Vacation Part 1: Mesa Verde National Park

So Jake and I have been wanting to go to Mesa Verde National Park since we were first married...not too long ago, so we went and had a blast!

Cliff dwellings came about around 1200 AD-1300 AD and were inhabited by the ancient Puebloan people/Anasazi.Here is Cliff Palace its the biggest cliff dwelling in the park. There are about 400 cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde.



Here is a before excavation picture from when the discoverers, the Wetherill
brothers, first found Cliff Palace in 1881-Complements of Wikipedia.com



Jake and I got to hike down to the dwelling-not much of a hike. Its pretty massive. Water was not plentiful. The mesa tops are made of sandstone and below that is shale. Shale is dense, sandstone is not. When water comes down from the mesa top through sandstone it hits shale and cant go anywhere but out the cliff walls. Each cliff dwelling has this natural spring. Pictured below is at Long House. The Puebloan people carved holes in the floor so when the water came out of the wall the water would fill the holes. They made ladles to scoop the water out. They farmed on top of the mesas so they carved hand and foot holds into the stone.




Here is a picture of a kiva. Its basically their room for spiritual ceremonies. There would be a cover on top made of wood and mud with a hole in the top for access into and out of the kiva via ladder. There is a hole in the bottom for a fire pit and another hole much smaller then that called a sipapu. They believe that they came from 3 other worlds under this one but they were destroyed, so I guess the hole in the floor is a symbolic reminder of where they came from. *There are two unusual things in the picture below. There is a doorway into the kiva from a house right behind it and there is a tunnel leading into the other kiva next to it.



The rock coming out of the floor by the fire pit is to disperse the air flow. There is an air shaft that comes down into the kiva and the rock is set up right in front of where the air would be coming in. I'll have to see if Jake has a better picture of the inside of the kiva with a sipapu.



Here is a picture of another cliff dwelling right across the canyon from Cliff Palace


We also visited Balcony House. We had to climb a 30ft ladder to get to it.
(Pictures to come)

We visited some of the pre-cliff dwelling houses on top of the mesas.
(Pictures to come) Before they built the cliff dwellings, around 600 AD they lived on the mesa tops in pit-houses. They dug into the ground for the foundation and then built roof of wood and clay with an opening on top to get in and out of via ladder. This picture is from Wikipedia.com and is a reconstruction of a pit house: (Jake has the pictures of the pit-houses). All that remains of a pit house is just the foundation, sipapu, post holes, fire pit and that's about it.



They had towers built within line of site on the mesas. They were thought to signal each other with them. A kiva is also next to a tower so I wonder if someone lived there permanently with their family. Jake thought it might be like on Lord of the Rings. (Jake has the picture of the tower)

Here is Long house:




Here are some petroglyphs, they look kind of orange and there are 2 symbols:


To be continued.... Jake took most of the pictures in Mesa Verde so I'll have to steal some from him.