Original subtitles

Support form viewers like you makes this program possible.

Please give to your PBS station.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: It is another world

thriving with a hundred million people,

connected by elaborate roads, bridges,

and social networks

spanning continents...

(puffs)

with some of the world's largest cities

aligned to the heavens.

♪ ♪

Native Americans create America's first democracy

that later inspires the United States Constitution...

(man chanting)

...shape Mississippi swampland

into the largest pyramids on the planet.

Carve Andean mountain slopes

into fields that feed millions.

They domesticate plants that provide 60% of the food consumed

in the world today.

Native Americans invent a way of life

intimately connected to earth, sky, water,

and all living things.

JIM ENOTE: Being in the Grand Canyon to me is

LEIGH KUWANWISIWMA: These ancient people were keen observers of everything.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: At the intersection of modern scholarship and Native knowledge

is a new vision of America,

and the people who built it.

♪ ♪

This is "Native America."

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: In a remote canyon in New Mexico,

more than a thousand years ago, Native Americans build

one of the largest cities in North America, Chaco.

♪ ♪

Today, all that remains are crumbling stone structures,

long abandoned and largely forgotten.

♪ ♪

But some Native Americans

maintain a strong connection to Chaco.

KUWANWISIWMA: We make pilgrimages to Chaco

because it's a way of connecting back to our ancestral places.

NARRATOR: Leigh Kuwanwisiwma is a Hopi keeper of knowledge.

(speaking Hopi)

The Hopi are one of the Pueblo communities,

the most ancient peoples living in the Southwest.

for many of these elders.

(Leigh speaking Hopi)

The Hopi have never shared this private ceremony

outside their community.

They offer cornmeal and eagle feathers in gratitude.

KUWANWISIWMA: Today is a very important day for all of us to be here

among our own ancestral people.

RONALD WADSWORTH: Chaco is a very significant place.

A lot of people

with high spiritual power and knowledge settled there.

It was a place where a lot of great teachings happened.

NARRATOR: Through the eyes of the Hopi and other Native peoples,

this city is still alive.

♪ ♪

These ruins are ancient skyscrapers,

filled with hundreds of rooms...

♪ ♪

Their walls carefully aligned to the sun and stars.

(birds chirping)

They transform the surrounding desert

They share secret knowledge, prayers and practices

about how to influence the elements--

wind, clouds, and rain.

Here, a thousand years ago,

in the desert of the American Southwest

was a thriving center of science and spirituality.

♪ ♪

Chaco was a place where clans came together

to share their knowledge,

to share the wisdom of being caretakers of the earth.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Now, an archaeological discovery is showing the extent

of Chaco's influence,

and just how far people would travel to come here.

Archaeologist Patti Crown led the investigation.

PATRICIA CROWN: This is room 28, a small room, but one that has been critical

in our understanding of Chaco.

NARRATOR: First excavated in 1896,

Room 28 contained dozens of cylindrical pots.

CROWN: They really seemed to be drinking vessels,

I just wasn't sure

what they might have been drinking in them.

NARRATOR: Patti took a closer look using forensic technology,

and what she found was a complete surprise...

Chocolate.

used in ceremonies where it was poured between vessels,

shaped like those found in Chaco.

CROWN: The cylinder jars are actually created in sets,

and so one might be placed on the ground

and the other used to pour from a height,

creating this cascading waterfall of chocolate

with bubbles at the bottom.

(chocolate splashing)

NARRATOR: Chocolate and its sacred drinking ritual

must have travelled from Central America to Chaco.

And chocolate is just one of many sacred objects

discovered here.

Carved shells from the Pacific Ocean and Gulf of Mexico.

over a thousand miles away.

(birds calling)

All objects of ritual significance

brought from great distances.

CROWN: It made Chaco

part of this very, very deep and distant belief system.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Remains of an ancient city.

Hopi traditions about a center of great knowledge.

Sacred artifacts connecting Chaco to distant cultures.

♪ ♪

A new picture is emerging of this remote ruin.

♪ ♪

In a world of cities teeming with people,

immersed in the science and spirituality of earth and sky...

