What purpose did the prehistoric roads of Chaco Canyon serve?
Among the most baffling cultural features of the prehistoric American deserts are the road systems of the Chaco Canyon Anasazi, who had no wheeled cargo vehicles and draft animals or even pack animals to use the roads. In their book Chaco Canyon, Robert H. and Florence C. Lister said that the roads “could have had several functions, namely to provide well-defined routes for the travel of groups and individuals within the Chaco sphere and between nearby community centers, to transport raw materials into Chaco Canyon and goods and materials among those affiliated towns, to facilitate communication between widely separated groups, and as a means for keeping the Chacoans together as a cohesive social force. No other aboriginal land communication system of such magnitude and purpose has been recognized north of Mexico.” Navajos told Marietta Wetherill, wife of famous early archaeologist Richard Wetherill, that the roadways were actually “race courses.” In accounts referred to by Linda Corde
