A tale of irreversible environmental decay is told by the remains of pack rat nests in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. Chaco Canyon was populated by the Anasazi Indians, builders of the famous cliff dwellings of the southwest. The numerous cliff dwellings of this bustling ancient civilization have been abandoned for hundreds of years. They are a mystery even to the neighboring modern Indian tribes of the southwestern United States.

But by looking at old pack rat nests in the cliffs and examining their hoarded remains (preserved for hundreds of years through crystallized pack rat urine), archeologists discovered evidence of deforestation as stark as night and day. The materials hoarded by the pack rats changed dramatically.

Prior to 1,000 years ago, there was pinyon-juniper woodland in the Chaco Canyon, but for the past 1,000 years, it has been gone. The evidence tells the story of a civilization using up local woodlands for fuel and building projects, with subsequent erosion destroying the topsoil and converting their irrigation channels into useless arroyos. The environment then could not sustain agriculture. Population declined as people either died out or moved elsewhere. Today, the area is largely desert, as the law of increasing entropy (decay) and one of its consequences, environmental decay, accelerated by poor stewardship, changed the face of the land.

Discovery of the ancient pack rat nests is an example of how environmental decay from poor stewardship of the earth has been a phenomenon throughout the history of mankind. It has led to the decay and abandonment of many ancient sites throughout the world – such as the disappearance of the civilization that rose up to build the great statues of Easter Island fame. That civilization, also, apparently over-exploited the sustaining resources of the island and its surrounding waters and then disappeared to become something of a mystery to this day.

The story that has emerged from the Chaco Canyon pack rat nests is in stark contrast to popular belief that the American Indians were great “stewards” of nature, especially compared to “the white man”.

The Bible in fact touts many principles of stewardship of the earth as mankind’s responsibility – part of God’s “dominion mandate” for mankind (Genesis 1:26, 28, Psalm 8:6). The Bible tells us, for example, that the job God assigned to the first man, Adam, was to care for and maintain the garden of Eden (Genesis 2:15). From principles of sanitation, to tending, cultivating, and caring for nature, to Sabbath rests for the land, the Bible presents environmental stewardship as a responsibility.

These have led to the implementation of robust conservation systems applied within a Western Civilization framework, such as pollution controls and the conservancy of national parks in the National Park system of America. Furthermore, the post-1948 nation of Israel has made “the desert bloom” and many parts of the country are today often described as a “garden” because of responsible stewardship compared to the previous situation under the Islamic Ottoman Empire.

Societies without a biblical basis, or which have traded that basis for a humanist or neo-pagan worldview, do not have the same legacy. Communist societies, for example, such as the old Soviet Union and Communist China, based on atheism and rejection of the Bible, have had the worst pollution records in the world.

• Mark Cadwallader, Board Chairman of Creation Moments

Photo: Pack Rat (Neotoma albigula), Gregory "Slobirdr" Smith, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

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