Visiting the Citadel Pueblo

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:05][music] Hello everybody, Ben [music] Woodruff here and in this video we are going to visit the Citadel PBLO which is part of Wupatki National Monument in Arizona.

[00:00:27]But you can't just go visit it. You got to understand some background before because this is a strange, crazy, volatile and explosive area with what happened around that time. So, Watki in and of itself, the whole region um had people living there since the archaic time. For thousands of years, people been living there. But then what we see is in 1040 AD, there's an influx of people starting to come into this area. We're not sure why, but Wup itself begins to grow and Waki was this great pebb PBLO that grew and grew and grew. Um, but then some things happened. 1054 AD, there was a supernova. The Crab Nebula exploded in the sky. We have verified written documents of this happening uh from Japan, China, and the Arabic texts. So, we know that this happened. We know it could be seen day or night for weeks.

[00:01:24]and then in the night sky for months now. Today you can still see it kind of like as a star. You can you look at it with a telescope, but this would have been huge. This would have been a massive upheaval to your world view if you're seeing this thing as bright as the moon day or night in the sky. Then 1066 AD, Haley's Comet pass through.

[00:01:43]Looks like a big old snake. And that's going for like a month through the sky.

[00:01:47]That's got to add some more upheaval signs in the heavens. Then finally, most important of all, in 1085 AD, Sunset Crater blew up. Sunset Crater is a volcano just a few miles from the community of Wupatki. This was right next to people. People were living in the area at the time. Now it looks like uh what happened was at first you would people would have experienced earthquakes, some tremors and then you would start to have fissures coming up from underneath the ground where you'd have steam and smoke coming up from underground and it seems as though the people took this as a sign to get out of the area and they did.

[00:02:27][clears throat and cough] Then the volcano blew up. This eruption was would have been seen for hundreds of miles around. There's an ashfield that goes for hundreds of miles. This is crazy.

[00:02:37]There's nothing like this in the PBloan thinking. There's nothing like this in the understanding in the in the pantheon, in the religious beliefs.

[00:02:46]There's nothing. This is just something totally new, totally crazy and otherworldly. Clearly, it's a sign.

[00:02:51]Clearly, this was a big deal. Uh the volcano itself was very volatile, very explosive, and it left again in Ashefield for hundreds of miles, and it left lava flows, some of which were are 100 feet deep. I went to that uh since that crater and saw it and it's incredible. It's otherworldly. It looks like you're on the moon. So, after this happened though, what we see is there was a quick uh uh comeback where people came back into the area fairly quickly afterwards. And the reason is because all this volcanic ash uh made a nutrient-dense soil that even more important than being nutrient-dense was very good at retaining water. And that high retentive state is uh is a gold mine here in the southwest because in the southwest we find that most of the dirts and soils and sands of the desert when it rains water just washes through.

[00:03:45]So it's hard to irrigate crops. So now you had this incredibly fertile, highly productive region that could support and sustain a larger population. So again there already was a lot of people coming into Wuaki in 1040 AD but after the volcano erupted within a few years by 1085 AD you know by 1090 you had this big huge influx into Wupatki itself.

[00:04:12]Wupaki became a Chocoan outlier. And if you watch my videos, you know how big a deal Choco Canyon was and all the great house communities there and the trade they had going all the way up north and all the way down to Mexico. Massive trade that even brought in Macaus. Well, Wupadki itself became a Choco and outlier. It was a seat of power regionally and even included a Mesoamerican style ball court. So this was a happening place. Uh we found the remains of 53 macaw at this site which is unheard of uh outside of Choco Canyon. You never hear of any thing like that that many macaus in one place live macaw brought up from Mexico. Incredible. This place was so big. So Wupaki was a Chocoan outlier community. But Wupaki itself began to have Wupatkian outlier communities locally. So on top of meas or down below little pblo and little villages started popping up little hamlets and [clears throat] we're going to visit one of these. Now the site we're going to visit is really interesting because down below it has the a pretty typical PBLO but no ka and it has tea doors again showing an affiliation as being a Chocoin outlier saying it's somehow connected to Choco.

[00:05:34]But on top of this volcanic but there is a citadel and in the center of the citadel there's what's the remains what would have been a big old tower. So this is a very interesting community. We're going to go and see it firsthand. I'm going to talk along the way and some of the time we're just going to listen to music and let you experience it for yourself. So thank you for coming along and let's go ahead and look at the Citadel ruins and PBLO as part of Wupatki National Monument.

