Mesa Verde National Park an Act of Congress

C. Gilbert Wenger writes in bill of tabular array Verde National Park that the Anasazi way of life and their fundamental int epochction with their environment may be traced through a serial publication of developments. During their hunter-gatherer stage, the Anasazi were at one with their environment. Essentially nomadic, the family groups migrated from place to place in a loose confederation, searching for plant and animal foods to entertain and sustain themselves. Life was precarious at best, a variety show of hand-to-mouth existence. When food sources played out because of excessive consumption, drouth, or increased population, the family groups moved to another area in the sphere. dry land eventually had to replace hunting-and-gathering as the main source of food. The Anasazi of this era lived in pit houses clustered in small villages. Villages were oft strengthened on mesa tops (Wenger, 1980).

Occasionally, these early villages were rigid under cliff overhangs. By 1000 A.D., the hoi polloi of Mesa Verde had advanced their methods of building. There was a steady progression from less(prenominal) substantial structures such as those made of adobe to homes built of stone and masonry. Homes with walls of thick stone often rose 2 or even three stories high. Christina Clarke (2000) writes in American inheritance that the houses were joined together to form compact clusters around impart courtyeards. In these common courtyards the Anasazi dug pits.

Clarke, C. (2000). Colorado. American Heritage, 51(2), 110.

Archeologists have also theorized that since the Ancient Puebloans had certainly survived in spite of previous droughts, it is likely that a combination of factors resulted in the exodus. For example, it is possible that a serious drought combined with hundreds of long time of intense farming had depleted the Anasazi's farmland as comfortably as intrusions by other seen by the Anasazi as their enemies. B. enclose in Science News writes that excavations of three 850-year-old pit dwellings strewn with butchered homophile skeletons have yielded evidence of cannibalism. During a period of intense warfare throughout the region from A.D. 1150 to 1200, residents of the dwellings fell prey to attackers who killed and ate them.

inclose adds that severe drought and political upheaval in the region may have temporarily sparked cannibalistic practices.

Scientists also hit the sack that beginning in 1276 A.D., a drought struck the region. That drought lasted for twenty three years and it coincided with what scientists now believe to be the last of the new constructions in and around Mesa Verde. ane by one the springs that supplied water to the Anasazi dried up. The Ancient Puebloans had no choice but to move from Mesa Verde. They migrated federation in search of new homes in a region with a more dependable water supply. According to an article in Science News(2002), the fact that the Anasazi left the valley as a group rather than stay in reduced numbers game suggests that factors other than drought, such as disease, may have been at work. Because Anasazi culture was so complex and the parched valley could no longer support a critical mass of people to maintain the society, all of the Anasazi chose to leave together (Could the Anasazi have stayed? , 2002, 174). notice Muro writing in Science (2000) suggests that the large-scale exodus to the south would have required a higher degree of brotherly cohesion than has been attributed to the Anasazi cul
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