on the mesa tops around Chaco Canyon. Word from the shaman-priest-astronomers on Fajada Butte would then have spread to all of the kivas through out the canyon, to the guests at Pueblo Bonito, to the priests who arranged the kiva ceremonies, in a very short time, allowing them to all know with in less than an hour when the exact point of the solstices and equinox, and other related events, had arrived.

This combination of having a solar clock and a signal system may have been a very important part of the ceremonies that drew people to this Canyon from all over the Anasazi world. Perhaps they congregated there a week in advance if an approaching important annual date so they could all be together to celebrate a central religious observance. In some tribes, this observance was extremely important at Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year with the least sunlight. That night would have been a time of intense spiritual focus, praying that the Sun would reverse its path away from their lands, and return again to bring the warmth of spring and summer, and the light needed to grow their crops.