When the Earth Cracked

By Daniel Gibson

The soaring mesas, serpentine canyons, and wind-swept high plains of the American Southwest harbor a profound mystery. Everywhere one travels in the Four Corners region of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado, one runs across small fragments of this mystery - a tiny stone structure tucked under a sheltering boulder, finely chipped patterns of a parrot on a rock face, or entire cities of stone, such as those found around Mesa Verde National Park or Chaco Canyon National Historical Park.

These are the calling cards of one of the greatest cultures of pre-historic North America, the Anasazi, who occupied this region for almost 2,000 years. This was a culture that built over 450 miles of roads around Chaco Canyon to link its dispersed outlying villages together; that conducted regular trade with people on the Pacific coast, the Great Plains and central Mexico; that created beautiful pottery, jewelry and other fine crafts; and that devised a complex social, religious, and administrative structure to guide and unify their culture.

The question is: what happened to this culture and its people? This is a mystery that drapes Anasaziland to this day like a heavy cotton manta. Early visitors to Anasazi sites noted that it sometimes appeared as if people had simply gotten up one day and forever left their finely-built villages. Stone metates, used to grind corn into flour, were found with flour still sitting in them.

New theories and evidence make quite clear that far from vanishing, the Anasazi are still with us. Today they are known as the Pueblo people - encompassing 19 Pueblo communities in New Mexico and the Hopi reservation of Arizona - whose lives are directly linked to a remarkable cultural continuity of some 2,700 years.

The birthing period of the Anasazi took place about 2,500 years ago when organized agriculture, acquired from Mexico, first appeared in the Southwest. This profoundly altered life in the region, allowing people to become more sedentary.

Archaeologists divide the Anasazi occupation of the region into eight periods, beginning in 500 B.C. The Pueblo II period from 900-1170, considered by some authorities to have been the Anasazi's peak, saw the rise of the extensive structures of Chaco Canyon. But by the late 1100s, Chaco was completely abandoned, and the Anasazi culture had shifted north and westward, with the construction of magnificent cliff dwellings such as the Mesa Verde complex and Keet Seel. By the beginning of the 14th century, however, these sites were abandoned as well, and the Anasazi seemed to disappear from the face of the earth.

"This story has lots of romantic appeal," notes David Grant Noble, author and editor of many leading books on the Anasazi, "It's a great tourism hook, and as a side benefit (to the non-Indian culture), if people don't exist, they have no rights."

Joe Sando, a Jemez Pueblo scholar and teacher at the University of New Mexico explains, "The old theory about them disappearing is just plain ignorance. They simply moved, some eastward into the Rio Grande Valley, and others southward to the Zuni and Acoma areas."

"The Anasazi are one of the few cultures of the world that show a continuity and homogeneity of culture from 700 B.C. to modern times," note the authors of Anasazi Ruins of the Southwest (University of New Mexico Press). "The Pueblo culture, has, of course, been influenced during historic times by the Spaniards, the Mexicans, and Anglo-Americans, yet despite these influences, the religious ceremonies, marriage customs, government and language have remained remarkably constant."

But the mystery remains: Why did the Anasazi leave their ancestral homelands?

Between 1100 and 1200, some sources estimate there were perhaps as many as 50,000 people living under an Anasazi cultural umbrella. They constructed intricate irrigation systems. Farmers grew corn, squash, beans, and cotton. Dice recovered from dwellings showed they even had time to gamble and play games. Flutes, drums, and rattles enlivened their days and nights. Astronomers kept precise track of the seasons based on observations of stars, the sun and planets.

The Anasazi wore sandals, and in winter they wrapped themselves in thick capes made from fur and turkey feathers, which were raised for this purpose in great numbers. Trade networks brought them copper bells from the Aztecs and live parrots from the Mayan jungles of Mexico, abalone shell from the Pacific coast, and buffalo products off the Great Plains.

In central locations like Chaco, people poured in from outlying villages and tiny hunting and farming camps on pilgrimages to the "Big City" Here they would take part in elaborate religious rituals in the Great Kivas. An extensive road and trail network connected the Anasazi. Then, over a course of a few hundred years, nothing remained but wind and rock.

Early theories on the Anasazi dispersal that focused on a supposed invasion of nomadic tribes from the north, have been discarded. The creation of the cliff dwellings, with their inherent defensive capacities, following Chaco's abandonment suggests that raiding and warfare might have been a factor, little physical evidence of systematic warfare exists.

"When people are short of resources, conflicts arise," notes Noble, and "it's natural when people live in close proximity with one another that they have a complex and changing relationship." He suggests there may have been "enemy-ally" cycles between groups of Anasazi. "Many lived in very marginal areas for farming," says Noble, and even small climate and rainfall changes might have meant the difference between feast and famine. Chronic food shortages, in turn, lead to malnutrition, susceptibility to diseases, higher mortality rates, and the temptation to raid one's neighbors."

The Anasazi's elaborate and ritualistic religion most likely focused on trying to ensure rainfall and agricultural fertility - essential to an agrarian society. "The aim was to create a harmonious relationship with the supernatural forces that controlled rainfall," says Noble. If rain stopped for a prolonged period, followed by starvation and sporadic violence, many authorities believe the Anasazi religious structure may also have come toppling down.

"All of these factors may have kicked in, creating internal chaos with religious implications," says Noble. Perhaps the people felt that their homeland had become cursed and that no other choice was left them but to leave it behind forever.

Sando, however, rejects speculation that the Anasazi experienced a loss of faith in their religion and governmental structures. "Mother Earth was cracking. That's what our people say about that time. They kept their religious practices, which we still practice today, and the traditional form of government, which we trust more than the modern, secular governments we have."

Physical evidence bears out the "earth cracking" story. There were severe droughts on the Colorado Plateau in the 12th and 13th centuries, right when the Anasazi abandoned the region. The link seems obvious.

So, perhaps some questions have been answered. But others remain: why did the Pueblo ancestors, Grandmother and Grandfather, never return to the awesome mesas, canyons, and plains of the Colorado Plateau? It is a tantalizing question to ask as one gazes up at the stunning ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, or stumbles upon a pottery shard protruding from the sandy soil at the foot of a petroglyph-pecked stone in some unnamed canyon.

Copyright ©1997 Cowboys & Indians

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