This soldier was fighting Native Americans when he discovered an elaborate ancient law city. It's unlikely that Jose Antonio Viscara was looking for ancient ruins. After all, it was the height of summer in 1823 and Viscara, the governor of New Mexico, was waging war against the Navajo. For 74 days, Viscara and a column of 1500 soldiers advanced through the west of the state, and their route took them through Chaco Canyon. This was the first recorded journey through the canyon, and while Viscara may not have realized it, he was actually about to make an incredibly important archaeological discovery. In the valley, he spotted the ruins of a number of different buildings. This, as it turned out, was a city of the Anasazi, the ancestors of the Pueblo Native Americans. The canyon lies in a remote location between the modern cities of Farmington and Elbuquerque. From 800 AD to around 1130 AD, however, the site was the hub of Anasazi culture. But even with Viscara's rediscovery of the ancient structures, it wasn't until later in the 19th century that archaeologists began to delve into the secrets of the Chacawan past. In 1848, the United States Army carried out a survey of Chaco Canyon. A lack of natural resources in the area meant that it was of little interest to them, and for over 20 years, the impressive structures lay unstudied. Then in the 1870s, researchers from the Smithsonian Society found the ruins once more. And so it wasn't until 1896 that work on uncovering the secrets of Chaco Canyon began in earnest. It was then that an expedition headed by the Hide Exploring Expedition and backed by the American Museum of Natural History began excavating the site. And over a period of five years, it dug up more than 60,000 historical relics. The most examined of the ruins in Chaco Canyon is known as Pueblo Bonita, which translates as Beautiful Town. The structure is one of several great houses in the 10-mile stretch of the canyon, and spans Nayan 2 acres. When it was finished moreover, Pueblo Bonita was of a similar size to the Palacium of Rome. There are about 650 different rooms inside Pueblo Bonita. Parts of the great house were four stories tall, and in places, the walls are around three-feet thick. Furthermore, as well as featuring living and communal areas, Pueblo Bonita was home to a number of keyvests, shadowy subterranean spaces designed for councils and religious ceremonies. A second great house, Chatro Catil, covers even more space than Pueblo Bonita. The structure spreads over three acres of land and contains more than 500 rooms, and it too reaches up to four stories in height. Archaeologists believe that it took some 29,135 manhours to complete Chatro Catil, with the builders using 50 million blocks of stone, as well as 5,000 trees. Yet it's unclear what Chatro Catil's name actually means. It reportedly first took that specific name in 1849. However, a survey of the same year lists the building as Pueblo Chetocata, which roughly translates as rain Pueblo. Either way, the construction has a number of features that make it stand out from others in the area. The northern wall of the Pueblo has a balcony, for example, while the central block boasted a colonite, though this was later filled in with stonework. These features, moreover, could well show how the architecture of Chaco Canyon changed over the period in which it was inhabited. Unlike other great civilizations, the Anasazi had no written language, and this presents a significant obstacle for trying to discover more about the people of Chaco Canyon. Like theologists have had to find a number of ways around that problem, not least DNA testing, and this has revealed some incredible facts. Genetic tests on remains discovered in a burial chamber at the site have shown that it was possible that the Chacoan culture was based on a matriarchal hierarchy. Power it seems passed down from mother to daughter, and there was another, perhaps even more interesting, discovery. According to the DNA results, there's a very good chance that all of the rulers that archaeologists had discovered were in fact descended from a common female relative. This suggests something pretty startling. Indeed it's possible that the same family may well have led the Anasazi for the whole of their time in Chaco Canyon. The Chaco finds haven't been without controversy though. After working on the original excavation of the site in 1901, a member of the expedition made a claim on the land. The researcher, Richard Weatherl, took 161 acres of the area from south. Yet his stake in the land also had some unforeseen consequences. For starters, it resulted in a thorough mapping of the site. A researcher from the New Mexico Normal University, Edgar Lee Hewitt, worked on the survey in 1902, and there were even more far-reaching changes to come for this Native American ancestral land. Indeed Weatherl's land grab eventually led to changes in the law. In 1906, Congress passed the Federal Antiquities Act in response to the claim, putting this new law in place to defend relics from pre-Columbian America. More over in 1907, Theodore Roosevelt took more steps to ensure that Chaco Canyon would be preserved for generations to come. Roosevelt in fact designated the canyon as a national monument on March 11, 1907. As more in 1966, the area got added to the National Register of Historic Places. These structures of Chaco Canyon were to be preserved and studied so that researchers could gain a better understanding of America's ancient past. Excavations still take place at Chaco Canyon, and archaeologists continue to uncover new mysteries in the Pueblos. A pictograph found on the walls, for example, suggests that the Chacoans may have observed a supernova in 1054 AD. Studies have dug up many thousands of turquoise beads during excavations, too. This interestingly indicates that the site played a large role in the manufacture of important goods. However, the thriving civilization at Chaco Canyon eventually came to an end in around 1150 AD. There are a number of theories as to why this happened, but experts believe that a drought lasting half a century played a role in the changing fortunes of the Anasazi. The Chacoans migrated away from their cities, and the structures stood silently amidst the dust of the arid plains. There they remained, until by chance, Jose Antonio Viscara spotted them again. It's arguably rather ironic that the site's rediscovery happened because of a war with the descendants of the Anasazi. But the relics of Chaco Canyon stand as a reminder of a living, breathing America that existed long before Europeans landed on the continent. Please share this video with your friends below.