Aztec, Four Corners, Mesa Verde #1

This was a killer-good touristy trip. We knocked three things off my "to-see" list.

We started off by driving up to Aztec, NM to see the Aztec Ruins National Monument. I wish I could give you a more specific history of this place but I didn't get to read the pamphlet as much as I would have liked. We arrived just barely before a group of 200+ elementary students so we had to hurry to keep ahead of them. Basically, this is another group of "cliff dwelling" Native Americans that just disappeared one year. Their history is so sketchy and most of the pamphlet that we did get to read just said, "We don't know..." So there you go.


Yes, the doorways really are that short. I have a hard time believing how tiny these people were but I also can't imagine why they would purposely build a door that they had to stoop through each time.


These doorways are cool! But again, the pamphlet said, "We don't know why they had t-shaped doors. We assume it was religious..." I think it's because their pans of cookies they cooked to take to the Kiva meetings were too wide to fit through the original doorways and so they had to widen the tops. Or maybe they had flower pots on the shelves of their front home doorways to make them more pretty and welcoming... Or maybe that's where the mailmen set their packages... There are so many possibilities!


Here is a "corner doorway" where they build the door at the intersection of four walls. How cool are these people?!

Here's another corner doorway from farther away and with the top still intact.

This is a kiva whose roof no longer exists but has remnants of the roof left. They would pile these juniper logs on each other and get them closer and closer together until there was just a small smoke hole left at the top. Then, they piled branches and clay on top of that to cover them over. I'll show more of the finished tops from Mesa Verde.

Here's the inside of the largest Kiva in the... (NM? US? the West? I can't remember, but it's big.) It's been completely recreated (although there is apparently some disagreement about how correctly it was done...) and again, they have very few facts as to how this building and all its details were used. Still cool, though!
And here's the outside of the largest Kiva in the... area. :)