[00:06:02]I'm here today at Wupatki National Monument and behind me I got Hilltop PBLO, a hilltop ruin. Now, this is really neat. We're going to go see it because there is a PBLO on the ground, but then up above there's also masonry on this uh this is a volcanic but so this is a lava flow that came out in ancient times. And so it just has kind of like a flat messa on top, but they've done structures around the edge. So, there was structures on top as well as a village below. Now, this whole area is volcanic and there's a volcano just down the road, Sunset Crater, that exploded and drove the people out. But not long after, the people came back because all that volcanic ash made a nutrient-dense slurry. Uh, volcanic ash mixed with water and mud that would retain water.

[00:06:53]This is a very desolate area where water just slips through the sand. It made this a much better place to grow and there was a huge influx of people who came here. Now, Wupaki itself is the is the hub. It's the main place where you even had trade coming up from Mexico and going all the way up to Choco Canyon.

[00:07:12]This whole area was a Choco outlier community. So, it was kind of loosely governed, we believe, by the Chocoan system. And people follow the Choco and roads going from here to Utah, further south in Arizona, all the way to Mexico and all the way over to New Mexico and Colorado. But we're going to go ahead and we're going to check this out and see it up close.

[00:07:37]So, there's two PBLO.

[00:07:40]This one we're going to go see on the bottom is Nalaki and then up on top is the Citadel.

[00:07:46]We're going to check them both out.

[00:07:58]the masonry.

[00:08:01]This is really good masonry. But again, this is what you normally see with small PBLO.

[00:08:07]You know, eight rooms in a ka, 10 rooms in a ka, but I don't know that there's a ka here.

[00:08:15]But you have the addition of volcanic rock.

[00:08:30]There's a vent down below there.

[00:08:33]Little hole and a doorway there going into that room.

[00:08:44]But not seeing any tea doors and not seeing any kas.

[00:09:02]There we go.

[00:09:04]Here's what's left of a tea door. Tear doors started out at Choco Canyon and they spread. I've done other videos talking specifically about detours and what they meant. This is a very faint one. If you can see, there's sort of a lip.

[00:09:25]These walls would have gone up much higher and you would have had a roof over the top. But this tea door, these barely go in.

[00:09:35]Look at these. Look at the width of my hand. This is nothing. So people who say this is so that you can get a bundle of firewood in. You got to think this through like me, I can barely walk through this.

[00:09:56]It's a statement. It's a It's something much more than just something functional.

[00:10:03]You could put like a little lantern or an offering or something like this on each side. But again, at Pakime, we see T- door apertures as freestanding altars that aren't even doors. So again, look how narrow this is.

[00:10:22]This is not about getting a bundle of firewood in and out. Some people suggest because macaw were kept here. They say this is so the macaw can fly in and out.

[00:10:32]but it just doesn't track. I've raised macaw.

[00:10:36]I've bred and flown and trained macaw.

[00:10:38]You don't need this. A macaw will just pull its wings in. And this little lip is not helping or harming a macaw in any way.

[00:10:52]It's a beautiful pblo.

[00:11:13]So at Choco Canyon, New Mexico, which is kind of the hub, there's the halves and the have nots.

[00:11:23]Choco Canyon. Originally, it seems that there were PBLON people living there and then people coming up from Mexico, likely Toltechs or you know postto Toltech people coming up came and brought a lot of their systems up with them and they brought amazing things and they brought terrible ideas as well all the way up to including uh slave trades and cannibalism. [snorts] That's where you see the birth of the T- door aperture and that's where you start to see a class division system which you had in Mexico. In Mexico you had royals, you had elites, you had artisans, you had uh warrior classes, you had all priestly classes, all these different things that weren't necessarily part of the pbloan pantheon. But when this happened here, what you see at Choco is you see halves and have. So you the have nots were on the south side of the river in Choco Canyon and there's just these pblo just like we're seeing now you know eight rooms in ka 10 rooms in aka 12 rooms in aka well and I'm not seeing a ka here there might be one there is a lot of structures over here that are not together but I'm not seeing a ka but I am seeing a tea door aperture and that aperture is pointing outward which is saying hey towards the rising sun and guess what if you are coming towards our village you understand we are associated with whatever the T represents. But I want to see the citadel up on top and we're going to take a look. But again, the shape of this PBLO is so similar to the have knots in Choco Canyon. But again, after the volcano erupted, after Sunset Crater erupted, there was this big influx of people who came into this area. So, it's going to be interesting to uh take a look up top.

[00:13:23]So across the way here, this is showing you can see these troughs that were carved into the side there for planting planting corn just right across the way there, which is neat to know.

[00:13:41]Tiny little echoes of the past all through here.

[00:13:47]Caution, snake habitat, not in January.

[00:14:02]You can see even from here just how well that masonry just using the natural rocks blends in so well.

[00:14:33]Oh me.

[00:14:49]Yo. Yo, yo yo yo yo yo yo yo.

[00:16:14]Here on top of the citadel is an incredibly commanding view. [music] And as we often have at these ancient sites, have a raven almost watching over this place.

