AmericaQuest is an interactive expedition developed by Classroom Connect. For four weeks a team of scientists and explorers will work to unravel the mysteries surrounding an ancient Pueblo indian tribe. Follow along here for daily reports on the Quest.

A stop along the way

Is it prehistoric alphabet soup, or important clues?

By Dan Buettner

March 22, 2000
Web posted at: 2:15 p.m. EST (1915 GMT)

For the past couple weeks, I've been building a warfare theory to explain why the Anasazi abandoned their dwellings. Today it got shot down.

In Cave 7, we found the site of mass graves with over 100 bodies dumped there. We explored Chaco Canyon, the center of what some archaeologists believe was a brutal regime of terror. At Castle Rock we saw rock art depicting people shooting arrows -- apparently at each other. Yesterday at Scaffold House ruins, we found a site tucked high in a canyon, surrounded by lookout points -- sure signs of defense.

Today, however, we joined the 620,000 other people who will visit Mesa Verde this year. Mesa Verde is the most famous Anasazi site in America, a vast highland plateau etched with canyons where, as one archaeologist put it, "No matter where you are, you are within a bowling ball's roll from an ancient ruin." Among the 4,000 ruins at Mesa Verde are both the first and second largest cliff dwellings, Cliff Palace and Spruce Tree House. Mesa Verde also happens to be where Christine believes her ancestors originate.

Will Morris, the park's chief interpreter, agreed to spend the day with us. Will met us in his tiny, cluttered office in the back of the visitor's center. Like most Park employees, he wore a crisp khaki shirt, olive green slacks, gleaming shoes, and the same brimmed hat that Smokey the Bear wears. Outside, it was snowing hard and the otherwise desert-like ground had turned into mud. "If you don't mind," he said, "I'll change into my 'civies' and we'll slog."

A few minutes later, Will arrived wearing blue jeans, a raincoat and a "Fox Sports" baseball cap. I had told him that our online collaborators were interested in warfare and asked him if he knew of any evidence of it at Mesa Verde.

"For years," he replied, "violence was the reason given for the Anasazi moving into the cliff dwellings, but the evidence just doesn't support that here. We just haven't found a significant number of weapons or mass grave sites like at other places."

"What caused the abandonment then?" I asked.

"I think it could be a number of things," he said. "Come, let me show you."

Will marched us through the mud, past an ancient check dam, through juniper and pinon forests, and onto a cliff with a jaw-dropping view of Spruce Canyon. We stopped. "Right now we're standing on a mesa," Will explained. Until about 1200, most of the Anasazi lived and grew their crops up here, but for some reason they then moved down into the cliff dwellings.

He pointed across the canyon to a row of adobe structures tucked into an alcove on the opposite canyon wall. "They might have moved there for defensive purposes, or maybe it was because their population grew too large and they needed all the mesa land for their crops."

Will Morris, a ranger with the National Park Service, explains the topography of Mesa Verde to the team

We then descended some slippery rocks, turned a corner and stood before the most awesome display of rock art we've seen yet.

"We call it rock art but I doubt that it's just rock art," Will said. He stood looking at a bizarre jumble of figures that looked a bit like prehistoric alphabet soup. "I don't think they would have spent hundreds of hours chipping those figures into the rock just for art's sake. These were petroglyphs. I think they had specific meanings."

"What meanings?" I asked.

"We had a Hopi elder here looking at it a few years ago and he told me that it speaks about a migration." He went on to explain that after Chaco Canyon began to decline, the center of power in the Anasazi world moved close to Mesa Verde (modern day southwestern Colorado). "Perhaps," he continued, "Mesa Verde was just a long stop on a very long journey for the Native Americans?"

Why leave such a beautiful place? Mesa Verde has water, trees, wild animals, land for growing food, alcoves for shelter, and some of the most stunning scenery on earth. Will just shrugged.

I turned to Christine. Since her ancestors may very well come from Mesa Verde, I thought she might have an answer. "Do you think it's a migration story?" I asked.

At that, Christine blushed. "I don't talk about that," she said. "I can't talk about that."

Pedals Up!

Dan

AmericaQuest
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