The Magic Gate - Part 2
Four Corners Region
The Colorado Plateau
Mesa Verde
From Durango, we ventured west on Highway 160 to the pre-Puebloan alcove and cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park. Mesa Verde contains the most famous of the Anasazi (or pre-Puebloan) sites in the Four Corners.
In 1965, the archeological sites appeared unchanged since their
discovery in the 1870s. With park rangers as our guides, we climbed
traditional pole-ladders and peered into ancient living spaces and
granaries. On hands and knees, we squinted down into dark ceremonial
chambers, known as kivas. In contrast, today one views these ruins from
behind fences, on well-marked trails.
In
the 1960s, mystery pervaded the disappearance of the ancient cultures
of the Four Corners. Today, we know that those cultures experienced a
combination of drought, overpopulation and internecine warfare. To
offer some perspective on their numbers, archeologists believe that in
1200 CE, the population of Colorado’s Montezuma Valley was 30,000, a
number larger than its contemporary population.
For reasons both known and unknown, the society
broke down, leading to the complete depopulation the Four Corners.
Later, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Navajo tribe, with
ancestors traceable to Asia, Alaska and British Columbia, repopulated much of the area.
Returning to Durango that night in 1965, we saw live
television reports of riots in South Los Angeles. Large areas of Watts
and the Central City were ablaze. Not unlike the pressures experienced
by the pre-Puebloan cultures of 1250 CE, summer heat, overpopulation
and competition for resources had led to violence in LA. Unlike the
pre-Puebloan, who could simply migrate south in search of water and new
farmland, there was nowhere for the residents of South Los Angeles to
go. In a metaphor to the actions of the ancients, some Los Angelenos
sacked and burned their own commerce and cultural centers.
The Disappearance
Hundreds
of archaeologists and other scientists have studied the pre-Puebloan
disappearance phenomenon. Not one of them that I know has hypothesized
seismic activity as a contributing factor to the mass migrations of 1200
– 1400 CE. Today, researchers assume that prior to their departure;
the former residents burned and willfully destroyed many of their most
important buildings. The remaining destruction they attribute to the
ravages of time.
Rather than assuming that the pre-Puebloan tribes
irrationally destroyed their own cultural landmarks, might we trace the
initial cause of that destruction to
large-scale seismic activity? Even the largest earthquakes leave few
long-term traces in the natural environment. Toppled towers and
caved-in kivas might be the best indicators we have that cataclysmic
seismic activity provided impetus to the complete abandonment of the
Four Corners area.
Today, we find potsherds at many Four Corners
sites. Intact pottery is so rare that we find it only in museums and
private collections. Were the pre-Puebloan so careless as to destroy
essentially all of their useful pottery or did seismic activity play a
larger role than previously assumed?
Today, the consensus is that the last pre-Puebloan migrated away from the Four Corners, later to “reemerge” as the Hopi, Zuni and other Pueblo tribes. The Hopi creation myth centers on the “sipapu”,
a hole in the earth from which their ancestors arose. Every ceremonial
kiva in the Four Corners includes a symbolic sipapu in its floor.
The great kivas provided communal warmth and shelter to the pre-Puebloan.
Since an earthquake could collapse their roof timbers, kivas also
carried the risk of unexpected and immediate death. After a swarm of
catastrophic earthquakes around 1250 CE, did the pre-Puebloan survivors
reemerge from the metaphorical sipapu of their collapsed kivas, only
then to leave the land that had caused them so much death and
destruction?
Silverton
Leaving Durango, we traveled north on Highway 550, also known as The Million Dollar Highway.
Whether the road derived its name from its initial construction cost or
from silver-bearing ore crushed into its asphalt mixture is still a
subject of conjecture. In 1965, its new surface reflected light like a
million diamonds in the afternoon sunshine.
After negotiating the 10,910-foot Molas Divide, we descended into Silverton, Colorado, a former mining town now famous as the northern terminus of the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad.
Although winter sports are now a factor, the summer tourist trade
generates most of the town’s revenue. In late May 2008, a spring
snowstorm closed Highway 550 near Silverton, forcing us to make a
low-elevation detour in order to reach Moab, Utah.
By James McGillis at 12:10 PM | Travel | Comments (0) | Link
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