Chaco is a metropolis of ideas and beliefs

that span two continents.

(puffs)

♪ ♪

Where did these ideas come from?

(waves lapping)

The story begins far from Chaco.

Archaeologists Anna Roosevelt and Chris Davis

are searching for the earliest evidence

of people in the Americas

in the Amazon rainforest of western Brazil.

Their destination is a cave on this mountaintop

rising out of the jungle.

This is the Caverna da Pedra Pintada,

Portuguese for the "Cave of the Painted Rock."

DAVIS: That's amazing.

There's art going from the base

all the way up to the ceiling.

NARRATOR: The cave is covered with paintings

inspired by animals and the sky.

In this case there's a round object

in the middle of the depiction of the turtle.

DAVIS: Yeah, a lot of them are very abstract.

ROOSEVELT: The local people,

speculated that these were suns or moons--

And that might match with the turtle,

because also turtle myths

were related to the sun as well

as a creation spirit.

NARRATOR: This cave in the Amazon is rewriting the history

of when and how people settled the Americas,

and who those people are.

♪ ♪

For decades, textbooks presented only one view--

around 11,000 B.C., during the Ice Age,

big game hunters cross a frozen land bridge

from Asia into Alaska, a region known as Beringia.

After the ice melts, they migrate down

into the virgin territory of North and South America,

(animals growling)

hunting mammoths, giant sloths, and caribou,

with finely fashioned stone spear points.

(birds squawking)

The standard view is that people reached the Amazon

about a thousand years ago.

But what Anna excavated in the Cave of the Painted Rock

changes everything.

ROOSEVELT: The remains we found and dated in the cave

show that people were living deep in the Amazon forest

at 13,000 years ago.

This is some of the earliest art in the world

and it's definitely, so far, the earliest art in the hemisphere.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Thousands of years before the Romans or Greeks,

8,000 years before the Egyptians,

at least 13,000 years ago, people arrive in the Amazon.

♪ ♪

And their stone tools and paintings reveal

these first Americans are not only mammoth hunters,

they are foragers, fishermen, artists,

and perhaps scientists.

(birds chirping)

Chris is a specialist in archaeoastronomy,

the study of how ancient peoples looked at the sky.

Because this is an open-air site,

maybe they were counting something in the sky,

and this big grid represents something of a calendar.

NARRATOR: To Chris and Anna,

these images are calculated observations

of the sky and nature.

DAVIS: What this art represents is very sophisticated thinking.

ROOSEVELT: This art links people with their environment

through its animals, its plants,

and the heavenly bodies of the sky.

NARRATOR: These paintings are the earliest art ever found in the Americas.

They suggest that people 13,000 years ago

had already developed ideas and beliefs about the world

that centered on the sky, caves, and nature.

But what exactly are these First American artists trying to say?

Part of the answer may lie a continent away

in an ancient ceremony performed by the Hopi back at Chaco.

(indistinct chatter)

KUWANWISIWMA: The reason we do these pilgrimages

is to continue our connection to places like Yupköyvi,

which is the Hopi name for Chaco.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Built in northwest New Mexico between 900 and 1150,

Chaco grows to cover an area roughly the size

of modern San Francisco.

♪ ♪

At its core are 12 Great Houses.

♪ ♪

Five stories high, and up to 800 rooms,

these are the biggest buildings in what will be

the United States until the 1800s.

♪ ♪

Throughout the city they also construct

cave-like gathering places.

They were once covered,

but their roofs have collapsed with time.

where both men and women conduct different ceremonies.

So, a kiva that is a thousand years old

is a very special setting for us.

NARRATOR: Prayers and rituals inside center on rainmaking, healing,

and hunting,

all to ensure the continuation of life.

♪ ♪

(chatter in Hopi)

Today, the Hopi are conducting a smoking ceremony.

(chatter in Hopi)

It has been passed down for thousands of years.

(speaking Hopi)

(lighter clicks)

(puffing)

WADSWORTH: Smoking is a form of prayer.

We meditate.

