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700 years ago, in the area that we today know as Arizona and New Mexico, the Anasazi people came en masse from the north to build large stone settlements. Their predecessors (the Hohokam) had built with sticks and mud, and as a result the older settlements are much harder to find today. The Anasazi settlements stand as grand, abandoned cities that now house a mystery: why did these people move south? What would cause a thriving civilization to pull up stakes and abandon its homeland?
A New York Times article surveys the current archaeological thinking:
Scientists once thought the answer lay in impersonal factors like the onset of a great drought or a little ice age. But as evidence accumulates, those explanations have come to seem too pat — and slavishly deterministic. Like people today, the Anasazi (or Ancient Puebloans, as they are increasingly called) were presumably complex beings with the ability to make decisions, good and bad, about how to react to a changing environment. They were not pawns but players in the game.
Looking beyond climate change, some archaeologists are studying the effects of warfare and the increasing complexity of Anasazi society. They are looking deeper into ancient artifacts and finding hints of an ideological struggle, clues to what was going through the Anasazi mind.
What makes the puzzle weirder is that the Anasazi never went back to their northern homeland. Even if climate change (for example, a drought in the thirteenth century) caused the initial migration, why didn’t the Anasazi people return to their northern cities after the rains returned, just a few decades later?
In the remains of Sand Canyon Pueblo, in the Mesa Verde region, Kristin A. Kuckelman of the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Cortez, Colo., sees the story of a tragic rise and fall. As crops withered, the inhabitants reverted from farming maize and domesticating turkeys to hunting and gathering. Defensive fortifications were erected to resist raiders.
The effort was futile. Villagers were scalped, dismembered, perhaps even eaten. Families were slain inside their dwellings, and the pueblo was burned and abandoned. Curiously, as was true throughout the region, the victors didn’t stay to occupy the conquered lands.
Read the rest for an overview of modern thinking on this age-old mystery. (Also be sure to check out the slide show.)
Comments (6)
Comment
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I visited two of these sites during my time in Arizona, and both times I concluded that it was just not feasible for the people to avoid fatal attacks from raiders. They practically cornered themselves against the wall, with the only advantage being able to clearly see their approaching doom-bringers. I’d relocate, too.
On a whimsically unrelated note, it looks like you guys are approaching your 20,000th post! Cool!
posted by Johnny Cat on 11-7-2008 at 1:57 pm
It was unusual for them to be there in the first place. I think it was a charismatic leader who brought them there and created that style of living. When the leader died, that style of living died.
posted by Jake on 11-7-2008 at 4:46 pm
This is totally silly, and I’m certainly not suggesting it as a theory of any sort, but my husband discovered a Louis L’Amour book called _Haunted Mesa_. It’s about a guy whose friend disappears inside a kiva, through the ceremonial hole. The Anasazi believed that this world was the fourth one they had lived in, having climbed _up_ a kiva hole to leave a world and emerging to climb _out_ of a hole into the next world. This guy had apparently wound up in the Fifth World, the one to which the Anasazi vanished after leaving this one, and his pal had to rescue him. It might be the only good Louis L’Amour book (or not — I never read any others), but it’s a combination of Western history, sci-fi, and mystery. If you ever want to kill two hours with the Anasazi, it’s pretty fun.
posted by Southern Buddhist on 11-7-2008 at 6:51 pm
Another interesting book is _The Zuni Enigma_, which argues that the group of people who are genetically the most closely related to Native American Zunis are actually the Ainu, the indigenous people of Japan, and it theorizes some kind of extremely early Asian settlement of the West Coast. Sorry, can’t remember the author.
posted by Southern Buddhist on 11-7-2008 at 6:53 pm
Why the people never returned?
They never really had much of a chance. Just as their society was reforming in pueblos along the Rio Grande and on the Hopi Mesas, they were conquered by the Spanish. Both civil and ecclesiastical authorities did everything they could to repress the original culture–destroying kivas and other cultural artifacts, killing priests and shaman, and selling survivors into slavery.
posted by eric on 11-8-2008 at 7:31 pm
I’ve been to one of the anasazi sites, and it was really cool to see how intact and well made most of the structures were.
posted by Hannah on 11-9-2008 at 12:10 am