Anasazi
Mesa Verde is the center of the prehistoric Anasazi culture. It is located in the high plateau lands near Four Corners, where Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona come together. This high ground is majestic but not forbidding. The climate is dry out tiny streams trickle at the bottom of deppy cut canyons, where seeps and springs provided water for the Anasazi to irrigate their crops. Rich red soil provided fertile ground for their crops of corn, beans, squash, tobacco, and cotton. The Anasazi domesticated the wild turkey and hunter deer, rabbits, and mountain sheep.
For a thousand years the Anasazi lived around Mesa Verde. Although the Anasazi are not related to the Navajos. No one knows what these Indians called themselves and so they are commonly referred to by their Navajo name, Anasazi, which means “ancient ones” in the Navajo language.
Around 550 A.D,, early Anasazi – then a nomadic people archaeologists call the Basketmakers – began constructing permanent homes on mesa tops. In the next 300 years, the Anasazi made rapid technological advancements, including the refinement of not only basket making but also pottery – making and weaving. This phase of development is referred to as the Early Pueblo Culture.
By the Great Pueblo Period (1100-1300 A.D,,) , the Anasazi population swelled to more than 5,000 and the architecturally ambitious cliff dwellings came into being. The Anasazi moved from the mesa tops onto ledges on the steep canyon walls, creating two – and there – story dwellings. They used sandstone blocks and mud mortar. There were no doors on the first floor and people used ladders to reach the first roof. All the villages had underground chambers called kivas . Men held tribal councils there and also used them for secret religious ceremonies and clan meetings. Winding paths. Ladders, and steps cut into the stone led from the valleys below to the ledges on which the villages stood. The largest settlement contained 217 rooms. One might surmise that these dwellings were built for protection, but the Anasazi had no known enemies and there is no sign of conflict.
But a bigger mystery is why the Anasazy occupied these structures such a short time. By 1300, Mesa Verde was deserted. It is conjectured that the Anasazi abandoned their settlements because of drought, overpopulation, crop failure, or some combination of these. They probably moved southward and were incorporated into the pueblo villages that the Spainsh explorers encountered 200 years later. Their descendants still live in the Southwest.
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