October 12, 2010

Tuesday 12~~~~Today we packed a picnic lunch and we drove to the "Mesa Verde National Park" where we took a guided tour led by a park ranger to see the cliff dwellings perched high on rocky ledges. About 1400 years ago, long before Europeans explored North America, a group of people living in the four corners region chose Mesa Verde for their home. For more than 700 years they and their descendants lived and flourished here, eventually building elaborate stone communities in the sheltered alcoves of the canyon walls. Then in the late 1200's, in the span of a generation or two, they left their homes and moved away. Ever since local cowboys first reported the cliff dwellings in the 1880's, archaeologists have sought to understand these people's lives. Even with decades of excavation, analysis; scientific knowledge remains sketchy. We will never know the whole story: they left no written records and much that was important to their lives has perished. Pueblo ans tossed their trash close by_scraps of food, broken pottery, anything not wanted went down the slope in front of there homes. Much of what we know about daily life here comes from these garbage heaps. Archaeologists have called these people Anasazi, from a Navajo word sometimes translated as "the ancient foreigners." We now call them Ancestral Pueblo ans, reflecting their modern descendants. In the Classic Period at Mesa Verde from 1100 to 1300, several generations probably lived together as a household. Each family occupied several rooms and built additional rooms as it grew, several related families constituted a clan and each clan would have its own Kiva and rights to its own agricultural plots. Kiva a Hopi word for ceremonial room__underground chambers that may be compared to later churches. Kiva's were also gathering places for luck with hunting or places to weave. (picture) The short brick post along the sides of the wall are where they lay the beams that eventually support the roof. Kivas are entered from the top and down a ladder inside. On the Mesa tops, the Mesa Verde people grew crops of squash, corn and beans which were their main staples. They supplemented their crops by gathering wild plants and hunting deer, squirrels, rabbits and other game. The only domestic animals were dogs and turkeys, they used the turkey feathers for many things, clothes and weaving their ropes and the bones for tools. They worked the soil with digging sticks and often built dams along draws to catch and hold rain and snow, the soil was fertile about the same as today, they cut juniper and pinyon for building materials and firewood. Their dwellings are built beneath the overhanging cliffs, these over hangs are huge and would cover several hundred people. Their basic construction was sandstone that they shaped into rectangular blocks about the size of a loaf of bread. The mortar between the blocks was a mixture of dirt and water. Living rooms averaged about six feet by eight feet, space enough for two or three persons. Isolated rooms in the rear and on the upper levels were generally used for storing crops. One of the videos we watched said some of the corn was several years old, nothing was wasted. These Pueblo ans spent most of their time getting food, even in their best years, farming was their main work. (Note the land above the cliff houses, that is where they grew their crops.They wove handsomely decorated baskets of many sizes and shapes and they used them for carrying water, storing grain, and even for cooking. They waterproofed baskets by lining them with pitch and cooked in them by dropping heated stones into the water. The finest baskets made at Mesa Verde were created before the people learned how to make pottery. After the introduction of pottery about 550, basketry declined. Woman were probably the potters, designs were tended to be personal and local and most likely were passed down from mother to daughter.
Kent signed us up for a 12:00 PM tour and he signed himself up for 2:00 PM tour. I didn't think I wanted to do the second one as it had a lot of climbing of ladder climbing to the different levels as the first one was enough for me with my asthma. We chose to tour the Cliff Palace and the Balcony House, they are open seasonally and were two of the popular ones the park ranger recommended. We had a female Ranger take us on our tour and she didn't do a very good job, we could hear the lady ranger ahead of us talking to her tour group and she never stopped talking, telling them all about the houses and crops and lives of the Indians. Our lady hardly told us anything, she was more worried about all of us staying in line like we were little first graders on a field trip. We learned a lot from the wonderful movies they always show.The second tour Kent took, had a male guide and he did a great job, Kent came back all out of breath, huffing and puffing. He said he was glad I didn't go on that tour. This place is so awesome, I recommend everyone should see it. To finish off this story, I have to write about Kent and going to dinner and watch the baseball game at some friend of ours here in the desert. They served the most delicious ham & bean soup I have ever ate. I commented how good it was and they proceeded to tell us that it was called Anasazi bean soup: the story behind these beans is they were found in the ruins of the Anasazi Cliff dwellers in a bag. Some of them were planted and harvested and now they can be bought under the name Anasazi from the Indian tribe. I don't know how true the story is about the beans being found all these years later, but I am going to buy some before we head home.