We silently pray as we smoke.

We pray for rain.

We pray for long life, good health, abundance.

KUWANWISIWMA: The prayers are to the environment.

You take time to contemplate the power around us--

(wings fluttering)

the bird world, the reptilian world,

the animal world, the insect world.

They are part of who we are as Hopi people.

♪ ♪

As the smoke carries prayers to the winds,

Leigh sprinkles the meal for birds and insects

to spread to all four corners of the earth.

(bird wings flapping)

WOMAN (speaking Hopi):

(chanting in Native language)

(chanting in Native language)

WOMAN (speaking Hopi):

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Many Native American peoples share a belief

that they emerged from the earth.

Hopi and Pueblo tradition say that place of emergence

is beneath America's best-known natural wonder--

the Grand Canyon.

Five million people visit each year.

They come to connect with its natural beauty.

But Pueblo people have an even deeper connection.

This is their birthplace.

ENOTE: When we come to a place of water, we take the water,

we put it on our head, and we splash that water,

we lift it and throw it into the air

in the direction of Zuni, to encourage rain, four times,

and then we drink the water.

NARRATOR: Jim Enote is an elder of the Ashiwi,

a Pueblo group in what is now New Mexico,

known as the Zuni.

Jim is mapping ancient images of the Zuni's origins,

carved in stone by his ancestors.

FRANCESCA BOB: Just one hefty push.

There we go.

Thank you, Jim.

NARRATOR: He is joined by river guide Francesca Bob,

who is part Zuni,

and Zuni story keeper Octavius Seowtewa.

There's some panels up here on both sides.

♪ ♪

(indistinct chatter)

NARRATOR: Maps show this place separate from the Grand Canyon,

and call it Glen Canyon.

The Zuni just have one name for the whole area.

SEOWTEWA: We call it Kuhmin A'lakkwenne.

In Zuni that means the place of emergence,

the place where the Zuni people came from.

(birds squawking)

BOB: We're coming up to shore.

(speaking Native language)

SEOWTEWA: A lot of people call it rock art,

but for us it's history.

Wow.

SEOWTEWA: It's a memory of our people being here.

It's not just a story, but actually an experience...

Right. Yeah. It's like a diary.

NARRATOR: The petroglyph, more than a thousand years old,

depicts a row of descending bighorn sheep.

It is an ancient lesson:

to find water, follow the animals.

SEOWTEWA: You follow their tracks, you will eventually

find a way down to the river.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: The Zuni want to both preserve and share these sacred symbols.

So Jim began hiring native painters

to turn Zuni history into illustrated maps.

We looked at these kinds of petroglyphs

and other kinds of images on ceramics.

Things that were woven in tapestries.

We thought about the songs and prayers we have,

and we decided that we can make our own kinds of maps.

NARRATOR: Their maps are unlike any others.

Not limited by lines or topography,

they depict cultural landscapes and living memories.

ENOTE: The Zuni maps represent the world

without defined boundaries.

Many people are familiar with geometric maps

with streets and roads.

And then when they see Zuni hand-painted maps,

they realize there is a different way

of looking at the world.

NARRATOR: This different way of looking at the world

is shared across Native America.

It is a reverence for place--

Sacred caves, underground sanctuaries, grand canyons,

real physical connections to earth.

It's why many call it Mother Earth.

♪ ♪

ENOTE: Being in the Grand Canyon to me is like a womb.

♪ ♪

This is the place we came from.

So the river is like an umbilical cord.

It's all part of the Mother,

and Mother is the place where we begin.

It's our ultimate reference point.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Pueblo tradition requires them to honor Mother

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

WOMAN (speaking Hopi):

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: In their origin story,

after they emerge from the earth,

of where they were at that particular time and place,

which is a spiral.

It's about the people moving from one place to another,

living in some place, testing it,

moving on and on

until they finally find the right place.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Finding the right place-- the Center Place--

lies at the heart of Pueblo belief.

It is more than a physical location.

It is about living in balance with the natural world.

This search for the center place is built right into the kivas.

