A mystery almost solved: what happened to the Anasazi

In 1976 I moved from Chicago to Colorado in 1976, and I still remember the feeling of wonder, that a landscape so different from the flat Midwest was in the same country. I started learning to backpack almost immediately, hiking at altitude among trees and rivers, breathing the dry, crisp air, wondering at the temperature extremes between night and day. Within a couple of years, I had branched out to a different landscape: the red rock formations of western Colorado and Utah, archeology-rich Northern New Mexico, and the cliff dwellings of the Four Corners region, home to Mesa Verde National Park. Here I am in two pictures from the late 70s on a trip to Utah. The first includes my dog, Sophie. The second shows something of the human/landscape scale that fascinated me.



On a later trip to Mesa Verde, I was fascinated by the structures that were home to the Pueblo people for 700 years. There were about 25,000 of them in the area in the mid-1200s, and then suddenly they were gone. Called the Anasazi (Navajo term for "ancient foreigners"), they disappeared; by the 1280s, no one remained. The prevailing speculation was that a drought period had forced people to move. But where? How to know centuries later? I confess I rather liked the mystery. It was part of what still seemed exotic to me--a world so different from what I had known.

Today, I find that I like the solution even better than the mystery. Recently going through back issues of one of my favorite magazines, High Country News, I found an article by Krista Langlois, which explained how much of that mystery has finally been solved.  (Click here to read the full story.) The reasons were rooted not only in science, but in the stories of indigenous people today, specifically  origin stories of Native Americans speaking the Tewa language in Northern New Mexico.

The science was not surprising, given the data-crunching powers of modern computing. In 2001 a multi-disciplinary team of scientists formed the Village Ecodynamics Project. For the next 13 years, they analyzed population history at thousands of sites in the Southwest. The next step was  analyzing soil data and estimating natural resources and agricultural yields. Next came a computer simulation of human and environmental history, a kind of "Sim City for the ancient Southwest," Langlois calls it. They ran it 500 times, tweaking the data each time, and finally patterns emerged.  The patterns cast doubt on the dominant drought theory, as the Anasazi were already gone by the time the drought hit full force. Still, mystery remained.

Another line of inquiry turned to the social fabric of this ancient world. One project researcher, archeologist Scott Ortman, developed a theory that inequality was at work. Between 900 and 1200 the population tripled. Yet each family was still farming its own plot of land, living around a family-sized kiva. Over time those plots of land got smaller, creating a community of haves and have nots. There is evidence of violence and sudden departures. Perhaps this is not surprising either. As I read, I thought of many places in rural Europe in the 19th century, when mass emigration ensued for the same reason.

What did surprise me, however, was learning that Ortman's work is also rooted in listening to the oral histories of Tewa people, stories that told them that they were descended from the Anasazi. Instead of dismissing them as myth, Ortman started looking for clues connecting them to their ancestors at Mesa Verde. He found them. DNA analysis was involved, but more interesting to me was the linguistic connection: a word for a kind of roof found in ceremonial kivas, a work for pottery derived from older words for woven objects typical of Mesa Verde pottery; and other words and stories.

As Langlois explains, Ortman speculates that as Mesa Verde's people realized their world was unraveling, bringing changes in the food supply, overcrowding, and violence, they decided to migrate to the Northern Rio Grande, a place they knew about from traders. Oral stories say it took them "12 steps" to travel from their ancestral home to their new one; this could refer to the 12 days it may have taken them to walk the 250 miles between the two sites.

Ortman's research suggests that while the Anasazi moved to various places across the Southwest, the six Tewa-speaking tribes are the "most direct cultural descendants." Here's a map of their probable journeys:


Still, the mystery hasn't been completely solved and may never be with so many centuries separating us from that culture, but the complexity of the solution is much greater than the simple explanation I once accepted. And it's satisfying. Knowing some of the pathways these communities took builds a bridge to our time: the very common story of migration, of seeing a new place for the first time and making a life there. It's also a bridge in the sense that equality and inequality played a role for the ancients as well as for moderns. Droughts are cyclical, Langlois points out, yet the descendants of the Anasazi in the Tewa Basin did not flee. She writes, "The societies and traditions that developed were so strong they persisted through waves of colonization and through industrial development and the large-scale mining of the earth....Puebloans in the Northern Rio Grande structured their communities around a central plaza where work was shared, ...rituals held, and the harvest was inequitably distributed."

Happy to let go of the simplistic explanation I once casually accepted decades ago , I look forward to another visit to the Four Corners region some day, this time with a deeper perspective.

To the top of Pikes Peak via the coolest train ride ever

Although I’ve visited or lived in the Pikes Peak region for about two decades now, I had never been to the top of Pikes Peak. For most of that time I lived at sea level in Japan, and when I could have gone up during summer vacation, I figured it would give me a huge headache—if not worse. Pikes Peak, reaching 14,115 feet (4,302 meters), can easily induce altitude sickness in the unacclimated. Now that I’ve been back in Colorado for a few years—much of that time at my cabin (altitude 8,800’)—I knew I was ready to take the trip. The perfect opportunity arrived August 3, when I joined the Cosmic Cacao Cog. What, pray tell? It turned out to be not only a beautiful journey to the top of this National Historic Landmark, but just about the coolest train ride ever.

