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Show EVERYDAY LIFE IN PUEBLO BONITO 231 J» **5 Photograph by O. C. Havens THE EAST SECTION OE PUEBLO BONITO This aboriginal apartment-house covered more than three acres of ground, stood four stories in height, and contained not less than 800 rooms (see text below). and then, but the basic warp is mostly fact and strong enough to stand the supreme test of close and searching inspection. PREHISTORIC BONITIANS LIVED LIKE MODERNS Life in prehistoric Bonito was surprisingly modern. It was both strenuous and complex; yet it remained simple, withal. It witnessed the coming together of at least two distinct groups of people and their subsequent development of perhaps the most extraordinary pre-Columbian settlement north of Mexico. The daily struggle for existence was paramount then as now, and each inhabitant of the village, old and young alike, necessarily contributed his share to the support of the community as a whole. That the Bonitians eventually lost in this struggle is no just argument against their diligence, their capacity as colonizers, or their skill as agriculturists. It means only that their highly organized form of community life, their particular brand of socialism, was not adapted to the environment of Chaco Canyon. The ancient Bonitians were back-yard farmers They dwelt in a compact village- an aboriginal apartment house, if you will-covering over three acres of ground, standing four stories in height, and containing fully eight hundred rooms. No other apartment house of comparable size was known in America or in the Old World until the Spanish Flats were erected in 1882 at 59th Street and Seventh Avenue, New York City. Desert plants furnished edible seeds and skilled hunters brought occasional game from distant mesas. Nevertheless, the principal source of the Bonitians' food-supply lay in their neighboring garden plots, where corn, beans and squash- |