The disappearance of the Ancient Puebloans, also known as the Anasazi, from Chaco Canyon in the 12th century is an enduring mystery that is still debated to this day, but a Colorado University paleoclimatologist believes he has solved part of the puzzle.
Located in New Mexico within the Four Corners region, Chaco Culture National Historic Park is one of the most stunning pre-Columbian sites in North America.
Great ruins mark the landscape, including the tallest buildings in North America until the 19th century when skyscrapers were born.
At its height, the Chaco Canyon settlement had a population of more than 2,000 people and seemed to prosper. But the Anasazi soon abandoned the civilization they worked so hard to build, leaving researchers with many questions, including why they left the area.
It turns out that question has multiple answers, but the prevailing answer is climate change, which resulted in not enough food to sustain the population.
When the settlement was first built, the climate was suitable for farming and trade routes extending up to 100 miles were established. Unfortunately, as we are experiencing today, the climate can have a drastic effect on civilization.
A series of droughts struck the Chaco Canyon region over the course of 300 years beginning in 1130, around the same time the Ancient Puebloan civilization began to decline.
Retired geochemist and paleoclimatologist Larry Benson, who is also the curator of the Colorado University Museum of Natural History, sought to find out if land in such conditions could sustain enough agriculture to feed the population.
“You have this place in the middle of the San Juan Basin, which is not very habitable,” Benson said.
Together with Ohio State University archaeologist Deanna Grimstead, Benson studied data on rainfall in the region along with flash flooding and discovered that even if the Anasazi tried to grow enough maize to feed everyone, their efforts would fail miserably.
“You can’t do any dryland farming there,” Benson said. “There’s just not enough rain.”
Indeed, and even when enough rain fell, flash flooding would wipe out the crop.
“If you’re lucky enough to have a spring flow that wets the ground ahead of planting, about three-quarters of the time, you’d get a summer flow that destroys your crops,” Benson said.
The Anasazi even failed to plant enough acreage to feed the entire population.
The team calculated that Chacoans could have, at most, farmed just 100 acres of the Chaco Canyon floor. Even if they farmed all of the surrounding side valleys—a monumental feat—they would still have only produced enough corn to feed just over 1,000 people.
The researchers also went one step further, assessing whether past Chaco residents could have supplemented this nutritional shortfall with wild game like deer and rabbits. They calculated that supplying the 185,000 pounds of protein needed by 2,300 people would have quickly cleared all small mammals from the area.
In short, there would have been a lot of hungry mouths in Chaco Canyon.
Benson and his team have reached two possible conclusions about the settlement. The Anasazi people either imported most of their food until supply chains collapsed or the settlement merely served a temporary purpose such as for religious pilgrimages or a shelter during times of conflict.
During those times, people may have simply brought their own supplies to survive until they left.
“Whether people are bringing in maize to feed 2,300 residents, or if several thousand visitors are bringing in their own maize to eat, they’re not obtaining it from Chaco Canyon,” Benson said.
And it’s certainly possible that supply lines collapsed because the Great Drought also resulted in the decline of other great Native American civilizations, such as the Mississippian culture.
And so, the Anasazi abandoned the site and the population scattered in different directions, which is why Puebloan people today object to conclusions that the Anasazi disappeared off the face of the planet.
They say that their ancestors assimilated into other tribes in more habitable areas and passed down stories and traditions from the Chaco Canyon settlement and elsewhere over the generations.
University of Denver professor Dean Saitta agrees.
“The Anasazi were terribly diverse in their ethnic affiliations,” he told the Fort Morgan Times back in 2010.
Saitta says that rather than just mysteriously vanishing, the Anasazi became members of other tribes such as the Hopi, Zuni, and Rio Grande Pueblo. That claim is backed up by the oral histories of the tribes.
Furthermore, Saitta theorizes that emerging religious differences may have contributed to the break up of communities.
“People voted with their feet,” he said.
Regardless of why they left their homes, the Anasazi people certainly left their mark in the American Southwest. Their structures have stood the test of time and continue to awe visitors, many of whom never realized that such strong cultures existed in North America before Europeans established colonies.
The ruins also serve as a warning that no civilization lasts forever, and if we do not take climate change seriously, we could watch our own food supply collapse and be forced to leave our own communities behind just as the Anasazi did hundreds of years ago.
See more about Chaco Canyon and the mysteries of the Anasazi below
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Crop circles, elaborate patterns found in farmer’s fields, continue to fascinate people worldwide. Although some have been elaborate hoaxes, others remain a mystery, tangible and real yet unexplained. The first simple crop circles started to become a regular phenomenon when they appeared in the southern English countryside in the summers of the 70s. Ever since they seem to have become more and more elaborate. Some people believe the intricate geometric patterns are messages sent from higher intelligence, extraterrestrials, or even time travelers. One Italian inventor, Umberto Baudo, believes crop circles may be meant to impart secrets of new technology and free energy to humanity.