Every kiva is aligned to the four compass directions:

north, south, east, and west.

That's true north, and this one is true south.

So the sun rises here in the east,

and then sets to the west there.

NARRATOR: There are two more sacred directions: up and down.

(fire crackling)

Climbing a ladder out of a kiva

is symbolic of emerging into this world.

The Hopi believe the six directions

give kivas great power.

♪ ♪

The sacred power of six directions

is shared by many peoples across Native America.

One of its purest expressions was recently discovered

in a man-made cave near Mexico City.

Here, almost 2,000 years ago,

is the largest city in the Americas,

Teotihuacan, population 125,000.

The name of its builders is lost to history,

but it would take more than 1,500 years

for a U.S. city, New York, to surpass its population.

Its biggest pyramid is one of the largest in the world,

after Egypt's Great Pyramids of Giza.

Yet archaeologist Sergio Gomez is more interested

in what lies underground,

a previously unknown man-made cave.

(Sergio speaking Spanish)

SERGIO GOMEZ (translated): In almost every Mesoamerican culture,

caves have a deep significance in cosmological thought.

That is why this discovery is so important.

NARRATOR: In 2003, a monsoon rainstorm created a sinkhole

near a pyramid known as the Temple of the Feathered Serpent.

(Sergio speaking Spanish)

(translated): The entrance to the tunnel is located under the white tent,

at a depth of 14 meters.

NARRATOR: Sergio was the first to rappel down the sinkhole.

(machine whirring)

It led to a tunnel, carved 2,000 years ago.

Inside, he found artifacts

brought here from vast distances,

just like at Chaco.

(speaking Spanish)

(translated): This is one of the thousands of pieces, of artifacts

that we have discovered in the interior of the tunnel.

It's a representation of the principal deity

of both the underworld and the celestial region.

NARRATOR: Sergio believes many of the offerings

symbolize heaven and earth,

and are carefully positioned in the tunnel.

(speaking Spanish)

(translated): We believe that the placement of each object

throughout the tunnel had a particular meaning.

They were not just placed there randomly.

NARRATOR: The tunnel ends in a human-made cave.

(Sergio speaking Spanish)

GOMEZ (translated): The entire tunnel was originally covered in a dust

of shiny metallic mineral.

They covered the walls and ceiling of the tunnel

so it's as if you were seeing the sky and the stars twinkling.

NARRATOR: In this cosmic sanctuary of stars,

Sergio finds two stone figures,

statues that depict the first man and woman

in the city's origin story.

Sergio laser scans the tunnel.

It descends 50 feet underground,

extends for 340 feet,

and ends directly beneath

the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent.

Here, the Teotihuacanos place the founding couple,

within 16 inches of the exact center of the pyramid.

(Sergio speaking Spanish)

(translated): We are positioned exactly under the intersection

of the north-south axis and east-west axis.

And above us is the peak, the central point

of the Temple of the Feathered Serpent.

Right in this spot.

They believed there was a conduit that connected

this region from the underworld to the celestial region.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: The builders went to extreme lengths

using precise math and masterful engineering

to align their sanctuary of stars to the six directions.

represent finding balance in the universe.

It is a quest to find the center

between the world below and the one above,

between caves and the cosmos.

(Sergio speaking Spanish)

GOMEZ (translated): In the southwestern United States,

including Central America and South America,

there are a series of ideas that form a general concept

of the cosmos.

I've heard and read of the ideas the Hopi have about the cosmos

and how the universe was created.

These ideas are shared

throughout many indigenous communities,

including indigenous communities in Mexico today.

NARRATOR: Teotihuacan is part of something bigger

going on across the Americas.

The Maya, Aztec, and Inca, all build monumental cities

aligned to compass directions

and with an eye to the worlds above and below.

♪ ♪

And at Chaco, the builders extend the science

of six directions

to apply not only to place,

but also to time.

WADSWORTH: Alignment was very important to these people at Chaco.

It helped them to determine the times of year,

the cycles of their crops,

when they plant certain seeds.

