Again, please indicate the likely route you think they would have taken. Which waterways?

> When it rains all those white river shaped things turn into rivers that you can float logs down.

You are conjecturing. I've seen wet arroyos. They are not like the image you've shown with the nice flat water.

Here's what it looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obrgK17L1UM and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmO0xzXapeg and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ40m2SoBWM and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1PTLOp_hUs .

These are short-lived events. You are not going to pole a raft 50+ miles upstream during that time in that flow.

Yes, they can be enough to carry logs downstream. But they'll also easily snag, and be abraded.

> As long as the current is relatively weak it's easy to move a boat by pole.

Why do you think the water flow in NM arroyos, in those rare times when the water is deep enough to float a log, is "relatively weak"?

In NM there are a lot of warnings to stay out of arroyos when it rains, because the water can come quickly, with a dangerous flow.

For example, from https://www.koat.com/article/officials-urge-residents-to-sta...:

] LT. CHRIS CARLSEN WITH THE ALBUQUERQUE FIRE DEPARTMENT SAYS IT ONLY TAKES INCHES OF WATER IN AN ARROYO TO SWEEP YOU AWAY. Carlsen: "It doesn't seem very dangerous when it's hot and dry but it takes a very small amount of rain in the foothills or mesa to fill these channels up quickly." AND WHEN IT POURS AND THOSE ARROYOS FILL UP - THE WATER MOVES FAST AND GETS DEEP. LOOK AT WHAT THE WATERS HAVE DRAGGED DOWN THE CHANNEL, ALREADY THIS SEASON: Carlsen: "You can see the water can move concrete. We've had forklifts, vehicles come washing down the system." IF A PIECE OF HEAVY MACHINERY IS NO MATCH FOR THE RUSHING WATER ... NEITHER ARE YOU

> You don't need much more than a few inches to float logs.

To repeat the previous quote, "IT ONLY TAKES INCHES OF WATER IN AN ARROYO TO SWEEP YOU AWAY."

You can work out how a rough minimum required depth.

The paper says their test log is 22 cm in diameter = 8.6 inches and "timbers of at least 0.61 m diameter were used at Chaco as vertical support columns in great kivas", so 24 inches.

Pine greenwood appears to have a density about 700 kg/cubic meter so it looks the test log needs 5-6 inches of depth and the vertical support columns need about 1.5 feet. (I used the greenwood weight since you're going to waterlog the pine anyway. The dried density is only about 400 kg/cubic meter.)

That's a lot of water in dry New Mexico!

Oh, and your hypothesis requires that each one of the "white river shaped things" is that inches deep, to be able to float logs. They merge into the Coyote Wash, so that would be carrying a huge volume of water. But looking at the aerial pictures you can see it's never had regular huge flows like that.

Aslo, there's about a 600 foot rise from where Coyote Wash meets the Cacho River to Chaco Canyon proper, so there's a decent river flow. (A flow you saw in the photograph.)

In Three Men in a Boat they punt the Thames from Kingston upon Thames to Oxford. That's 100 miles, and a rise of <200 feet. This stretch of the Cacho Wash is 600 feet in 50 miles, so about 6x the slope, and thus a rather faster current than the Thames.

> How many examples are there of them choosing to carry heavy stuff when water transport was available?

That doesn't answer my question. If no one brought tens of thousands of logs upstream 50 miles by water using only manual labor than your appeal to history is bad logic. If you can't show people did it, you can't appeal to history.

Further, you've yet to demonstrate that appropriate water transport was available to the Chaco Canyon dwellers.

Further, the paper cites the archeological evidence that "that the people of Chaco used tumplines to carry a variety of materials (water vessels, maize, ceramics, chert, obsidian, turquoise, cacao, and even macaws) across a trading network spanning the San Juan Basin and beyond."

What evidence is there for your proposed transport method?