Written on the Landscape: Mysteries Beyond Chaco Canyon conveys to viewers the brilliant achievements of the Chaco civilization -- many of which are in grave danger today. This one-hour documentary reveals the astounding reach of the Chacoans across 70,000 square miles of the American Southwest. Without modern tools, wheel or beast of burden, these ancient people built ceremonial Great Houses and connected them to places of spiritual power with massive "roads," remarkably straight and as wide as modern two lane streets. Inspired engineers and laborers achieved feats equal to the other archaeological wonders of the ancient world. But those of the Chacoans have been long obscured in a fragile desert environment -- only now to be recovered through beautiful aerial footage and with the new technology of LiDAR (aerial laser scanning) revealing the true expanse of the Chacoan's complex world.

Filmmakers Anna Sofaer and Christopher Beaver take viewers on an exciting exploration of the minds and inspirations of this remarkable culture driven by religion and cosmology. As scholars of the sky, they made their center at Chaco Canyon, a place that joined the cycles of the sun and moon and unified the people in a huge reach across one of the most challenging environments of the world. The people emerge from a thousand years ago through new insights of archaeologists, the words of descendent Pueblo people who hold knowledge of their ancestors to this day, and the Navajo inhabitants of the region. This same capability to be deeply attuned with the natural environment is still with us today. We can awaken to these capacities through experiencing the finely constructed works of those who came before us.

Written On The Landscape is the third in a series of films on the Chacoan people. The previous films, The Sun Dagger and The Mystery of Chaco Canyon, were narrated by Robert Redford and produced by The Solstice Project for PBS