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Paul Devereux – Earth Mysteries

The south western United states has a rich crop of shamanic landscapes of various kinds. A key example is the complex of roads around Chaco canyon in New Mexico, a cult centre of the lost Anazasi people. These 1,000 year old Chacoan roads stretch for tens of miles around the canyon linking now ruined ceremonial Great Houses. Where the roads met the canyon rim, stairways were carved out of the rock walls reaching down to the canyon floor. These 30 foot wide roads are not mere tracks, but engineered features. They are strikingly straight and NASA infra red surveys have revealed multiple parallel sections to some lengths of the roads. This has only deepened the mystery of the roads, as the Anazasi had neither wheeled vehicles nor horses. As Hosteen Beyal, a Navajo elder, told archaeologists in the 1920s ‘they may look like roads but they are not roads’

Other curious straight tracks were made by ancient Miwok Indians in the California sierras.

Over this rugged terrain they ran with ‘airline’ directness as described by one archaeologist. In the extreme south of California, prehistoric American Indians used desert etchings, lines of boulders and earthworks to mark out strange geometric patterns enclosures and meanders.

Ancient patterns can be found on the shimmering hot floor of Death Valley or the Chocolate Mountains in Imperial County.

Some ground markings are thought to date back as much as 3,000 years.