Lasers have revealed a 1,000-year-old sacred road near Chaco Canyon in New Mexico. Researchers say the road was part of an Indigenous ritual landscape, serving as a path between natural springs and aligning with the sunrise on the winter solstice, a new study finds.
Until now, researchers thought the road at the Gasco site may have linked Indigenous settlements in the area. But new research shows that not only is a sacred road there much longer than they thought, it also has a previously unknown road running almost parallel to it. In addition, the two roads align with the winter solstice sunrise over Mount Taylor, which remains a sacred mountain among Indigenous peoples today, the researchers wrote in the study.