Our 3-hour trip on the Cog Railway, which departs several times a day from Manitou Springs, was organized by Kat Tudor, yoga director at the new SunWater Spa in Manitou. Participants, many of whom were her yoga students and their friends or families, piled into our reserved car, along with holistic healer/artist Juan Pablo, sound healer and singer Shivani, and a small ensemble of musicians. I was delighted to be with these cheerful gentle lunatics and got into the spirit of it all as easily as they did. As the 90-minute ride to the top got underway, Kat invited us to set an intention—common practice in yoga classes. “Joy” was the word that first came to mind, so I went with that. Hopefully this photo communicates the joyful mood I enjoyed at the top, as clouds gathered and parted, revealing patches of sky and terrain.

As with all journeys, it was the process that counted. During the ride, we gazed at the valleys, patches of snow, tiny alpine flowers, and huge numbers of rocks made of the special pink granite characteristic of the mountain. As altitude increased, forests gave way to treeless slopes. The last 3 miles of the ride was above timberline--the point at which trees can't grow due to environmental conditions. I hiked above timberline once during my younger years and still remember the feeling of excitement and a sort of vague anxiety. This time I was glad I wasn’t hiking, biking or running to the top, as some do. The altitude gain on 13-mile Barr Trail, which leads to the summit from the east side, is about 8,000 feet.

Shortly after we left the station, Kat handed out small seed-filled balls, which made soft rattling sounds as we chanted Tava which was the name of the peak among the Ute tribes who once lived here. Tava means Sun, and Ute legends says their first ancestors were created here by all of the animals and living spirits. An alternate name used by the Arapaho was Heey-otooyo, which means Long Mountain. We chanted that too. We did not chant Pike—the name of a man who never made it to the peak’s summit.

Juan Pablo and Shavani are pictured here with participants and the official tour guide (center), who happily turned the program entirely over to us.

Later Kat passed out colorful scarves, and we waved them out the windows as musicians continued their magic and returning trains passed us by. Regretfully, I have no photo of the expressions on the faces of the returning tourists, expressions ranging from surprise to delight, to puzzlement, and sometimes stoic indifference. It’s the closest experience I’ve had to being in a flash mob, something that remains on my bucket list. Still, audience or not, we waved our scarves, shook our seed balls, danced in the aisles, or just sat back and enjoyed the changing views on the slopes of Tava.

It got steadily cooler. A warm summer afternoon in Manitou (low 80s) became a chilly one at the top (upper 40s/low 50s).* Jackets covered cotton tops and hats appeared on many heads. We were prepared for the weather as we piled out of the car at the terminal and decided how to spend our allotted 20 minutes.

The US soldiers who climbed Tava in 1806 under the command of Capt. Zebulon Pike would have envied us. On an exploratory mission, Pike and his party never made it to the top, wisely turning back 15 or so miles away. Unwisely, they chose to make the climb in November, in sub-zero temperatures, with the recruits clad in light overalls and wearing no socks. One wonders what they were thinking—whether they cursed their leader’s folly or the stinginess of the Army. They should have taken counsel from the Native Americans who spent winters at lower elevations, in what is now Manitou Springs and Garden of the Gods.

In 1820, fourteen years later, the first European-Americans reached the top when Edwin James, a young botanist, and two friends made the climb. In 1858 Julia Archibald Holmes, who climbed with her husband James,  became the first woman to reach the summit. Julia, wrote later that nearly everyone had tried to discourage her, “but I believed I could succeed….I would not have missed this glorious sight for anything at all.”

Forty years later another woman immortalized the beauty of the experience. Katharine Lee Bates, a visiting English professor at Colorado College, made the climb with other teachers in 1893. She wrote a poem about it, America the Beautiful, later set to music. She reported feeling “great joy” as “all the wonder of America seemed displayed there.” Would Katharine have envied our smooth sheltered ride on the cog railway? Her trip involved a wagon and pack mules—exhausting, she admitted—but perhaps all the more satisfying for the struggle. Reading her story, I thought what a thrill it must have been to have this experience before the era of air travel. Perhaps she would pity us in the 21st century, baffled at how we often turn away from the wonders outside the windows of our airplanes, in favor of napping or watching in-flight movies.

Another view from the cog railway window:

With limited time at the top, we dispersed to walk around and take photos and/or line up for the restroom inside the gift shop. Then came an all-too-brief “cacao ceremony”—perhaps 5 minutes before the train warning whistle blew. Juan Pablo laughed, saying he usually takes 2 hours for this ceremony, which is designed to help us “find connection to your inner self”. Gathering off to the side of the parking lot,** we formed a circle, made sounds and sipped a delicious small cup of intense cacao, flavored with herbs and spices. Though there was hardly time for any journey to our inner selves,  I thought the cacao cleared the slight light-headedness I felt and left me feeling if not exactly joyful, very relaxed and content.

Cacao ceremonies, with deep roots in indigenous communities in the americas, are happening today in New Age circles. Guinevere Short founded Heart Beats Raw Cacao and Dance Ceremonies in 2013. Reading about it on her website, I learned that today’s ceremonies often include forming sharing circles, invoking the cacao spirit with shamanic prayer and asking for our intentions to be heard. Cacao is usually served in liquid form with spices, as was ours. Ms. Short writes that the cacao helps flood our bodies with the many emotions stored in the heart, some of which may be painful, but the cacao “facilitates a deep sense of self-love.”

I’m not sure what the cacao might have unleashed in the hearts of my fellow yogis and yoginis, but our energy seemed undiminished on the 90-minute return trip. Jackets came off as we descended; chanting and music continued, as did our scarf-waving and appreciation of the changing beauty outside the windows. It seemed that for many of us, there was joy--and perhaps other realized intentions as well. I plan to go again next year. How could I not?

*The average daily temperature at the summit in July is 47F (8C)

**Driving to the top is another option on the Pikes Peak Highway, a paved 19-mile (31 km) ride.