Pre-Phoenix

matter of fact I see comet tale streaking across my arch

mostly

@shotgunner The Mormon Rocks appear to be sandstone. is that correct?

The "Cibola" Buttes are shattered granite peaks with a THICK mud and boulder cover running in a line from Phoenix to Tempe and Mesa along the Salt River. Other areas? I don't know yet, having never been there.

Each of the 7 cities contained a temple, each dedicated to a principle direction - North, South, East, West, Center, Up and Down. They had a long history of several thousand years, farming through irrigation to support a huge population of several hundred thousand. All were destroyed in a short time - irrigation ditches now useless at 18 feet above the river level, buildings knocked down, people buried, hills buried in a single sheet.

The "worn out people" of Hohokam.



These were not high speed particles that would have melted or vaporized.
They are regular looking rocks and dirt that could have come from a landslide - except they are the local highlands and show no or little erosion.

That serious question Dave
That mudflow had to be of biblical proportions!
The defined path is huge as you noted.
Yet compared to the size of the valley it only accounts for a certain low percent.
Regardless the path is long. At least 7 miles
From the Camel Head Formation to the Tempe buttes
of which ‘A’ Mountain encompasses

How wide? Estimate about 4 miles?

I have vista pictures taken from atop the McDowell Butte in both directions.
North to the Camel Head Formation and southerly to “A” mountain.
One of your posted pictures shows the Camelback vista.
The southerly vista I’ll need to post…

Here’s a possible scenario
A cataclysmic mud event occurred mya
This left breccia/clastic granite blocks gathered
in the ‘event’ region.
Monsoon rains and erosion over the course of millions of years
turned the mud into silt clay soil ect…
This is the weak part of my hypothesis.

Then the ‘comet tale event’ occurred around 1680.
This scattered the red bed debris .
This would certainly had a devastating effect on the Hohokam/Cibola settlements.

This theory at least accounts for the granite breccias
with out resorting to Aeolian transportation

Question: As anyone done a scientific analysis on the red bed dust to determine its origin?
Is it -- terrestrial or extra terrestrial?
The whole area looks like something from Mars.
The Curiosity rover could easily do the test.

Stay tuned

Moslty6

Where would the sheer volume of material have come from. Forget what moved it. Where did it come from?

Thanks Guys for the links!!!




That’s a good question gunner
Like asking where did all the sediment from the Grand Canyon deposit ?
Where did the massive amount of mud come from?

I always thought it came from the Mogollon Rim area.
That considered a Transition Zone and the higher elevation makes for logical cataclysmic mud/landslide.
down to the Basin Range area of the Valley
Perhaps some of this Papago sediment is from Colorado Plateau & formation of the Grand Canyon ?

Anyway I think the mudflow came from the northerly higher altitude direction.
And I like the alluvial submarine idea

But if none of these pan out

Then we get back to some sort of aoelian occurrence to account for the dust soil sand ect…

Have to admit the South Mountain origin theory for the buttes
leaves me wanting.

Plus the ‘tifoni’ explanation for the caves?

Well... once again were in Aeolian territory

Admittedly my explanation for the caves
-- comet theory or even a mudslide---
crumbles pretty easily. Ha --

I’m not sure why the gemstone author refers to the ‘red beds” as sandstone?
The material I crumbled was much finer than sand .......

Obviously dust motes trailing Buckaroo Banzai across the 8th dimension.



seriously my best guess is a massive landslide blocking the salt river well upstream. When that became waterlogged it broke loose as perhaps a 10-20 mile long mudflow at perhaps 2-300/hour. it could stay narrow for quite a distance, then the lower points drug away and the river channel deepened s the backed up lake drained.

metalsmith the question is what destroyed the cities of Cibola and when. The author gave us a half dozen guesses.
it appears to have happened 1500-1684. (94? I don't remember anymore)

As promised here a southerly vista shot of “A” mountain from atop McDowell butte.



It is deceiving because I’m using zoom.
It’s a good 3 miles away and is on the other side of the Salt River.
Tempe is consider the boundary for the event
Camel Head Formation being the northern boundary


Tempe as built up and incredible complex on a manmade lake.

[quote author="mohs " source="/post/922033/thread" timestamp="1492647303
I’ve spent a lot of time tracking those canals. Amazing that the Hohokam did it without metal. Just stick & stones.
[/quote]

Ed, an antiquarian's tour of the U.K. is revealing about what can be accomplished without metal tools. I visited Stonehenge a few years ago and an English friend who was kind enough to serve as my guide insisted that we visit the Avebury Complex just a few miles away. While Stonehenge is astonishing in its use of incredibly heavy stones, Avebury is an amazing 425-meter diameter trench, dug into the chalk with no tools but the scapulas of oxen. It's huge and just one of literally dozens of similar trenched hill forts spread throughout the country all dug with bone tools. All date from around 2600 to 1800 B.C.