And it also determines the months, the moons

when the certain ceremonies happen.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: At the very center of Chaco, builders create a sacred space

to unify time and place-- Pueblo Bonito.

(echoing chants)

It is the largest of the city's 12 great houses,

with over 800 rooms and 30 ceremonial kivas.

We can talk about this as a building,

we can talk about it as a storage unit

and a ceremonial center.

And we can also talk about it as a clock.

NARRATOR: Park Ranger GB Cornucopia

came to Chaco to study the stars 30 years ago and never left.

♪ ♪

To GB, Pueblo Bonito and the sky are intricately linked.

The great house is aligned to the six directions.

And in just a few moments it will disappear.

♪ ♪

There...

This is solar noon,

when the sun is at it's highest point in the sky.

Every day, the sun sets in a different place on the horizon.

The solar year starts on the winter solstice,

when it sets in the south.

On the summer solstice, it sets in the north.

The two days halfway in between them are called equinoxes.

And today, on the fall equinox,

the sun lines up with the east-west wall.

CORNUCOPIA: We're between the two extremes

when it's really hot in the summer, summer solstice,

and when it's really cold in the winter, winter solstice.

We're at that midway point.

♪ ♪

The north wall tracks the day.

Now most of us have forgotten that,

because we have devices that represent time,

we've got watches and calendars and clocks.

But if you've got good markers on your horizon,

you can predict the seasons,

so that you can prepare for ceremonies, agriculture,

all manner of things.

NARRATOR: The people of Chaco look to the sky to guide their agriculture

and their ceremonies.

Their city is the physical embodiment of their worldview.

It is a way of living that is both a scientific understanding

of the cycles of the earth, sun, and stars,

and a spiritual quest to find their place within it.

♪ ♪

WOMAN (speaking Hopi):

WOMAN (speaking Hopi):

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: Sky watching, the six directions,

and a search for people's place in the world.

These ideas are found throughout the Americas.

They are part of a foundational belief system

shared between distant and diverse cultures.

Where does this common belief come from?

The Chumash may have an answer.

Their ancestors were the first coastal settlers

of what is now Southern California.

My ancestors were far better paddlers, far better navigators,

NARRATOR: Today, these Chumash men are taking to the water

in a flat-bottomed canoe, like that of their ancestors.

(singing continues)

SALAZAR: That's when the ocean is the calmest.

(water lapping)

It's so dark that you can barely see the paddler in front of you.

You feel your paddle hit the water and come out.

It's powerful.

NARRATOR: Far at sea, in the dark of night,

the Chumash look to the stars to guide them.

Just as their ancestors did.

PAGALING: At a very early stage we saw the Milky Way

as a way to chart our way across the islands.

♪ ♪

My ancestors were masters

at building canoes that could travel great distances.

NARRATOR: Their mastery of the stars and seafaring

enabled the very first Americans to move quickly down the coast

and across the continents.

Can the way America is settled explain why Native Americans

share so many core beliefs?

♪ ♪

New DNA evidence suggests that all Native Americans

are descended from one people.

They live together for 25,000 years,

stuck behind a wall of ice in an area called Beringia.

Perhaps here, over thousands of years,

people observe cycles of the earth, sun, and stars,

and plant the seeds for a worldview

that will be shared across the Americas.

♪ ♪

Can these ideas really have been developed so far back in time?

If so, they may be expressed in the earliest art found here.

It dates back 13,000 years

to the very beginnings of Native America.

Anna Roosevelt and Chris Davis re-examine the rock paintings

in Brazil's Amazon rainforest.

ROOSEVELT: It's been assumed

that hunting and gathering people were primitive

and wouldn't be into art very much.

But everywhere you go in this rocky area, you find a painting.

NARRATOR: Chris believes the paintings may relate to the sky.

DAVIS: All of the rock art is facing the west.

So maybe there was something important in the west,

maybe sunsets.

NARRATOR: The cliff wall extends a half mile.

It is covered in paintings of animals, grids, and circles

all the way to its far south end.

DAVIS: This is the southernmost image

of the painting sequence.

And there's two concentric circles--

one above, and another one below.

