![](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmbVgPmb9uc9H1gcYVeHZPPtRrJFeHu46egdCX9Ct9R5Ru/image.png)

Over 1,000 years ago, the ancestors of modern Pueblo tribes in New Mexico may have used bonfires to communicate over vast distances. Just like system of mountain-top warning fires in The Lord of the Rings between Gondor and Rohan, evidence of these signal fires has been uncovered at a variety of far-flung ancestral sites, possibly used for alerting neighbors to approaching threats.

![](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmew1Rf7kGLeK84xnk5ttEGSkrcRhkujTkWs4VTUQ4puRC/image.png)

Another speculation is that the fires were used to signal the timing of celestial events, like solstice and equinoxes and eclipses that played an important part in tribal culture and life. Recent tests with mirrors showed that such signals would have been visible between important areas such as Chimney Rock, Chaco Canyon, and Aztec Ruins National Monument.

![](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmTgz5V2M6qQoL4rRHntiZwxCWAqwQFdqpQBo9rqWUkawC/image.png)

Chaco Canyon was an important hub of Ancestral Puebloan culture and economics, and served as a trading center for a variety of goods that could only be had from Central America, such as chocolate, shells, copper bells and macaw feathers. Tribal sources relay that the signal fires were used to alert far-flung outposts that shipments of goods from the south had arrived.