Discovery of 'calendar' rock carvings from Ancestral Pueblo in US Southwest surpasses 'wildest expectations'

[Warpy]

2. Now that we know that people have been living here

at least since the last glacial maximum and probably long before then, it should come as no surprise that they were sophisticated when it came to marking out the seasons, their lives depended on knowing what was growing and where and when it was growing. The agricultural revolution at the end of the last ice age happened here, too, the Pueblos have a longstanding farming tradition.

The Americas presented early people with a challenge they hadn't faced in Eurasia, where the land lies east to west with large areas of land with similar climate. Here it runs north-south with vastly different climates over relatively small terrain and micro weather that was more violent and less predictable than it was in Eurasia.

Our calendar is still less precise than that of the Maya, after all.

I'm still getting blown away by just how ancient this part of the country is in terms of human habitation.