In my remarks on the roof of the grand kiva at Rinconada, I mentioned that this may have been the greatest engineering marvel of Chaco Canyon, but that it can no longer be seen. There are other things about Chaco which can no longer be seen, but which must have been there, in order to create what can be seen.
I am referring to a political/social/economic/ religious system. The Chacoans had no written language, so we are pretty much without clues to the nature of this system. The only hope is by oral traditions kept by the descendants of the Chaco people. From what I read, not much has been determined from this source so far. As we sit here, separated by some 40 generations from the abandonment of Chaco, it may be that there is not much to find.
Looking at the general outline of what we know about the Chaco people, I am struck by a parallel. This has all happened at least once before, and in the western hemisphere, and not too far away. There is a city now called Teotihuacan, located in what is now southern Mexico. These are the people that built the famous pyramids. This was the 6th largest city in the world in AD 600, with a population estimated at 200,000. A century later it was totally abandoned. No one knows what type of government or religion they had, but they were apparently an economic powerhouse, being the trading center for a large region.
The abandonment of Teotihuacan was just before the beginnings of the Chaco activity. There is a tantalizing possbility that there was some transfer of ideas and possibly personnel. It is known that Mexican artifacts reached Chaco. Maybe there were other imports as well. If so, it takes nothing away from the Chacoans. The energy to do all they did had to be generated locally.