Sept 1 Sand Canyon

Sand Canyon pueblo is located within the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. It is a 6 mile out and back walk. We opted to do only half due to the heat. The parking area is solid surface stone. It reminds me of Stone Mountain State Park in NC. 

The attraction here is you can hike along the canyon walls and see ruins at a number of sites. Most are just a wall or a few rooms but unlike Mesa Verde, you are on your own here.

Not much grows here which leads me to wonder how these people eked out a living. This four corners region was home to 70,000 people back in the 1200s. By 1300, they were virtually all gone. No one can definitively say why they departed. The best hypothesis I heard, was a shift in climate in the late 1200s. A severe drought appears at that time according to dendrochronology. Tree rings tell that story. There is also evidence the population was thriving and increasing in the presiding years. That may have stressed the natural resources. Limited resources likely would have caused community conflicts. There is evidence that the last construction around 1300 was defensive.

The progression of Native Americans in this area begins about 10,000 years ago, we are told. Those people would have been hunter gatherers who would have built only seasonal camps as they roamed in search of food and water. Judging by the size of their points, they would have hunted large mammals. We know that the Late Pleistocene saw the extinction of 33 out of 45 mammals exceeding 90 lbs in North America. The likely cause was overhunting. Many of these species lacked the instinctual fear of humans. Thus, hunting and killing these mammals was relatively easy until they grew fearful of humans or went extinct. It is difficult to say when agriculture began in Mesoamerica. There are reports of crops in the area over a period of years. I'm going with 2-3000 years ago. The 3 main crops were beans, corn and squash. Agriculture led to permanent homes. The first homes were pit houses, dug into the ground and used shallow stone walls supporting a wood structure above. Later construction sported stone houses with a wood frame roof. Finally about 1200, some people moved from the mesa tops to cliff dwellings in the alcoves of the canyons, like the structure above.

I'm still baffled by the lack of vegetation and hardness of the soil. This may look like sand but it is almost rock hard. Farming this land would have required water. There are check dams and even a reservoir for this purpose. They are all dry today. So has the climate changed here in the past 700 years to that degree?