NARRATOR: Chris thinks these circles could depict

stages of the sun setting.

And their location here to the far south

NARRATOR: Chris suspects that pedestal

represents a rocky outcrop on the horizon.

He has come here on the winter solstice to see if the sun

will line up with the platform.

If there's a match, we should see it today.

(birds chirping)

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: The winter solstice sun sets behind the rocky platform,

just as depicted on the southern cliff face.

What's more, art on the northern end of the cliff

marks the summer solstice.

DAVIS: At the northern end

we have a match with the summer solstice.

In between, there are images of animals,

perhaps constellations, and other important resources.

They are recognizing connections, associations,

that when the sun is at this particular point in the sky,

these animals are most active,

or these changes occur in the environment.

NARRATOR: 8,000 years before England's celebrated Stonehenge,

Native Americans paint a cliff face

to transform a mountain

into a three-dimensional solar calendar.

It is the earliest evidence of tracking astronomical events

in the Americas.

DAVIS: They created a calendar that you can walk through,

a pictographic almanac that encapsulates this landscape.

NARRATOR: The calendar expresses an intimate knowledge

of their new world.

Caves and mountains provide shelter,

plants and animals teach them lessons of survival,

and the sky helps them find their place in the world.

These same foundational ideas, shared across two continents,

are already established

at the very beginning of Native America.

DAVIS: They were not just living off of the land,

they were actually trying to figure out

how to better place themselves in the landscape.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR: The Pueblo people seek the same thing:

to find their place in the world.

They discover it in America's Southwest.

WADSWORTH: The migration stopped here in this American Southwest.

We came here to the center, and this is where

we all conduct our ceremonies,

and to bless the world like Maasaw instructed us to do.

NARRATOR: The Hopi fulfill the covenant they made

when they entered this world: they find the center place.

♪ ♪

Along the way, they create Chaco,

balanced between the underworld and the heavens,

six directions aligned to the cosmos.

Chaco becomes a beacon,

drawing people from thousands of miles away.

Visitors bring hallowed objects like turquoise stones,

tropical bird feathers,

sea shells,

and chocolate.

Both cacao and scarlet macaws are tropical species

that were brought from a great distance into Pueblo Bonito.

♪ ♪

There's no question that there was this very large area

of shared beliefs in ritual activities.

(chanting, drumming)

NARRATOR: Chaco was a place where people came together

from vast distances.

KUWANWISIWMA: Chaco was a culmination of many years of learning and knowledge,

and perfecting their ceremonies.

NARRATOR: People share knowledge and beliefs

based on thousands of years of observing their world.

Ceremonies to influence the very forces of nature.

They are still practiced today.

In the ancient kiva at Chaco, the Hopi elders

conduct their smoking ceremony to make rain.

(puffing)

KUWANWISIWMA: You offer your own private prayer,

and you speak to the spirits of our ancestors.

(wings fluttering)

You offer these prayers in hopes they in turn bless us with rain.

The smoke comes out from the pipe,

emerge to that cloud,

make a big cloud,

and then rain comes from that.

The Hopi prayers for rain are answered.

(rainfall pattering)

♪ ♪

Just like Hopi tradition says,

Chaco was a special place to study the forces of nature.

It grows out of a deep connection with the earth,

planted in time immemorial,

developed over tens of thousands of years,

and shared across two continents

by the pioneering people who create this world.

They are Native Americans.

Their teachings remain as relevant today as ever.

reflects in the earth.

ENOTE: The world lives with us.

We live with it.

But we have to maintain it.

We have to take care of it in order for it to provide for us.

(birds chirping)

SALAZAR: To me it's essential to my survival

that I am part of the earth, I am part of the family

of plants and animals and bugs and birds and all the mammals.

I'm just a part.

ENOTE: Deep inside the teachings of Chaco Canyon

resonate and still continue today.

♪ ♪

Native Americans find their place among

earth, sea, sky, and all living things.

Through careful observation, over tens of thousands of years,

they form an intimate relationship with their world...

A world that continues to this day.

♪ ♪