Today was yet another good day. I had told C that I'd be in Salt Lake City by this weekend, but once M left, I realized how much harder driving is when one can't share the load. I decided to take it slow instead of trying to stick to a schedule, and I feel much better for it.
I slept in this morning, and then made my way back to Mesa Verde National Park. It was sunny and 60 degrees when the wind wasn't blowing. I paid $3 for a ranger guided tour of the Cliff Palace. Contrary to what I had learned about the Anasazi growing up, they didn't mysteriously disappear as a culture, but spread out throughout Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico to become today's Puebloans. Nor were cliff dwellings the norm.
Around 1-100AD, the Anasazi showed signs of converting from hunter gatherers to a sedentary agrarian society, farming corn in the loamy soil of mesa tops. Most Anasazi communities were built on mesa tops, and there are signs that the communities kept in touch with each other. Getting from one mesa to another had to be tough - the mesa tops are 500-600 ft above the valley floor, and the Anasazi got around by ladder or hand and toeholds cut into the rock.
The cliff dwellings didn't come into existence until 1200AD, and it's speculated that they happened as defensive gestures. Tree ring dating shows a long-term drought in the area around 1200AD, and archeology shows that the area had become increasingly populated. The Anasazi kept no written records, so researchers can only speculate that resources had become scarce, so communities built hard to reach cliff dwellings to store their food. Things must have gotten bad, because by approx 1270AD, the Anasazi had left the area.
After the tour, I visited the Spruce Tree House, which are another set of ruins. Perhaps I'm culturally insensitive (I am), but I'm starting to feel like all the ruins look the same. I've now seen several Anasazi kivas, and I'm kind of... bored. As cool as it is that the Anasazi were building multi-story towers in 1200AD, it was kind of late by European and Asian standards. By then, basilicas and cathedrals had been built throughout Europe, Shaolin temples existed in China, nobles would soon demand that their king provide them rights and Confucious had already developed his philosophy. I know I'm not supposed to stay stuff like that, but I haven't made anything up.
The best part of the day was when I walked Petroglyph Trail, a 2.4mi loop that passes a small section of Anasazi art. The album shows some of that in detail. I think I can make out two birds, a mountain range with people and a Anasazi village below it, a mountain lion, a big horn sheep, and a man with either a stick/sword/sickle in front of another man (possibly fighting?). It's kind of cool. Too bad we'll never know if it was just a bunch of Anasazi kids fooling around, or if this was the local artist went to put down his thoughts. :-)
