I saw a documentry on the Anasazi from a few years back and the archeologist at that time were still debating what had happened to the Anasazi population. I guess they have more possible answers now? This is some news worth following.
Finally. I have been talking about this for years. However what actually took place there IMHO has much darker and evil implication than your simple social genocide. We're talking blood cult as it grew from the Aztec and Mayan empires northward. Have you seen the movie "Apocalypto"? Entire tribes ran for thier lives to escape being captured and sold as slaves or for sacrifice. The Anasazi may have been one of the tribes driven farthest northward in their attempt to put lots of space between themselves and the blood cult empires to the south. I have been to the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde as a child back in the 60's. We got to climb all around in places that are totally off limits to the public today. The thing that struck me the most about the place, (mind you I knew nothing about Aztecs or Mayans let alone Anasazi), was that this is the kind of dwellings you build when you want to keep invaders from getting you. Everyone just climbs up into the cliffs and then just kick away the ladders! haha But apparently it wasn't good enough.. Thanks for the link BTW ZW
I forgot about that, ZW. Interesting. I was surprised how good Apocalypto was after hearing bad reviews on it. That girl telling the prophecy scared the hell out of me!
they probably just overfarmed, and split up into smaller units, and are still among us as various pueblo peoples
Damn Bluska, did you even read the article? "The unearthed bones and artifacts indicate that when the violence took place, men, women and children were tortured, disemboweled, killed and often hacked to bits. In some cases, heads, hands and feet appear to have been removed as trophies for the killers. The attackers then removed belongings out of the structures and set the roofs on fire." ZW
there's plenty of stuff to read out there, this article has an interpretive agenda but the dna part seems good http://indiglit.wordpress.com/2010/06/10/science-provides-new-evidence-in-an-old-land-dispute-2/ part of my problem with tv and film is interpretation as well - an exciting story always outsells a dull one genocide is dramatic, but diaspora is essentially plotless...
I think I saw the same documentary are you're right at the time evidence was just beginning to emerge that while the anasazi may have lived in relative peace for over 2000 years, once the food became scarce they began to war amongst themselves until there was no one left. Hotwater
there was internal strife, it seems that dictatorial power structures emerged, and were resisted no one left? then why did their culture and their dna survive? http://www.blm.gov/co/st/en/fo/ahc/who_were_the_anasazi.html there really isn't any mystery . . .
^^I can't believe you posted a link to a Bureau of land Management site...:scholar: Pretty sure the people that write for those sites don't get their job by being controversial...or are even actual antropologists/archeologists. If not mystery,there certainly is still plenty of controversy surrounding this... ZW
i just posted something that summed up conventional wisdom, and was easy to get relevant copy/paste text from - note that they cite both tribal beliefs and the "extensive literature" mrs wica did 3 1/2 years of american anthro at siu carbondale [illness intervened] and still maintains a healthy interest and fat library on southwestern and mexican peoples, her main interest she showed me reams of stuff on paper but i am not going to start typing, far more detail than the blm page, but boiling down to the same thing if i remember the spew of [her] verbiage correctly, the best thinking is that environmental stresses led to social stresses leading to some violence, some chaos - and dispersal into smaller and more numerous groupings [smaller groups surviving better in the climate anyways] she is the one who taught me about the pressures of academia, the desire to discover and the need to publish, and the caution that one should have when dealing with exciting new theories . . . [there is money in controversy]
The problem with that theory is that there is someone left: all the Pueblo tribes in the Rio Grande valley, plus the Hopi in Arizona. I find it amusing when new theories come out about "what happened" to the Anasazi, when all you have to do is ask their descendants. The Hopi have elaborate oral histories that go back thousands of years. Nowhere do they mention anything about genocide. They also don't mention drought, mass starvation, or invaders (except of course the Spanish Conquistadors; they have plenty to say about them). These are the most common theories put forth by anthropologists. In all the detailed accounts of Hopi history, don't you think somebody would have at least mentioned a drought that, according to the theorists, resulted in societal breakdown and cannibalism? There is occasional warfare in the histories, with the Utes and other Athabaskan people in the Southwest, including the Navajo later on, and there is even inter-village squabbling and feuds, such as you might expect with any group of people. But nothing like large-scale genocide. The Pueblo peoples are all extremely religious, even prudish, and have very strong prohibitions against harming their own people or anyone else. The word "Hopi" means "people of peace". They are a prototype for pacifism. The problem that most modern-day researchers have is that they look at the Anasazi world with the mindset of 21st-century Western civilization, instead of looking at it as the Hopi/Pueblo do. To hear the calamity theorists tell it, the only possible reason the people would have built their homes on the side of cliffs is for military purposes, because they were being besieged by hordes of bloodthirsty invaders. But that's a 21st-century viewpoint. Defense is why we would build in such inaccessible places, and we can't imagine having any other reason. Why not ask the Hopi themselves about it? In fact, people have asked them, and they scoff at such ideas. They'll tell you exactly why the Ancient Ones built where they did. They'll also tell you exactly why they left, where they went, and which clans were involved. Hopi clans are semi-autonomous units; not all of the clans did things in the same way, or for the same reasons. Hopi culture is also heavily based on mystical revelation and ritual. There are ceremonies for almost everything they do, including packing up and leaving their homes behind. This is all spelled out in the literature. The Hopi histories have been extensively collected and written down. Personally, I believe the people themselves over theorists who are probably more interested in stirring up controversy than they are in finding out what really happened.
Well if anyone wants to read how the views of archeologist,the Navajo and Hopi square with each others on the Anasazi here's an interesting article on it.
It seems cut and dried to me. The Navajo have no connection at all to the Anasazi, except for the gadzillions of ruin sites on their land. But they arrived in the Southwest long after the sites had been abandoned. In fact, except for Navajo employees of the National Park Service, they won't even go into the ruins themselves. Traditional Navajos have a morbid fear of dwellings where people have died, or where they think there are ghosts.
Though it may be true in the beginning Puebloan peoples and indeed the Anasazi of the U.S. Southwest were among the most peaceful and non-aggressive cultures ever known, as their society evolved it became a virtual imperative, necessitated by the all-powerful place witchcraft and witches came to hold in society, the formation of special cults and totem societies, so-called “warrior societies” with powerful shaman leaders, as illustrated by more modern warrior-priest groups such as the Kachina Cults of the Zuni (also Puebloan) as well as a number of rituals involving hunting and warfare including the practice of scalping. Believed to harness an enemy’s spiritual and physical strength, Pueblo oral history tells of the scalping and eating of human scalp flesh--often feeding portions to their children... ZW
So i guess the theory that they cut down all their trees, denuded their environment, consumed all their resources and then didn't adapt or move on is now as extinct as they are? i used to like this one because it seemed (& still does) so very relevant to our current situation . . .
But they're not extinct. Their descendants number in the thousands in the Southwest. The fact that they abandoned dozens or even hundreds of pueblo dwellings in the course of their mystically-ordained migrations does not mean the people themselves disappeared. They simply moved on. Eventually, they settled on the Hopi mesas where they live today.
