As you approach one of America’s most
historic sites, Mesa Verde, you must drive through hundreds of acres of
burned forest. The trees are like skeletons on a landscape that was once
a lush centre of Indian agriculture.
Mesa Verde, which
means green table, is the site of over 15,000 structures built between
900 and 1200 AD. These grand homes sit below the mesa, carved into the
alcoves of the sandstone cliffs below.
Visitors from
around the world come to see these remnants of a spectacular
civilisation and try to learn what they can teach us today. It was the
reason that I made the trek to this beautiful but isolated place in
southwestern Colorado this week.
GREAT DEPRESSION
Taking
a guided tour through Cliff House, I walked down several hundred feet
of stairs built into the side of cliffs by preservationists during the
Great Depression in the 1930s. I then climbed a 15-foot ladder into
dwellings, carefully and artfully sculpted with sandstone bricks, stone
and plaster, some several stories high.
Nobody knows
where these people came from, but two theories are popular. One suggests
that they were descendants of those who crossed the great land bridge
that once spanned Russia and America. Others say they came from the
Africa-Latin America land mass that was once one continent.
The
Indians came to this area for two reasons. They could grow crops —
mostly corn and squash — on the rich mesa above their cliff dwellings.
They could get fresh water from the alcoves in the cliffs below because
it was slowly filtered from the mesa through the porous sandstone.
The
lifespan in those times was about 25 years for women and 35 for men.
Childbirth was often fatal. While the diet of cornmeal was healthy, it
was ground on sandstone. Sand particles in food caused problems for
teeth and digestive systems.
Nobody knows why these
Pueblo people left. Since their descendants can be found along the Rio
Grande and other rivers in Southwest America, one thought is that lack
of water might have instigated a migration.
As I toured
the site with European, Asian and American tourists, I thought of the
ancient Greek travel writer Herodotus, who lived in the fifth century
before Christ. He chronicled large civilisations that are no longer on
any map.
I also thought of the quarter-million pine
trees in Colorado that have been killed by a beetle that used to be
killed by cold winters. Climate change has now allowed the beetles to
work non-stop, and I passed by hundreds of mountainsides near Mesa Verde
that were covered with dead trees.
The trees that top
Mesa Verde, burned by a fire started by lightning, will likely not
re-establish themselves completely for 200 years, according to forest
rangers. And that is if there is no further change in temperatures in
the area.
The lesson of Mesa Verde is that man can
build the grandest cities and have the grandest plans for the future.
But the final outcome of a civilisation is often dependent on nature —
the changing courses of a river, the infestation of disease and
temperature fluctuations. It is a humbling reality to contemplate.
rsmith4825@gmail.com
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