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Anasazi America: Seventeen Centuries on the Road from Center Place by David E. Stuart

Western Kingbird, San Antonio NM, April 15, 2010

I'm adding Anasazi America to my list of books I want to read.

Here's a link to a list of the books on my wish list.

The Anasazi America website introduces the book with these words

At the height of their power in the late eleventh century, the Chaco Anasazi dominated a territory in the American Southwest larger than any European principality of the time. A vast alliance of hamlets and towns integrated the region through economic and religious ties, and the whole system was interconnected with hundreds of miles of roads. It took these Anasazi farmers more than seven centuries to create classic Chacoan civilization, which lasted some 200 years-only to collapse spectacularly in a mere 40.

Why did such a great society collapse? Who survived? Why? In this lively book anthropologist/archaeologist David Stuart presents answers to these questions that offer useful lessons to modern societies.

David Stuart's take on these questions might help me fill in some gaps in my understanding of how and why our civilization seems to be hurtling toward a similar end.