In 1991, a book titled, “Crop Circles: Harbingers of World Change” by Alick Bartholomew was published. It explored the idea that some crop circles could be messages from non-human intelligence from beyond this physical world. Maybe the formations were meant to deliver secrets for new advanced technology. In the book, an English historian and psychic, Isabelle Kingston, suggested that crop circles might reveal a molecular structure or blueprint for a new form of energy that would one day be unraveled by scientists.
It was the same year that two British men came forward to take credit for creating hundreds of crop circles: Doug Bower and Dave Chorley. As more and more crop circles are discovered, the idea that they could be messages from aliens persisted. Crop circles became more and more elaborate, and some believe they can’t all be chalked up to a hoax.
If crop circles are an intended message, then what is it?
In 2008, Umberto Baudo decided to use crop circles as an inspiration, a blueprint for a mechanism that he believed could deliver a source of free energy, similar to the ultimate goals of Nikola Tesla. Baudo’s work, like that of Tesla’s plans for free energy, has remained obscure, but now with a translation from researcher Pedro M. Duarte, we can look at his findings with English captions in the video below.
Baudo recognizes that some crop circles are hoaxes, but among the hundreds of images found, he chose the formations he believes represent authentic energy generating systems. He demonstrates that those formations can operate like the gears of a machine.
“Since 2008 I realized that it is absolutely possible to generate free energy to all of the planet, and instead of having to pay large amounts of money to have in exchange [for] a small amount of energy,” said Baudo.
Umberto Baudo works on a computer simulation showing an “eccentric core”
In Baudo’s first experiments, he attempted to create magnetic motors. The prototypes were arrays of circles based on crop circle formations. His work progressed from magnetic systems to systems using centrifugal force and tested using computer simulations. The simulations allowed him to find out what happens when the shapes are rotated at high speed, generating energy both with and without the variables of gravity and counterweight mechanisms: magnets, springs, and chains.
Baudo believes extraterrestrials chose to communicate with crop circles for a reason.
“It’s important to understand that the Crop Circles are the maximum expression of a message because through an image you can communicate much more than with words without any doubt,” he explains. “…especially if the message [is addressed] to someone that does not speak our language.”
The inventor found that the rotating systems could whirl around an “eccentric core,” shapes he recognizes in many crop circle formations. Spinning around this core, the circular shapes generate momentum.
See Umberto Baudo discuss his experiments with English captions from Pedro M. Duarte below
In the second part (below), Baudo is convinced that crop circles are meant as examples of using centrifugal force and that he has decoded their meaning. With modifications, including the addition of a spring, he says he has created perfect models that continue to build momentum even after the engine is turned off. All thanks to centrifugal force…
“After some years studying and researching, always with these images in my mind, finally I think I’ve found the key to understand the [main] part of these crop circles. The main key to understand it is fundamentally one: The centrifugal force. Just like that!”
Computer simulation showing ever-increasing energy output as the model spins
The circular gears rotate until the spring slowly reaches full extension.
“The speed will increase, always in a constant way, until the spring achieves its maximum. In that moment [it] will stabilize,” he explains.
Although many people remain skeptical, he believes that these systems can work against the first principle of thermodynamics, that states the total energy of an isolated system is constant. Instead, the engine he simulates continues to accelerate, while the “eccentric core” of the disc appears distorted into an oval shape.
In part 3, Umberto Baudo has advanced beyond the computer simulations to create the mechanics of the centrifugal motors in three dimensions. We see his team working to test the pieces cut out of metal, and in the latter part of the video in English, he discusses his findings with a man who puts him in contact with experts in America. From here, we are left to wonder what happened next.
Umberto Baudo works on making 3d versions of his computer simulations
What happened to Umberto Baudo’s designs? If he had been successful, surely we would know about it, right? Yet delivering a source of free energy to the world would most likely be met with incredible resistance in a world where economies revolve around monetized methods of energy delivery. Finding a source of unlimited free energy would change the global economy, freeing people from the need to labor endlessly to pay energy bills.
Will Baudo’s ultimate findings remain a mystery, like crop circles? Like Nikola Tesla’s plans to deliver free energy to the people? Are beings with higher intelligence trying to tip the odds in the common person’s favor, allowing us to finally have such technology distributed to everyone worldwide? Or, are we all overly optimistic to think this is even possible? Are crop circles just elaborate hoaxes by people who want to keep our hopes alive?
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