These water systems allowed dense populations to settle in the canyons. The Anasazi of Mesa Verde built a system of ditches to collect rainwater in a reservoir capable of storing up to a half million gallons (two million liters). As many as thirty thousand people lived in the nearby Montezuma Valley, some of them in pueblos of more than one thousand people. The canyon towns were built in nearly inaccessible caves and under overhangs in the steep canyon walls. By 800, Mesa Verde's deep canyons were home to about twenty-five hundred people. By 1000, the thriving Chaco Canyon culture consisted of about 75 to 100 interconnected communities and occupied an area of more than 25,000 square miles (65,000 square kilometers).Īnother major Anasazi center developed in the Mesa Verde and Montezuma Valley area of southern Colorado, starting around 600. More than 400 miles (640 kilometers) of unpaved roadways-shallow tracks up to 40 feet (12 meters) wide, often running in perfectly straight lines across the desert-linked Chaco Canyon pueblos to outlying settlements. At least eleven Anasazi “Great Houses” arose in Chaco Canyon during the eleventh century. The greatest of these was Pueblo Bonito, where more than eight hundred rooms surround an enormous plaza with many large kivas. As the pueblos grew large, their inhabitants built aboveground, mul-tiroom adobe houses. Inside there was a sipapu-a hole in the floor leading to the center of the Earth.Īnasazi pueblos arose in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, around 700 ce. They were built underground people climbed in through the roof and descended a ladder. Kivas served as sacred places for religious ceremonies. Early Anasazi villages, now known as “pueblos” (Spanish for “town”) were simple groups of pit (underground) houses built around a central pit house, later known as a kiva. They introduced successful dry farming techniques and bows and arrows for hunting. Borrowing from the Mogollon and Hohokam cultures, the Anasazi made baskets and clay pots and irrigated their fields. The Anasazi (meaning “the ancient ones”) culture arose in the high desert of northern Arizona, New Mexico, and southern Utah and Colorado around 400 ce. By 1000 ce, they built rectangular, aboveground dwellings in small villages. Their major claim to fame, though, was an elaborate system ofĬanals to carry water to their crops. The Hohokam wove cloth from cotton and made pottery with distinctive red designs. In later times, they began to build multistoried stone or adobe (bricks made of sun-baked mud and straw) buildings that housed many families.įarther south in the Sonoran Desert, the Hohokam culture emerged, eventually settling in present-day southcentral Arizona. The Mogollon raised large crops of corn, beans, and squash and lived in small villages of earth-covered houses. Highly skilled basket makers, by 300 ce they had begun producing high-quality pottery as well. The Mogollon people lived in what is now eastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. They developed unique ways of irrigating (watering) the land, adapting to the unpredictable environment that varied between long cycles of dry weather and irregular bursts of drenching rainfall. All three cultures depended on hunting, gathering, and farming for their food supply. Over the centuries, their farming and livestock-raising led to the formation of settled communities.īy about 1 ce, three major cultures began to distinguish themselves in the Southwest: the Mogollon (pronounced mug-gee-OWN), Hohokam (hoe-hoe-KUM), and Anasazi (ah-nah-SAH-zee). They, too, were hunter-gatherers, but by about 1500 bce, they began to harvest plants, to sow their seeds, and to raise animals for food. During the next five thousand years, people known as desert dwellers settled in the Southwest. As the Ice Age ended, these hunters apparently migrated east. The earliest group of hunter-gatherers arrived in the Southwest around ten- or fifteen thousand years ago, probably pursuing the giant mammals of the Ice Age (a period from 2 million to 11,500 years ago in which much of the Earth was covered in ice sheets). More than ten thousand years before the first Europeans arrived, Native North Americans settled in what is today the southwestern United States, an area that includes present-day Arizona, New Mexico, southern Utah, southern Colorado, and parts of Nevada.
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