The Casa Grande Ruins National Monument provided special insight into the ancient Sonoran Desert people.
The unique architecture and building methods was quite grand to see close up.
The Casa Grande (great house) is one of the largest prehistoric structures ever built in North America. Its purpose remains a mystery, as does it's demise. It was built in about 800 C.E. and abandoned in about 1450.
The folks who built the Casa Grande also developed wide-scale irrigation farming and extensive trade connections which lasted from about 450 until about 1450 C.E. Over 1200 miles of irrigation channels were dug, with stone tools and without any mathematical knowledge!
It is thought that Casa Grande was abandoned either to dought, which would have limited food supplies, or that there were simply greener pastures somewhere else.
All of the elements of STEM were here. Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, but in ancient forms. Examples:
Science: determining when the winter and summer solstace occurred, providing a "calendar" to use in setting the seasons for planting and harvesting crops.
Technology: making building materials from local sources, and building the walls of the Great House wider on the bottom and narrower on the bottom so they would distribute the weight.
Engineering: developing stone tools that were for specific tasks; some for hunting, some for skinning, etc.
Mathematics: they would not have has anything like our modern math, but somehow they figured out a solar calendar and the holes on the Great House that would line up with the solstaces.
More information can be found at this link: http://www.nps.gov/cagr/index.htm
The Great House has a protective cover that was built in the 1930's
The Portals near the top of the West wall on the left and right
are aligned with the winter and summer solstaces
Fishhook Barrel Cactus
"Grafitti" from visiting soldiers
Quail
Petroglyphs
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