11/17/2018 0 Comments Mesa Verde National ParkLocated in southern Colorado, a State in the Mid-west part of the USA. Around six hundred cliff dwellings including whole villages with storage rooms, watch towers and granaries were built over nearly a hundred year long period between the early 1200s and 1300A.D by the ancestral Puebloans who called the Mesa Verde (Green Table) National park area home for a seven century long period between approximately 550A.D and 1300A.D. The area is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site as it is the largest archaeological site in the USA with more than 4,300 sites of historical interest. The naturally occurring alcoves and overhangs that line the canyon walls provided shelter from both the extreme heat of summer and the biting cold of the driving snow storms in winter. Some of the overhangs were blessed with natural springs that provided a precious supply of water in an otherwise typically arid region of the USA. The buildings which are occasionally multi storied were constructed of local sandstone blocks and plastered with adobe, when viewed from the opposing side of the canyon the colors of the locally sourced materials help the structures blend into the landscape. Many are not easily accessible indicating that they may well have been constructed to keep the occupants and the food stored within safe from invasion and theft. In a similar style to the way that the city of Great Zimbabwe was made by utilizing locally sourced materials that were then built into the available openings of the natural rock face, they both had similar features such as granary towers and a shared visual aesthetic of blending into their surroundings, these two settlements were also both occupied up until about the same period in time. The Puebloans had emigrated south to Arizona and New Mexico by about 1299 after a very cold period that coincided with a great drought.
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