Mysterious Beliefs, Mysterious People Were Nearby in Chaco Canyon

What humans believe or may have believed is a challenge when on visits Chaco Canyon in northern New Mexico. I've been there. To visit Chaco Canyon National Historic Park is to be taken back to a time that looks prehistoric. Yet the mysterious society that built complex buildings, the ruins of which still stand, were from relatively modern times, about 800 to 1100 CE. Caves in the area were inhabited as early as 2,000 BCE. 

Anyone interested in religion should visit Chaco Canyon. Its people left ruins and there is some oral history. No written language was passed down. What its residents believed can only be surmised by looking at the ceremonial buildings and the impressive roads (not sure if they were roadks or religious monuments) that stretch for miles. The ancient roads are mostly straight instead of adaptations of animal trails. The debate goes on as to whether the roads were for transportation or were symbolic because they are aligned with the sun or moon phases.

What is mostly agreed is these early versions of current native tribes spent a lot of time looking at the sky. They were experts about stars, sun and moon phases. There seems little doubt they saw the sky as having religious meaning. As one anthropologist speculates, "On earth there was chaos, unpredictable weather, humans disagreeing, dying, etc. In the sky there was order. That's where they went for meaning.'"  

This explanation about religions based on sky gazing makes perfect sense. If one wanted to believe there was something somewhere bigger than what he/she experiences in life, where might on find it? Looking at the sky worked for many societies.

Another source was kings and noblemen. Whereas there was chaos in and around the lives of ordinary people, a king dressed in majestic robes giving you simple explanations of order. From the king they learned why crops grew or women had babies. The human mind in that society said, "Yeah, that makes perfect sense." 

During the Mayan/Inca periods the nobleman appeared high on a pyramid and made a cut in his penis. The red blood flowed down the pyramid steps. "This is how much your leader cares for you" might have been the message. Later the crucifixion was about blood and people said, makes sense to me.

At the same time all this was going on at Chaco Canyon, people in the Middle East and Europe were reading or hearing the written word. Going back in time, words were magic. God started the world with "the word." The "written word" for Chaco Canyon residents was the sun, stars and moon They put order into the chaos of life. The sky and the written word still provide order in the chaos of life to billions of people.

Is the written word from a few thousand years ago any more important than the sky viewed from Chaco Cayon?

So far as we know, they are equally useless. One culture made the arbitrary choice of the sky, the other ancient writing.