The Bloody Truth Behind America's Ancient Anasazi | Native American Documentary | Timeline

Were the native Americans secret cannibals? New discoveries reveal that the Anasazi tribe killed and ate their victims.

Investigations further afield have found that there may have been cannibals in Mexico and Cheddar Gorge in the South of England.

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[servals]

If you're a scientist and you reject facts because they're offensive, you're not a scientist.

[whoimia]

He doesn’t need to be sensitive to anything he needs to tell the truth, actual science has no sensitivities, only findings.

[Dragonsmom]

As part Native, please don't let the truth die. It is the past regardless of how vile we see it today. The actions of the past should not be judged by today's standards.

[paulpeek]

I agree completely with Louis L'Amour "A mistake constantly made by those who should know better is to judge people of the past by our standards rather than their own. The only way men or women can be judged is against the canvas of their own time".

Louis L'Amour

[shadowbroker]

I’m Aztec and in the end this documentary completely blamed all the horrors and cannibalism on my people. I’m also not at all offended. If there is clear proof that Aztec peoples moved to the area and did this, then it is what it is. This was 800 years ago! Political correctness has no place in history!

[teti_]

Cannibalism was common for many different cultures. My people (Polynesians) were Cannibals until only about 170 years ago. Specifically in Tonga where my parents are from. Love and respect to my native brothers and sisters. 💯✊🏾

Your Tongan friend from Provo Utah

[shoelace]

As a Navajo myself who grew up on the reservation I remember stories of the Anasazi, I was told that they were part of a certain people who came up from south america who set up these places as mass trading sites. There are stories of them taking our navajo people as slaves and it was a drought that caused their trade network to fail causing their ultimate downfall...perhaps thats what drove them to cannibalism toward their end...

[CountryBParty]

Wally Brown, Navajo historian, has a lot to say about this topic. According to Dineh (Navajo) oral history, the Anasazi left no descendants. Instead, they were eradicated by the ancestors of the cliff dwelling tribes and the puebloan tribes, whom they had enslaved and victimized (cannabalized?) for three centuries. Brown says the puebloans and cliff dwellers were present when the Dineh migrated into the Southwest. The Anasazi came later from the south. They were violent and oppressive, practiced human sacrifice and possibly cannibalism. These practices horrified the original inhabitants. Eventually, the victimized tribes turned on the Anasazi and wiped them out. Brown’s oral history is fascinating and presents a completely new way of viewing the history of the region. According to the Dineh, modern puebloan tribes are not descended from the cannibal Anasazi, but from the heroic survivors of their victims. Worth a listen:

[rickeldridge]

I Am Native American and extreme environments and extreme weather and extreme conditions and circumstances come together it is not at all impossible to see what happened! Just think of the plane crash in the mountains and what those people did with the dead to stay alive!

[ArgueNaught]

Can't help but admire the courage of the scientists and the filmmakers.
This is what true science and objective media should be about - the fact finding.
Bravo!

[Investigativebean]

“He’s so removed from it” because he is being objective. You have to be objective to be scientific.

[robertcolpitts]

This confirms the stories of the Diné (Navaho) historian Wally Brown about the Anasazi. The Diné name for the Chaco Canyon ruins is "Place of Weeping and Wailing".

[jennismith]

Why is human sacrifice (on a grand scale) accepted as part of ancient Aztec culture (including drinking human blood), but the very real possibility of something similar happening in the Anasazi culture is completely unthinkable. Its probably because the Aztecs had a form of written language that physically showed them carrying out such acts. Kinda hard to deny. The fact is that many human cultures engaged in acts that we today find horrid, but they considered normal. You can't (and shouldn't) judge an ancient culture by our modern standards.

[alvarovaldovinos]

My grandmother was a native woman. She died at over 105 years of age and she told my siblings and I about old rituals that our ancestors yes cannibalism was a part of that. Why that one guy is so sensative about that me. Maybe he has never spoken honestly to one of his elders, or asked the proper questions to his elders. Maybe he didn't pay attention to his elders teachings.

[katyachan]

"being politically correct is not science" YES. more people need to hear this, especially today

[lonl]

When I was young, back in the early 70's I got a chance to go to Mesa Verde...and I was astounded at the cliff dwellings and became entranced with the beauty of the place and the mystery of the Anasazi. As I got older though, I felt something was off with the history and the narrative of what happened in the southwest...so, I started travelling and going to many Southwestern sites and reading everything I could about the ancestral Puebloans...When I was young, the story was that these were egalitarian, peaceful simple farmers....but when you walk through the ruins of Chaco, Aztec Ruins, Salmon Ruins and many others...you get a very, very different feeling...This was a complex, thriving Mesoamerican society with what I believe were "Kings" and they had wars, Religion, Culture, basically all the things a thriving, sophisticated, culture would have. Finally over the last 2 decades the narrative is starting to change and putting the Anasazi, Hohokam and Fremont peoples into their proper perspective. I recommend anyone who is even slightly interested in Southwestern ancient history to read Stephen Lekson's Book "A History of the Ancient Southwest" an amazing and eye opening book that tries to put the pieces of the puzzle together and show what was really going on around a thousand years ago in the Southwest.

[iichthus]

“Morals only work on a full stomach” M. Twain. When pushed past the breaking point human behavior can devolve to animal behavior. In the jungle it’s eat or be et.

[Arnsteel]

It amazes me that people think what their ancestor did 800 years ago has any moral meaning to who they are today. Almost everywhere in the world at some point in the past cannibalism occurred.

[claywarner]

I will listen to a scientist more than some random guy saying we don't think they did that...It doesn't MATTER what YOU think, the evidence is there.

[theonlyzeek]

I am navajo, and I was told old stories that Anasazis were cannibals, and that I am surprised that a scientist found out by looking at the bones, crazy!