Ancestral Pueblo and D'ni

Monkeyboy · **Posted:** Mon Jul 20, 2009 2:08 am

I am reading the "House of Rain" by Craig Childs It's a book basically about the Anasazi (Ancestral Puebloan) and came across this passage:

"Some modern Pueblo people in the Southwest still use the kiva as their holy chamber, and among those who speak the language of Tewa, the kiva is called te'i, 'the place of the cottonwood tree.' The kiva is thought to be a bridge between the underworld and the world above, and the hole traditionally placed in the kiva floor, just beyond the deflector stone and in front of the ladder, represents a place of emergence. In Tewa this hole is called p'okwi koji, 'the lake roof hole,' which leads up from a mysterious underground lake...."

Anyway, I immediately thought of the Bahro cave above the Lake, and can make a connection with kivas and all bahro caves. It just seems its one more clue of the connection with the D'ni and Southwest peoples. It's something to take a closer look at, if nothing more.

laughingpineapple · **Posted:** Wed Jul 22, 2009 5:14 pm

Thanks for the info! It may be just a coincidence, but it sure is an interesting one.

heimdall · **Joined:** Thu Feb 25, 2010 8:32 am **Posts:** 45

I seem to recall watching the "Making of Riven" movie that came with the DVD game. I know that the Millers specifically went to New Mexico to get textures for the Riven village (I forget whether it was Taos or Santa Fe -- maybe both). I also seem to recall that they lived there when they were young. I wouldn't be suprised if a lot more than the Pueblo architecture influenced them...

Jairden · **Joined:** Thu Dec 14, 2006 5:52 pm **Posts:** 181

Wonderful connection! I hadn't thought about that, but the similarities are really fun. My first encounter with the term Kiva was reading The Haunted Mesa by Louis L'Amour, definitely had fun speculations about it the culture.

Monkeyboy · **Posted:** Fri Feb 26, 2010 3:38 pm

There are lots of neat connections like that. For instance, the name the Navajo call themselves, the Diné. That one is fun to contemplate. Especially when some D'ni, early in Earth history (and D'ni history), left the Cavern to live on the surface. I believe it was a first attempt to get to the surface. I don't recall all the details, but I do remember reading it on DPWR.net, but as of now I'm unable to locate that info.

Found it: # 114 DE

* Installation of fans and construction of air shafts to supply them is completed. During the course of the construction (which began in 84 DE), several D'ni working on the project went missing. It is assumed that they remained on the surface to live.

http://www.dpwr.net/forums/index.php?autocom=ibwiki&cmd=article&id=6#Historical%20Timeline

Which 100 DE (D'ni reckoning) is around 7556 BCE (Earth reckoning).

DocOlanA · **Posted:** Fri Feb 26, 2010 4:42 pm

That was when engineers under Ri'neref originally carved out the vents to the surface. Some stayed behind. That is long before the Navajo.

My pet theory is that the Navajo instead mingled with D'ni survivors from the Fall of D'ni, which would be closer to the right period for the formation of Navajo culture. Also, there's the possibility that the Navajo had some contact with the Bahro - compare their stories of coming from underground, where they were once bug-men.

horatio252 · **Posted:** Fri Feb 26, 2010 5:08 pm

While I don't know much about the Navajo, Doc makes a good point about the timing of the creation of the air vents. 114 DE is around 7543 - 7542 BCE. Wikipedia says the ancestors of the Navajo did not arrive in the Southwest until around 1000 CE. The Fall of D'ni is 9400 DE (1744 - 1745 CE), so fleeing survivors is a plausible explanation, to my knowledge (which I admit is limited).

Monkeyboy · **Posted:** Fri Feb 26, 2010 11:08 pm

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)

DocOlanA · **Posted:** Fri Feb 26, 2010 11:22 pm

Actually I think the original D'ni engineers are more likely responsible for some culture outbreak, POSSIBLY the Clovis culture (I had been studying this, but I got sidetracked in my Native American studies to the 17th century due to some work I'm doing for the Witch Hunter tabletop RPG. Which all of you should be playing.)

