During our time living in Germany and traveling Europe, two thousand year old Roman ruins were everywhere. We almost took for granted being able to explore 900 year old castles on a regular basis. Moving back to the U.S. where 150 years was considered "old" was quite disenchanting, and our kids desperately missed the wonder of ancient civilizations. Everything in the east seemed so new. We had no idea that 2,000 miles to the west of our nation's capital was a cornucopia of ancient Puebloan dwellings just waiting to be explored. If you've been following along, you've likely seen a spattering of cliff dwellings and Puebloan granaries in our photos from Utah and Arizona. These sites gave us a little taste of what we should expect when we arrived in Colorado, then traveled south to New Mexico for a large dose of Puebloan history. We left Utah and headed an hour and a half east to Yellow Jacket, Colorado, staying for two nights at Boondocker's Welcome's 5C Cattle Camp. The temperature had dropped 50 degrees the day before, but we were determined to break our brand new Enduro Lithium battery in hard core! The temperature the first night was 21 degrees and the second night we jumped to 30, but between the new battery, a tank of propane, and the generator, we kept warm. The town of Yellow Jacket is close to several government-run Puebloan Ruins: Hovenweep NM, Lowry Pueblo NHL, Mesa Verde NP, Yucca House NM, and Canyon of the Ancients NM. All the sites were on winter hours, and most of Mesa Verde was shut down, either due to winter hours, road construction, or rock slides. We were disappointed that no ranger tours or programs were taking place, and Mesa Verde had closed their archeology museum for renovations. For months we've heard people talk about the amazing ranger-guided tours of the largest and best preserved cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde. However, tours need to be booked two weeks in advance, and (as we found out) tours shut down for the winter on October 22. We wanted to cry a little bit when we arrived in the area on October 24. That's ok though...it just gives us another reason to come back. From Yellow Jacket, we drove to Oasis RV Resort in Durango where we stayed for 6 nights. These campground owners honor their military guests with a 50% discount on their stay! From Durango, we traveled south to Aztec Ruins National Monument and Chaco Culture National Historical Park. Having visited five of these major historical ancient Puebloan sites, we thought we would have a good understanding of the culture, but there are still so many more questions than answers. Archeologists lump a very complex Native American history and vast stretch of communities into "Ancient Puebloans" because their traditions seem to be fairly similar, though not the same. What I've gathered from these ancient site visits is that different tribes traded and communed with each other, piggybacking off of each other's ideas, but also developing their own regional cultures. Each society must have had their heydays at different times, much like towns do today. What's baffling about each of these settlements though, is that within 100 years of each other, all of them were abandoned. For many centuries, the Puebloan people were hunters and gatherers. They moved like the clouds, never staying in one place very long. Around 200 A.D. they began farming and settled down, originally in small pit houses, which were one room living spaces dug into the ground and entered via ladder in a hole in the top. Chaco Culture National Historical ParkAround 800 A.D., for reasons unknown, the Puebloans, decided to build--and build big! Ginormous Great House complexes began being built in Chaco Canyon in sandstone masonry techniques that had never been seen before. Pueblo Bonito, the largest Great House, was at least four stories tall, and had 600 rooms and 40 kivas (or circular rooms used for ceremonies and worship.) Each house was built to align with celestial cycles, such as the winter solstice, which was an important part of their culture. A road network was built, connecting Chaco to communities far and wide, allowing for trade of turquoise, copper, shells from the Pacific, and even macaws from Central Mexico. For many years, Chaco was the center of the Puebloan universe and visitors came from far and wide until the 1100's when, within the span of two generations, the magical city was abandoned. BTW: Props to the Rangers at Chaco Canyon. This small park is difficult to get to, as visitors must drive 21 miles down a dirt road that has seen its fair share of recent flooding. Of all the parks we have been to in the area, this is the only one who has honored its Ranger Talk schedule. (We attended a 90 minute tour of Pueblo Bonito.) It's hard to get employees during the off-season, but it was so refreshing to see dedicated employees stick to educational programs. Aztec RuinsFifty-five miles north of Chaco is the Aztec Ruins. No, these ruins aren't Aztec, though early Spanish explorers thought they might be and the name stuck. Puebloans began building Chaco-style Great Houses and kivas here around the late 1000's. They built fast, taking only about 25 years to build Aztec West, a complex that boasted 400 rooms. For 200 years, they continued to build and renovate, sticking to the original blueprint, but adding Mesa Verde-style flair. Archeologists believe this community originally supported Chaco activities, but eventually became a cultural hub in its own right, as people began to move away from Chaco Canyon. Again, after just 200 years, the community was abandoned. HovenweepPeople lived in Hovenweep, on the border of present day Utah and Colorado, as early as the 700's, but the community had a population boom between 1100-1230. This settlement is probably the most interesting to me. Originally, these people lived in pit houses on the mesa tops, close to their farms of corn, beans, and squash. They were skilled dry farmers, building check dams to irrigate. For reasons unknown, they began building houses on the canyon rims, and even on isolated boulders within the canyon. The location of these dwellings made little practical sense, as safety was questionable and they were certainly difficult to access. The best guess for archeologists is that springs or water seeps may have been easy to access from those locations. Side note: Water seeps are formed as water percolates through sandstone rock and comes in contact with a lower layer of shale. Water cannot flow through shale, so it begins moving to a low point. Puebloans would carve grooves in rocks so the water would pour out of it like a spout. This shows their ingenious creativity in collecting this elixir of life. Mesa VerdeMesa Verde was unbelievable, and I'm still a little disappointed that we didn't get to do a cliff dwelling tour. There is just so much to learn here. In 1200 A.D., inhabitants of Mesa Verde moved from mesa-top pit houses to large, expensive, expertly engineered cliff dwellings. With several large complexes within the park, this was a thriving community. There are 4,500 archeological sites on the property, and 600 of those are cliff dwellings. (Let that sink in.) Some of them are well preserved and others have been absorbed by nature, but all are spectacular to see. Again, by the late 1200's, these dwellings were abandoned. If walls could talk...What caused all these people to desert these highly engineered homes has baffled archeologists. Was it a change in climate? Were resources depleted? Were they chased out by another tribe? Evidence tends to lean towards the depletion of resources over time. Each of these settlements had thousands of people living in them, and in the arid desert, maintaining a thriving culture would be difficult. They certainly did not "die off" or disappear though. DNA evidence and traditional oral storytelling prove that these people dispersed throughout the southwest, taking many of their building techniques with them.
So much about these ancient peoples has been studied and hypothesized, and still, without any type of written record, there is just so much unknown. The ranger joked that if you ask five archeologists what happened, you'll likely get twelve different answers. These walls can tell us about the what, when, and how, but there are so many whys and actual stories of these people that lived here that will likely never be answered. It kind of makes you wonder if that was the intention.
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