Mesa Verde

About 1,400 years ago, long before the Europeans explored North America, a group of people living in the Four Corners region chose Mesa Verde for their home. For more than 700 years they and their descendants lived and flourished here, eventually building elaborate stone communities in the sheltered alcoves of the canyon walls.

Then in the late 1200's in the span of a generation or two, they left their homes and moved away. No one really knows why or where they moved to.

Mesa Verde National Park preservers a spectacular reminder of this ancient culture. Archaeologists have called these people "Anasazi" from a Navajo word sometimes translated as "The Ancient Foreigners". We now call them "Ancestral Puebloans" reflecting their modern descendants.

We will never know the whole story, they left no written records and much that was important in their lives has perished.

I hope you enjoy the pictures I took. Sorry the pop corn is yours.