The people who lived here for more than 2,000 years used to be called the Anasazi – a Navajo word meaning “ancient ones” or “ancient enemy.” Today, they’re known as the Ancestral Pueblo people, and the modern Hopi people claim consider themselves their descendants.
The Ancestral Pueblo people came to the region more than 3,000 years ago. They developed a culture and held together as a people until about 700 years ago – around the 13th Century – when they disappeared from the region very suddenly. Until about 25 years ago, this mass exodus was quite mysterious, and fueled all manner of theories, even, in some quarters, that they’d all taken off in space ships.
What we now know is a lesson for our own times: The population had grown in the previous couple of centuries, due to increased rainfall in the region, and had developed a more centralized society and culture. Then the rains stopped coming, the region returned to its more normal dry state, and the whole society was in trouble. This led to local dictatorships, the growth of new religions, cults and superstitions, and finally the breakdown of the whole civilization, with raiding parties invading outlying areas, and even, in some cases, the practice of cannibalism.
Those who survived abandoned their homeland, moved to more hospitable lands and, it is believed, became the modern Pueblo people.
In the centuries that followed, Navajo tribes migrated into the region, followed by the Paiute people, and then the Europeans, whose numbers, like the “Anasazi”, grew rapidly as they found ways to bring water to the region – largely by damming up the Colorado River.
Once again, the population grew beyond the true capacity of the land, and . . .
. . . well, we have yet to see the conclusion of this latest chapter of the story.
Meanwhile, at Indian Canyon, there is a peaceful silence, broken only by the sounds of song birds and red-tail hawks.
The pictographs themselves are silent. But if you stand there quietly and open yourself to the silence, you can almost hear them telling you their story.
Faces from the Past
By Michael Mountain,
The Ones Who Came Before
The people who lived here for more than 2,000 years used to be called the Anasazi – a Navajo word meaning “ancient ones” or “ancient enemy.” Today, they’re known as the Ancestral Pueblo people, and the modern Hopi people claim consider themselves their descendants.
The Ancestral Pueblo people came to the region more than 3,000 years ago. They developed a culture and held together as a people until about 700 years ago – around the 13th Century – when they disappeared from the region very suddenly. Until about 25 years ago, this mass exodus was quite mysterious, and fueled all manner of theories, even, in some quarters, that they’d all taken off in space ships.
What we now know is a lesson for our own times: The population had grown in the previous couple of centuries, due to increased rainfall in the region, and had developed a more centralized society and culture. Then the rains stopped coming, the region returned to its more normal dry state, and the whole society was in trouble. This led to local dictatorships, the growth of new religions, cults and superstitions, and finally the breakdown of the whole civilization, with raiding parties invading outlying areas, and even, in some cases, the practice of cannibalism.
Those who survived abandoned their homeland, moved to more hospitable lands and, it is believed, became the modern Pueblo people.
In the centuries that followed, Navajo tribes migrated into the region, followed by the Paiute people, and then the Europeans, whose numbers, like the “Anasazi”, grew rapidly as they found ways to bring water to the region – largely by damming up the Colorado River.
Once again, the population grew beyond the true capacity of the land, and . . .
. . . well, we have yet to see the conclusion of this latest chapter of the story.
Meanwhile, at Indian Canyon, there is a peaceful silence, broken only by the sounds of song birds and red-tail hawks.
The pictographs themselves are silent. But if you stand there quietly and open yourself to the silence, you can almost hear them telling you their story.
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