The actual fall of D'ni is a possible source of some Indian myth, but of course they had already been established as tribes by the 18th century, long before in fact, requiring some earlier contact.

Monkeyboy · **Posted:** Sat Feb 27, 2010 4:32 am

I don't think the D'ni were on Earth by the time the Clovis culture was up and going. Clovis is 13,000 years to 9-10,000 years ago. I would have to look up what culture was running 8,000ya to determine any earlier influence.

heimdall · **Joined:** Thu Feb 25, 2010 8:32 am **Posts:** 45

Having travelled through and having worked in the Navajo and Hopi Reservations through the years, I would say that similarity of the Navajo name for themselves "Diné" with "D'ni" is a coincidence.

If the D'ni were to have influenced (or been influenced by) anyone, it would have been the Hopi culture. The Navajo were still nomadic hunters back then, whereas the Hopi had been settled farmers. In fact, Oraibi (near 2nd Mesa) is the oldest village to be continually inhabited in North America.

Monkeyboy · **Posted:** Sat Feb 27, 2010 3:14 pm

Quote:

In fact, Oraibi (near 2nd Mesa) is the oldest village to be continually inhabited in North America.

Oh! Interesting! And how long has it been inhabited? and where is it located?

heimdall · **Joined:** Thu Feb 25, 2010 8:32 am **Posts:** 45

Oraibi is 100 miles drive northeast of Flagstaff.

Here's a Google Map link: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=oraibi&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wl

Here's an image of Oraibi that helps to make my point:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b3/Oraibi.jpg/250px-Oraibi.jpg (Wikipedia, Oraibi c. 1899).

heimdall · **Joined:** Thu Feb 25, 2010 8:32 am **Posts:** 45

Oh yeah, and Oraibi was founded about 1100 AD.

Monkeyboy · **Posted:** Mon Mar 01, 2010 8:35 pm

I'm wondering now, looking at dates when cultures were started and areas being occupied as well as D'ni dates and written history, if 1) There was no influence by the D'ni of past southwestern cultures, or 2) There just aren't any records of other missing D'ni persons escaping to the Surface.

We can definitely say that people went missing the first 100 D'ni years which correspond to the late Paleo-early Archaic time period of the southwest (approx. 7,000ya) when the peoples occupying the area where essentially hunters and gatherers co living with mega fauna in an environment changing to a more drier and hotter climate, (though for some reason I can picture a D'ni riding on the back of a mammoth

).

We can also imagine some D'ni survivors from the fall of D'ni possibly escaping to the Surface, where they would have met an already established southwestern cultures, as well as the Spanish, and if there were any influence it would have been minimal, perhaps a story of when Great Great Granddad saw this pale D'ni with funky goggles come out of a crack in the desert, whether Native American or Spanish. My guess is they perhaps lived with these groups and were assimilated into the "Spanish", or "Navajo", or "Hopi" than these groups taking from the D'ni.

What if through the ages individual or small groups of D'ni left without record, and influenced cultures on the Surface. Perhaps Chaco was one of those places. It's a ruin south of Farmington, NM in western New Mexico where the Chacoans had built large complexes with many Kivas and rooms. A place where astronomy and architecture go hand and in hand. A place still shrouded in mystery, many theories stating no one had lived there and it was a place of worship where pilgrimages were taken and the only people to live there were priests or holy men. And from the burials of these priests they had different skeletal averages than the people around them, they were taller (for example) than the people they served in the surrounding communities. But of course at the end of Chaco around 1150 AD there was violence surrounding its end.

I guess I'm getting at can this dialogue continue without more information on the D'ni or can we find information from the Surface to make match-ups to try to prove a hypothesis of D'ni influence on Surface cultures?

(Sure would make a good storyline for an Open Source project, where are those pesky Guild of Writers when you need them?)

Ancestral Pueblo and D'ni

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