Your Pic of the Day
- Thread starter DAA
- Start date
These people lived all over the Colorado Plateau, down into Arizona. They abandoned the entire area, completely, pretty much all at once, a little over 700 years ago. Then settled in the Rio Grande valley. Common belief is that a very prolonged drought, over population, brought about societal collapse. This area was far more densely populated between 1,000 and 10,000 years ago than it is today. For thousands of years they occupied the mesa tops for growing their crops. It was only towards the very end they retreated to the defensive "cliff dwellings". The mesa top sites have been open to the weather for thousands of years and aren't well preserved. The cliff dwellings are mostly in alcoves protected from the weather, so many have remained in amazingly good shape for their age.
The earliest white visitors to the area found entire households full of pots, blankets, stone tools etc. The area was systematically looted in the late 1890's and early 1900's, leaving only the scraps behind. And since I started exploring this stuff, the scraps have gotten to be a whole lot fewer from modern visitors taking stuff home. It's still a somewhat common past time for locals to go out and dig up these sites looking for pots. I have only seen three complete pots and one complete basket in all my time exploring the canyons. But there used to be thousands.
- DAA
I think I have a lot of work to do on my sign reading skills. That last one is quite a mystery, but the best I can come up with is the man and woman got two goats that had just jumped the fence, had a martini to celebrate with their two children, ate two jalapenos and a donut and were building a longer fence when Daves drone flew over and they waved at it. Haven't quite figured out the significance of the white coyote in lower right hand corner.
Not bad for a beginner, huh Dave? Where did I go wrong?
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Wonder how much is 'modern' graffiti and how much is old stuff. Like the white wolf?
One needs to remember that the 'plains' (central US) were very 'wet' for a long time when the ice melted. A lot of the southwest sculpture is from water (and wind) erosion. Part of the theory about Mesa Verde is that the 'houses' were originally much closer to the river but as the river receded, land dried out and people moved away. Another theory is that the people lived on top of the mesa and gradually moved lower to be closer to water. I wasn't there so don't really know. We just guess about all this stuff anyway.
One needs to remember that the 'plains' (central US) were very 'wet' for a long time when the ice melted. A lot of the southwest sculpture is from water (and wind) erosion. Part of the theory about Mesa Verde is that the 'houses' were originally much closer to the river but as the river receded, land dried out and people moved away. Another theory is that the people lived on top of the mesa and gradually moved lower to be closer to water. I wasn't there so don't really know. We just guess about all this stuff anyway.
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Widow maker 223
Well-known member
Amazing how the old relics stand the test of time.
I don't think any of that is even slightly modern. Newest, maybe 750 years. Oldest, the Barrier Canyon Style, between 2,000 and 10,000 years. I've studied it quite a bit. Have a pretty big library of both published and unpublished studies (paid for thesis papers). Have visited many, many known sites - and found two unknown sites (which are still "unknown" to academia - they tried like hell to get me to tell them though). I fall into the camp of thinking most of the BCS stuff is way towards the old end - 10,000 years. Based largely on figurines matching the style, that have been both stratigraphically and carbon dated that old - and found in a cave I've visited that is officially off limits to the public (I just happened to wander by?).
It's interesting to me that the perceived "quality" of the southwest rock art steadily deteriorated from the oldest to the newest. The oldest stuff, the BCS style, is what all the ancient alien people get all hot and bothered over. And it is, just stupid cool to stand in front of and look at. Especially, a site that isn't known to the internet or academia. The newest stuff, is all petroglyphs, no pigments, just carvings or scratching's, And it's just plain crude by comparison to what was done thousands of years earlier.
But, nobody alive today really knows. Definitely including me. That, is for sure.
- DAA
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SixsixtyMags
Well-known member
That is an amazing playground that you have there DAA, that's some beautiful country with a ton of history.
Be glad, around here everything would be graffitied up, seems like some people just can't leave well enough alone!
Be glad, around here everything would be graffitied up, seems like some people just can't leave well enough alone!
I think I have a lot of work to do on my sign reading skills. That last one is quite a mystery, but the best I can come up with is the man and woman got two goats that had just jumped the fence, had a martini to celebrate with their two children, ate two jalapenos and a donut and were building a longer fence when Daves drone flew over and they waved at it. Haven't quite figured out the significance of the white coyote in lower right hand corner.
Not bad for a beginner, huh Dave? Where did I go wrong?
I think you nailed it. Other than you didn't mention the kids were playing soccer before all the goat commotion.
Gotta wonder if that's something the village elders were saying back then.
Musta missed that one, Don.
Ahhh... That, is a kiva. Which is generally thought to have been a ceremonial gathering place (not everyone agrees). If you were to go down inside, you'd find benches all around the perimeter. I have pictures of the interior of other kivas. But not this one. This one is special. It's completely intact. Completely unexcavated. Completely un-looted. A real unicorn. My two friends and I were absolutely blown away when we found it. We did not attempt to enter it. Fearing it's too fragile to be messing with. Those are original ladder poles sticking out. It's just rare beyond rare to find something like this so untouched.
Here is the interior of another kiva that has been stabilized to allow people to go down inside.
- DAA