The Mystery Of The Anasazi

Advanced archaeological technology is shedding new light on what motivated the prolific builders of early America in southwestern Colorado.

1 minute read

February 3, 2006, 6:00 AM PST

By David Gest


"Probably beginning in the first millennium A.D., [the Anasazi] built increasingly complex communities here, complete with wide roads across the desert, complex dams that revitalized the landscape, and the tallest buildings in North America until the age of the skyscraper...[so] Why, after having invested so much work in this place, did the ancestral Pueblo people leave it all behind?"

Near Mesa Verde National Park, "it's a mystery that is finally beginning to unravel. Using painstakingly careful excavations of the area's prehistoric sites, elaborate computer and mathematical models and old-fashioned detective work, archaeologists are creating a more complex and subtle picture of the ancestral Pueblo people. In a field where new developments are often measured in decades, the past fifteen years have seen a flood of archaeological discoveries regarding their final years in the Mesa Verde region."

Thursday, January 26, 2006 in Denver Westword

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I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching.

Mary G., Urban Planner

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