Wow! These were awesome! It is so cool to imagine that before the Romans were even a civilization, before there were gladiators and Julius Caesar, the Ancestral Puebloans were farming and creating these cliff dwellings in the Mesa Verde area of Colorado. They are simply phenomenal!
We took the tour of the Cliff Palace to start our experience. It is the largest of the dwellings- 160 rooms in total- that they think was a ceremonial place, in addition to living quarters. The most obvious residences were called kivas- circular with a fire pit in the center. The Puebloans created the circular room with shelves that were mid-way up the wall, which had columns above them, that were used to support a roof structure. These were very clever builders- they did a transition of wood from column to column, structuring them over each other, until the height was at the top of the circular structure- then they layered logs and branches, covered them with clay and had a plaza on top for community use. From the top, you only see a hole with a ladder sticking out of it. The entry hole was also the smoke hole- some people believe that each time people entered or left the kiva, the smoke would cleanse their spirit. There was also a chimney for fresh air intake. It entered the kiva behind a piece of rock, causing it to flow around the inside of the kiva. In the winter, they would light a small fire in the center fire pit. It would smoke for 2 days, and then the smoke would clear, the fresh air would flow in, and with a very small fire, the kiva would be warm.
One of the really cool things is that they didn't dig or modify the original cliff structure- they built around it. When there was a huge boulder where they wanted to build, they would create a supporting wall, so the boulder wouldn't come down, and then build around it. The bricks were cut or broken pieces of the cliff that had fallen, and the mortar was sand, mud and water or sometimes urine (for the acid that added structure) with small pieces of rock stuck into the mortar to hold it into place. They would layer colored plaster over the walls, creating colorful buildings. The inside of the rooms was also decorated with colored plaster and paintings.
We wandered around some areas on our own. One of the self guided areas was the Spruce Tree House, so named because the roofing structure was created from Douglas Spruce- before scientists realized it was actually a fir tree. The climb down to the Spruce Tree House was pretty easy- the climb up not so much. (We were only moderately effected by the high elevation- all of Mesa Verde is above 6500 feet! I remember visiting Jennifer in Colorado Springs and feeling like I was suffocating from the lack of oxygen- or completely out of condition. We have acclimated during our trip, so we did pretty well with the waking and climbing.) We got to go into a kiva at the Spruce Tree House site that was reconstructed from the original , including the roof. It was cool!
Scientists have been able to carbon date the structures by taking core samples of the wood used for the roofing. Most of these dwellings date from 1100 A.D. to 1250 A.D. There are also pit houses that date from the 500s A.D. There is evidence that the Puebloans had lived in the area for 700 years- first as hunters and gatherers and then as farmers- before they abandoned the structures in the late 1260s and moved on. The Hopi people say that they were told they would migrate until they found a place where their blue corn would grow. Archaeologists suspect that one of the reasons they moved from Mesa Verde was the climate changes that caused their crops not to grow for several seasons.
I hope I didn't get too "teacher" on you with this post. I just found it all fascinating.
We are hoping to go back and do a loop of one of the mesas that has views of more dwellings before we head out tomorrow.
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