I'm not saying the Navajo are the D'ni. But it could be likely the D'ni could have co-mingled with local populations, somewhere on the surface. Whether the Navajo have D'ni ancestors or not, are of course, just a contemplation. But there is an alternative theory that the Navajo claim Anasazi ancestory, but this is loosely based on oral stories and traditions. That being said, the Navajo apparently didn't arrive in the four corners until the 1500s and that their language is Athabascan a language group from Canada and Alaska, and apparently the Navajo culture wasn't distinct until 1600, which places the Fall of D'ni close to that time, some 200 years later. If there were survivors that made it to the surface they may have came into contact with the Navajo and quite possibly the Spanish.
Now for the time period of earlier D'ni "escapees," 7500 bc puts these people in the Paleo-Indian period of New Mexico, which was dominated by hunter-gatherer groups and all the mega fauna. So, if those D'ni made it to the surface and survived, and intermixed with local populations, I wonder if oral traditions can hold up after nearly 10,000 years, and perhaps all these similarities in Native American stories and the D'ni are just coincidences. Or Doc's "pet" theory is correct and the stories are still fresh in the Navajo culture, but you'd think the Spanish would have some sort of document seeing D'ni people in the desert living with the Navajo, and they may, but I sure haven't looked.
sources: (Archaeology, Nov/Dec 2009)(Chaco Canyon, Brian nice people 2005)
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