Colarado, Part 7

May 22, 2012

Mesa Verde National Park roads seem designed to frustrate people.

We drove 15 winding, twisty miles over mountains to get to the visitors' center and our tour bus.  It's got to be the longest 15-mile drive on the face of the Earth.

Mesa Verde includes 80 square miles of Anasazi cities, inhabited in the 1200s. The word "Anasazi" means "ancient enemy" in the Navajo language.  Although there's been a movement to change the name to something a little more accurate, most of the suggestions have been unwieldy.  Plus, a number of tribes are weighing in on the name change, and can't seem to agree on one.  So our guide used "Anasazi" throughout our tour.

Many of the cities look like the one on the right, tucked under an overhang called an alcove.  They consist of round rooms called kivas, and square homes, many with towers.  Kivas were the rooms in which religious ceremonies were held.  They were also sometimes used as dormitories when no ceremonies were being held.

Our tour was offered through Aramark, a lodge in the park itself, and lasted over three hours.  Our guide took us around to view several sights, with two stops to get out and talk about the culture of the Anasazi. 

At left is our tour guide talking about the yucca plant.  It was (and in some cases still is) used as a source of food, fiber for weaving, the basis for soap, and the soles of sandals.

Our guide also talked about the juniper tree, which is used for a variety of items, including building materials, firewood, food, and decoration.  

 At right is a double-tier city.  Many of the sites are off-limits to visitors, but we got to actually walk into Cliff Palace, one of the largest of the ruins.  It is pictured below.

The cities are made of stone bricks mortered with clay mud.  Most of the cities seem to have been building in a 30-year period.  The Anasazi originally lived on top of the mesas, and then in the early 1200s, began building cities in the alcoves.  Theories about what caused the moves include greater access to water supplies, protection from enemies, and shelter from increasingly poor weather.

Left: Cliff Palace.  Our guide for this was actually a National Park Ranger.  The site is not even remotely handicapped accessible -- you have to be able to climb down 130 steps (some metal, some stone), and up three ladders (about 10 feet long).

Plus the atmosphere is much thinner here, as we were at 7000 feet.  (Sea level is around 5000 feet.)

Still, if you can made the trek, you can actually walk around the plaza that connects the houses and kivas.

At right, if you look closely near the bottom of the picture, you can see a series of logs protruding through the wall.  These logs make up the wooden floor inside the building.  They were cut with hand-axes, giving them a "gnawed" look on the ends.  Several of the houses had more than one level; the tallest building were four stories high.

When you stand next to the doorways of the houses, you realize that the average height of people back then was under 5 feet tall.  Our guide mentioned that that seemed to be pretty universal among people living in the 1200s, no matter where on Earth they lived.

For many years, there was a mystery surrounding the disappearance of the Anasazi.  By the end of the 1200s they had all left the area.  Theories included being chased from the area by enemies, or even alien abduction.  But anthropologists noticed similarities between Anasazi culture and the cultures of the Pueblo and Hopi Indians.  It's now know that the Anasazi moved to a different part of the Southwest and continued their civilization elsewhere. Their descendents are still living on those areas today.