In the late 19th century, when American ranchers first explored the land that now makes up Mesa Verde National Park, they were amazed to find complex limestone villages built into the sides of the cliffs. Even more strangely, these massive cliff dwellings, which showcased the impressive architectural prowess of their builders, were completely abandoned, as if their inhabitants had just stood up and walked away a few hundred years earlier. These sites presented researchers with an intriguing mystery: Who built the cliff dwellings, and why did they leave?
The first part of that question has been conclusively answered. Evidence shows that the cliff dwellings were built by a people called the Ancestral Puebloans, descended from nomadic tribes that visited Mesa Verde seasonally for millennia before finally settling down. For centuries, the Ancestral Puebloans lived in stone and adobe mud houses they built on top of the mesas, alongside the fields where they grew corn, beans, and squash.
Every couple of decades, they would shift the locations of their villages to preserve the fertility of the soil. As researchers began to piece together a timeline of Ancestral Pueblo culture, they discovered an interesting wrinkle to the mystery: The Ancestral Puebloans lived on the mesas for 600 years, constructed and moved to the cliff dwellings around the 1180s, and had completely disappeared from the area by the 1280s. So why move down to the cliffs, and why leave their homes less than a century later?
The answers to these questions remain unknown, although there are theories coming together. Archaeologists have discovered evidence of severe droughts in the nearby San Juan Basin area in the 12th century, coinciding with a period of significant population growth in Mesa Verde. This suggests that the people of the San Juan Basin migrated to Mesa Verde and joined the tribes living there. Larger populations require more permanent settlements, and the cliff dwellings may have been more suitable as long-term housing than the pueblo homes. It’s also possible that the migrants from the San Juan Basin brought knowledge of architectural techniques that made cliffside construction more feasible.
As for the ultimate fate of the Ancestral Puebloans, we still only have speculation to go on. There is evidence of another period of severe drought, this time in the Mesa Verde area, that could have forced them to leave their villages and migrate to more habitable regions. This fits with the assertions of modern Pueblo tribes, like the Hopi and Tanoans, who claim that the Ancestral Puebloans migrated south and merged with the people living there. Although there isn’t much evidence one way or another, this theory seems to be at least the most plausible – for now.
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