I love the history

We've been here near Mesa Verde for two weeks now, and I have truly grown enamored with the ruins and the scant knowledge of how the people lived and built these wonderful structures.

The old term was Anasazi; which is no longer used because it has been so long associated with an ancient people who mysteriously disappeared.  The newly evolved archeological thinking is that they did not "disappear mysteriously" at all; but moved away to the south (northern New Mexico mostly), and their descendants live here (and there) to this day.  The Native Americans proclaim this to be true; and refer to their descendants who lived in these ruins as "Ancestral Puebloans".  

Presumably the main reason to have moved away was there is documented two periods of severe drought; one lasting 25 years.  Of course they were primarily farmers, growing their crops on the mesa tops, dependent on approx. 17 inches of rain per year plus snow melt. They built a really sophisticated system of water catchment on the upper mesa, although there is no evidence of actually irrigating the crops.

The earliest dwelling structures (from 1 to 650 AD) were 'pit houses' which were dug about half into the ground and then topped with a primitive wood structure, covered with woven matting and then 'plastered' with mud. The entrance was thru a hole in the roof with a ladder thru it. 
By 750 they had started building single level dwellings with rock walls and wood/matting roofs.
By 1100 they were building multi-story structures .... but still on the relatively flat mesa tops.
By 1250 the first cliff dwellings appeared.
Many ruins show later period dwellings to have been built on top of the earlier period structures.
One canyon we visited this afternoon had cliff dwellings of various sizes on both sides of the steep (400 plus feet deep canyon walls. 
I just love the feeling of watching a dwelling and imagining the activity of the village so long ago.

One of my favorite quotes (which I heard in a film at the Ute Mountain Cultural Center) was one of their current elders saying that the story (as passed down to him from many, many ..... many..... previous generations) was that the reason the original "Ancestral Puebloans" moved away, was that  "It Was Time".

Well, it is time .... that we move on south.  I really LOVE this area .... and we will return some year or other.
But for now we have a balloon festival to see in Albuquerque.

Later,
Marilyn