[BGHater]

Mesa Verde in southwest Colorado was one of the settlements of the Anasazi. ("Mesa verde" is "green table" in Spanish.) The Anasazi first arrived in the sixth century A.D., and the remains of their buildings can still be seen on and around the mesa.

In the 1200s, the Anasazi built dwellings into the side of the mesa, including this one known as the Cliff Palace. Cliff Palace was probably an important administrative and ceremonial site. Its 150 rooms were home to about 100 people. Most of the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde were far smaller than those at the palace; three-quarters of them had just one to five rooms. The buildings were made of sandstone, mortar and wood.

For modern people, the doorways would be too short. An average-size male Anasazi was five-foot-four or five-foot-five, and an average woman was about four inches shorter.

In southern Colorado, the Anasazi also built a giant ceremonial great house near the Chimney Rock buttes. It is now believed that the Chimney Rock site was an observatory aligned so that the moon rose between the two buttes during "a major lunar standstill," when the moon appears to rise at the same spot for two or three nights in a row.

The round room was a kiva, a ceremonial chamber.

In the 13th century, for reasons still not well understood, the Anasazi abandoned Chimney Rock, Mesa Verde and other settlements and moved to the south. The Hopi in Arizona are believed to be among their descendants.

[BGHater]

Ping

[BenLurkin]

Beautiful photos.

[ReagansRaiders]

Anasazi was the second season finale of The X-Files. Good episode!

[PzLdr]

Did it have anything to do with the Apaches being driven south, then west by the Comanches?

[Michael.SF.]

Some 700 years ago, as part of a vast migration, a people called the Anasazi, driven by God knows what, wandered from the north to form settlements like these

Apparently Arizona has a long history of illegal immigration problems.

[353FMG]

“The round room was a kiva, a ceremonial chamber.”

The round room looks more like a cistern. Look at the water downspouts. At this elevation, water must have been a precious commodity.

[UNGN]

"Anasazi" is supposedly like the "N-Word" for Navaho's to call Hopi's, so the PC term is "Ancestoral Puebloan People".

The Sunset Crater Volcano erupted around 1300, right in the middle of their civilization. I wonder if it played a role in their demise. I know I would be pretty upset if an active volcano (even a small one) started erupting in my neighborhood.

[rednesss]

"a central hearth and a sipapu, or spirit hole, symbolizing the passage through which the first people emerged from mother earth."

The very first "Vagina Monologues". Does Hillary know about this????

[rednesss]

On a more serious note, I lived in Cottonwood, AZ for a summer in 1987. Whilst there we went to a lot of these cliff dwellings and they are pretty impressive. Montezuma Castle is a sight worth seeing. Canyon de Chelly, Tuzigoot, and the old Army forts, Sedona, old silver mines.......lots to see down there.

[Continental Soldier]

Great photos! But ‘an inconvenient truth’ intrudes: The Anasazi, the darlings of the archaeological set, were stupid in the face of change, and that’s why they are dead.

[Dinah Lord]

bump and mark for later read

[george76]

Anasazi, which means ‘ancient enemy’ in the Navajo language, was used by the Navajo people to name the early pueblo dwellers .

The Hopi, who are the descendents of the Anasazi, called their predecessors the “Hisatsinom.”

[SunkenCiv]

“and for dessert, lady fingers!”

WSU Researchers Study Fate of an Ancient American Southwest Civilization
Salem-News.com | 2-19-2008 | WSU
Posted on 02/29/2008 6:33:25 AM PST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1978229/posts

[SunkenCiv]

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