Archaeologists have long assumed that because macaws are tropical birds, ancient traders captured them in their native habitat and transported them some distance northward, perhaps when the birds were still juveniles. Additionally, archaeologists discovered clear evidence of macaw breeding pens at Paquimé in what is now the state of Chihuahua, Mexico (photo on left by Marianne Smith shows side view of pens). To date Paquimé remains the northernmost evidence of a formal macaw breeding aviary, so it had been assumed the birds that were bred there were possibly transported to points even further north. (With great difficulty, because tropical birds like macaws have delicate respiratory systems; are large, heavy, wiggly, can chew through almost anything including wood and bone, and are susceptible to the kinds of temperature extremes that are common in desert and high-altitude climates. - webmaster)

Zooarchaeologist Randee Fladeboe analyzed macaw remains in about 2015-2016. From her examinations and a review of Puebloans' historical and modern reports she surmised that Ancestral Puebloans plucked the birds, and that they were raised for the purpose of regular plucking. (Psittacines like macaws also regularly molt, and commonly pluck their own or another bird's feathers either with their regular grooming or especially vigorously when they are under physical or psychological stress. - webmaster)

A newer study noted that macaw remains have been found as far north as Utah which were dated to 300 CE, over 900 years before Paquimé and its aviary first rose to prominence in about 1250 CE. Similarly the sites in Chaco Canyon and the Mimbres region from which the 14 sets of macaw remains were excavated, were at their zeniths between 850 CE - 1150 CE, some 100 to 400 years before they presumably could have obtained macaws or their feathers from the Paquimé aviary. Another archaeologist, Patricia Crown (Kiva, Vol. 82, No. 4, December 2016 at p. 352), observed that certain Mimbres ceramics depict obviously very juvenile macaws, suggesting that the aviary they may have been transported from was relatively nearby the artist who made the ceramic image of them. (The remains of a military macaw that were unearthed with human remains and other artifacts by a bulldozer in Avendaños Cave near San Francisco de Borja, Chihuahua, Mexico, have been found to be 2000 years old (Late Archaic period), further suggesting that ritual use of macaws and their feathers - if not the actual breeding of the birds - was a very ancient and widespread practice. - webmaster) An image of a much younger and more alive military macaw is over on the right.

In the newer study, archaeologists extracted mitochondrial DNA from the remains of the 14 macaws intending "...to match the macaws to ancestral populations in Central and South America and trace potential trade routes backwards in time. But the macaw bones revealed an unexpected result. [The scientists] were shocked to find all 14 macaws were extremely genetically similar—so much so that it appeared 71 percent of them likely shared a maternal lineage...." One may conclude that instead of using macaws exclusively for ritual or sacrifice, somewhere in the US Southwest an aviary had a breeding pair of macaws that were successfully kept alive for at least several years, and whose offspring were distributed within a relatively small geographical area.

These archaeologists'  findings, taken together, strongly suggest that one or more as-yet-undiscovered locations in the US Southwest/Northwest Mexico had aviaries in which Ancestral Puebloans - and perhaps their forebears - bred, raised, and traded macaws locally. Whether or not this supposition turns out to be true, these archaeologists' discoveries point to a much more extensive trade and social network among ancient cultures than what was previously imagined.

Is there anything DNA cannot do?

/s/ webmaster