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Mesa Verde

The Mesa Verde Cliff Dwellings

Dating back to as early as 1150, the ruins of Mesa Verde are one of the oldest in America.

They are set in the Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, USA and are all that is left of the ancient Pueblo people, also known as the Anasazi.

Houses in the hillside

Around 600 houses dug in the cliffs of Colorado can be found through the park, most of them very small, but some are absolutely huge, able to house more than 250 people.

The Anasazi came to these places around 550 A.D., but only started digging their dwellings into the canyon cliffs around 1150.

The Anasazi inhabited Mesa Verde anywhere between 550 to 1300 AD. These people were mainly subsistence farmers; they grew crops on nearby mesas. Their primary crop was corn, which was also was the major part of their diet. Men were also hunters which further increased their food supply. The women of the Anasazi were famous for the elegant basket weaving. Anasazi pottery is just as famous as their baskets; their artifacts, even today, are highly prized. Since the Anasazi kept no written records, their artifacts are the only link to understanding their interesting culture.

By 750 AD, the people were building mesa-top villages made of adobe. By the late 12th century they began to build the cliff dwellings for which Mesa Verde is famous.

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Mesa Verde National Park is a U.S. National Park and UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Montezuma County, Colorado, United States. It was created in 1906 to protect some of the best preserved cliff dwellings in the world. The park occupies 81.4 square miles (211 km2) (211 square kilometers) near the Four Corners and features numerous ruins of homes and villages built by the Ancestral Puebloan people, sometimes called the Anasazi

To learn more about Mesa Verde, take a look at the following web sites:

Wikipedia
U.S. National park Service
Mesa Verde Country
Mesa Verde National Park Information