Chaco Culture National Historical Park
The Chaco Canyon in the U.S. state of New Mexico was 850-1250 a center for the Puebloan culture. Since 1980, he is known as Chaco Culture National Historical Park is a National Historical Park of the United States, which started in 1987 as a World Heritage Site in the list of UNESCO World Heritage.
The remote and inhospitable Canyon in northwestern New Mexico, between Albuquerque and Farmington, represents an important part of the cultural heritage of America. He is a part of the Holy Land of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, the Hopi of Arizona and the (albeit only centuries later immigrated ) Diné. With large pueblos and various other buildings he was for several centuries the center of a special form of the Anasazi culture that can be described as Chaco Canyon culture. The Chaco Canyon was the center of ceremonial events, trade and administration. The construction of the Pueblos, ramps, dams, irrigation ditches and earth walls and the roads connecting them, required a very good organization and clever planning in the pre- work of the building materials and the construction itself, the people united in the buildings geometry with their knowledge of astronomy. Pueblo Bonito, for example, was created according to the four cardinal directions and the axis of the great kiva was exactly in a north-south direction. Full description at Chaco Canyon culture.
On March 11, 1907, the Chaco Canyon Chaco Canyon National Monument as a national monument in the United States, on 19 December 1980, the reserve managed by the National Park Service has been extended and as Chaco Culture National Historical Park National Historical Park. On December 8, 1987 he was included in the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. August 19, 2013 the area of the International Dark Sky Association has been designated as a light area that is to receive the astronomical significance and function of the site to the visitor experience, and since then also called Chaco Culture International Dark Sky Park. He is after the Hungarian IDSP Hortobágyi the second world heritage with light protective measures, and the world's first UNESCO World Heritage Site of the monument class that also light protected area was ( DSAG Class 3 Dark Sky Heritage Site ).