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Archaeology

Sources of Chaco wood

Tree rings can pinpoint the source of wood as well as how old it is. This method has now been used to identify the sources of timber used by the Native Americans who constructed the pre-Columbian 'great houses' of Chaco Canyon.

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Figure 1: Great houses.

A, Michael Runkel/SuperStock/Corbis; B, Education Images/UIG via Getty

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Correspondence to Jared Diamond.

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Diamond, J. Sources of Chaco wood. Nature 529, 31–33 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature16864

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  1. In the remodeling of our home, my wife and I &#8212 at that time not young &#8212 raised 4 m. long timbers weighing well over 100 kg to a height of over 3 m. We did this by the simple technique of building scaffolding with horizontal crossbars on the ends at 1. m. spacing. Then we would lift the end of the timber onto the cross piece, slide it until it was just balanced on that crosspiece, and then gingerly slide it across to the next higher crosspiece at the opposite end. Thus at most we had to support only a fraction of the total weight for a short period of time.

    The Chaco Canyon people presumably lashed up scaffolding, and could have used the same technique to raise their timbers, given four strong men. They would not have had to go 6 stories high, since the scaffolding could be moved to the floor of the next story, and incrementally moved up one story at a time.

    As to the lack of scratches, as any small time logger knows, you drag a heavy timber by raising one end, and thus scratch only a short portion of the opposite end. And logs are moved into position with some excess length, presumably they trimmed off the damaged end when in position.

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