The airy Mesa Verde settlement in Colorado was built by the Anasazi, a civilization that arose as early as 1500 B.C. Their descendants are today’s Pueblo Indians, such as the Hopi and the Zuni, who live in 20 communities along the Rio Grande, in New Mexico, and in northern Arizona. During the 10th and 11th centuries the center of the Anasazi homeland was in the Four Corners region where Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico meet.
The landscape of sandstone canyons, buttes and mesas was populated by as many as 30,000 people. The Anasazi built magnificent villages with mesas that were five stories tall and contained about 800 rooms. The people laid a network of roads across deserts and canyons. And into their architecture they built sophisticated astronomical observatories. Toward the end of the 13th century, some cataclysmic event forced the Anasazi to flee those cliff houses and their homeland and to move south and east toward the Rio Grande and the Little Colorado River.
Just what happened has been the greatest puzzle facing archaeologists who study the ancient culture. Today’s Pueblo Indians have oral histories about their peoples’ migration, but the details of these stories remain closely guarded secrets.
I was intrigued by why the villages were built high in the cliffs. After doing research, I found that a huge impact crater has been discovered under a half-mile-thick Greenland Ice sheet. The enormous bowl-shaped dent appears to be the result of a mile-wide iron meteorite slamming into the island at a speed of 12 miles per second as recently as 12,000 years ago. The impact of the 10 billion ton space rock would have unleashed 47m times the energy of the Little Boy nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. It would have melted vast amounts of ice, sending freshwater rushing into the oceans, and probable sending the Anasazi up into the cliffs for survival.
This would explain the enormous pine trees, in Petrified Forest National Park, were as wide as 9 feet and 200 feet tall during the Triassic period, 200 million years ago. Fallen trees were often buried by the river sediments. Nearby volcanoes erupted abruptly and blanketed the area in volcanic ash with a high silica or crystal content. Rapid burial preserved the trees perfectly. The ash was dissolved by groundwater and the silica or crystal created petrified wood and turned the wood to stone. The Anasazi even used this petrified wood to make houses once the waters receded and the once lush area became the desert that we know today.
Despite the fear that apparently overshadowed their existence, these last canyon inhabitants had taken the time to make their home beautiful. The outer walls of the dwellings were plastered with a smooth coat of mud. Faint lines and hatching patterns were incised into the plaster, creating two-tone designs. The stone overhang had sheltered these structures so well that they looked as though they had been abandoned only within the past decade, only 700 years ago.
What exactly drove the Anasazi to retreat to the cliffs and then what precipitated the exodus? Was it an environmental catastrophe that I believe happened? Another theory that I researched is that nomadic raiders may have driven the Anasazi out of their homeland. But there is no evidence of this. Researchers have begun to look for the answer within the Anasazi themselves. According to researchers they found what is referred to as “socialization for fear” that can produced from long-lasting violence that could have torn apart the Anasazi culture.
Researchers learned of an ancient legend from a guide who had spent time among the Hopi. About a thousand years ago, an elder reportedly said, the pueblo was visited by savage strangers from the north. The villagers treated the them kindly, but soon the newcomers began to forage upon them, and, at last, to massacre them and devastate their farms. In desperation, the Anasazi built houses high upon the cliffs, where they could store food and hide away until the raiders left. Yet this strategy failed and a battle culminated in carnage. Researchers found that they were excavating sites of a major massacres and found individuals whom probably died violently and they recognized that some of the dead had been cannibalized. They also found evidence of scalping, decapitation and face removing probably for trophies.
As I meandered around the ruins of the cliffs and mesas, I pondered what life must have been like here during that dangerous time. It must have been very difficult and frightening but these Anasazi people still made beautiful home on top of these mesas and decorated their cliff dwellings. Archaeologists now generally agree about what they call the “push” that prompted the Anasazi to flee the Four Corners region at the end of the 13th century. It seems to have originated with environmental catastrophes, which in turn may have given birth to violence and warfare after 1250.
Explore the quirky adventures and misadventures as I take you on a journey of the United States National Parks. These journeys inspired me to explore even more about the history of the United States, the good, the bad and the ugly. These journeys are encouragements to explore, or re-examine these beautiful lands. From mountain roads with hairpin turns to stunning seaside escapes to exploring good old American history, these areamazing journeys to take in this lifetime.
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