[00:16:53]But the structure here, this is [snorts] this is strange because I don't know if this has been excavated. This is all heaped up. These are rooms that would have had roofs and all this [music] this big old pile.

[00:17:08]This is all structure. This goes way down as we saw below. You know, these walls go down, you know, 10 ft. So, we're standing on top of collapsed roofs right now.

[00:17:21]And it makes me wonder if this is the ka.

[00:17:29]Our raven guardian here is just keeping an eye on me.

[00:17:35]He's about 10 ft away and he's just just watching. Just keeping an eye on everything.

[00:17:42]It's hard to see, but if you can see around here, including the shape, this is very much a circular structure here. This might have been a ka. It might have been the tower structure. But even the way the plants are growing in it based off a buildup of organics, even you can just see you can't you can't see this the way I'm filming.

[00:18:08]>> [snorts] >> You just can't get it. But this is most definitely a circular structure.

[00:18:15]And being that this was so high, this is probably higher above the rest. So you had rooftops here. And this probably went up even higher.

[00:18:26]There's a tower structure.

[00:18:32]Hey, brother.

[00:18:44]Love ravens.

[00:18:50]This gives [music] you an idea just how high we are.

[00:18:56]Again, we're on 10 ft of wall. If we look at it from the side, hopefully you can get a sense of this.

[00:19:06]There was very intentional masonry [music] built up. So what looks on top to just be what's left of a publo, this was much taller.

[00:19:17]And there's some very good masonry here.

[00:19:29]I don't like to be too metaphysical about things, but this guy right here.

[00:19:35]It is like he's watching over me. In national parks, ravens are very, very, very, very smart. They become very acclimated to people and they learn, hey, if I just hang around people, they're going to give me food. But he's not coming towards me. He's not making sounds at me. It's like this is his place. He's just keeping an eye on things, you know. And this time of day, it's morning. It's cold. It's been below freezing. It's barely barely now, just barely above freezing. He should be looking for food, but he's doing strange calls and just kind of chilling here.

[00:20:09][snorts] And again, [clears throat] it is sort of a metaphysical kind of worldview, but it feels like he's keeping an eye on this place and making sure that I treat it with respect, which of course I will, but it's neat having him here. [snorts] At Choco Canyon, there's a raven that when you go to Pueblo Bonito is always waiting there.

[00:20:32]And it's the most unique raven. If you see this guy, you can see ravens are iridescent. They have rainbow in their feathers. If you see it in the light, it's like an oil slick in the parking lot. There's this raven at Choco Canyon that is flat matte black. And he's always waiting there, right, for waiting there for people guarding PBlo Bonito.

[00:20:51]And I feel like this raven here is guarding the citadel at Watki.

[00:21:10]The overall footprint of this citadel is is absolutely huge. It actually dwarfs the PBLO that's down below. It's hard to do it justice, but this up here, there's tons of rooms.

[00:21:22]I mean, this place is massive.

[00:21:26]And it's kind of strange. I don't know if the work has been done to show which came first, the PBLO down below or the citadel up top.

[00:21:39]God, I wish you could see this again.

[00:21:42]This right here, there's a circular structure and based on the masonry, it looks like this was a tower, but you just it's not picking up in the footage, but again, all of this is built up.

[00:21:56]And you can see the PBLO down below.

[00:22:00]Not very big compared to the citadel up here. So, is this another strange case of halves and haveotss?

[00:22:07]Are the people up top here the halves?

[00:22:09]And the people down below are the have knots. Are these totally different time periods?

[00:22:17]Yeah. Right there.

[00:22:21]It's wild.

[00:22:24]But then again, coming over to this edge, you have this commanding view.

[00:22:29]You're going to see anybody coming near for miles and miles around. Next PBLO is over there.

[00:22:39]You can see you right up top there.

[00:22:42][snorts] But again, you're going to see people 20, 30 miles out from up here. It's a very commanding view.

[00:22:51]And again, corn was grown right here.

[00:23:04]>> [snorts] >> And you can see how much of the masonry has fallen off. Just [snorts] falling all down below.

[00:23:13]These towers are much taller.

[00:23:20]Well, I hope you enjoyed seeing the Citadel. Again, this is part of the Watki Chakan Outlier system. It's a beautiful site. It's not a far little hike just to get up from the main road.

[00:23:33]Definitely worth seeing. And again, seeing that tower structure in the center. I wish it was still standing, but you can still see the footprint of it. But I hope you enjoyed visiting this little site. And I hope you also check out my video on Waki, which was the great house that kind of ruled over this whole area. Um, would love to know your comments and thoughts on the site. And always remember that life is a gift. So never stop learning and never stop exploring. We'll see you next time.