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While I was on the road a few years ago, I had the chance to go to the Black Water Draw in Clovis,NM, the place were the earliest signs of humans was found.

The museum there went into detail about that drought, and so do many of the local Spanish histories.

Picture a corn growing place like Iowa going to desert in a few decades, and you kind of get an idea of what happened. The area went from agriculture and cities to isolated outposts surrounded by waste land very quickly.

Yes, so I've also read and imagined, particularly after viewing the petrified trees and tree trunks...very large, substantial trees toppled over and petrified where they lay, without the ability to even decay, indicating severe and extreme drought conditions occuring relatively quickly.

Must'a been horrific to experience. Also global, from what I've read as to similar terrible conditions affecting the Mediterranean.

I did read as to what's been determined to have caused the global drought (that's inherent to this article about Mexico's experience of it), but now can't recall. I THINK it is attributed to the wobble of the Earth's orbit around the Sun but can't be certain (memory is foggy about this). There's always the "increased volcanic activity" that causes global atmospheric occlusion and thus, limits what sunlight reaches the planet's surface, then affecting everything else...since the drought was worse on the shared longitude, it seems to indicate, actually, both.

Tangentially...of interest here...the area that was populated at it's height of civilization by the Egyptians was sent into permanent drought (remains so) due to the fact that the Himalayas rose up as a high range during the many centuries of the Egyptians -- and the rising mountain range to their East changed the atmospheric moisture flow on the planet.