The Mystery of the Anasazi Civilization by Sam Osmanagich

Author:Sam Osmanagich [Osmanagich, Sam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B01KWCSGR4
Goodreads: 31845554
Publisher: Shanti Publishing
Published: 2016-08-22T07:00:00+00:00

Photo 37: Entrance to the Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado

where 5000 Anasazi ruins are located.

To get to the Visitors Center one must drive along a 30-kilometer winding drive. I stand at the lookout point known as Park Point, from which one can have an unhindered view for hundreds of miles over the corners of four American states. This is the highest point around, with an elevation of 2800 meters. It is also the location of a round house with radar and antenna which serve for forest fire prevention. On that day a young woman ranger was on duty. Unfortunately, entrance to this little house and conversation with the ranger was not allowed.

Several disastrous fires in the years around the turn of the millennium have stripped these mountain cliffs in the National Park but, at the same time, have exposed several previously unnoticed Anasazi ruins.

The most famous parts of Mesa Verde are the settlements built high into the very sides of the cliffs themselves. The cliffs are several hundred meters high, and the caverns of the settlements are very inaccessible. Despite this, hundreds of such settlements, small and large, had been carefully built over a short period of time.

In the official description I read: “The settlements in the rocks were built between the late 1190s and the 1270s. They vary from a one-room home to a settlement of over 200 rooms. The builders adapted the structures into the available space in the cliffs. The Anasazi lived in these settlements for less than 100 years. Around the year 1300, Mesa Verde was abandoned.”

These dates provide me with some answers. First, the building in these cliffs begins at a time when the Anasazi have abandoned Chaco Canyon, located 160 km to the south. Could it be that the Anasazi had moved in the face of some great danger into these inaccessible cliffs in Colorado?

Second, the investment of such an enormous building effort in the creation of settlements in which they would live for less than a hundred years once again seems illogical.

Third, all the settlements of Mesa Verde were abandoned at the same time. In a peaceful time. As if the people had been led away. The first researchers here found all the household objects in usable form. The people had not moved away. They thought that they would return.

These dilemmas are running through my head as I pay my entrance fee to look around the ruins. Here, all the settlements can be visited only under the supervision of a park ranger. No-one is allowed to wander around on his own, to take a stone or pick a wildflower or otherwise disturb what is here.

A few kilometers from the Visitors Center is where the visit to the first settlement begins. This is called “the Big House with a Balcony”. Waiting for the ranger, I continue to read the brochure.

It attempts to make the thousand years of the presence of man in this area fit into the theory of evolution. First nomads, then farmers.

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