Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi)

The Ancestral Puebloans, once called the Anasazi, were the master builders of the American Southwest. From their heartland in the Four Corners region they raised the monumental great houses of Chaco Canyon and the dramatic cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde, tucked into sandstone alcoves hundreds of feet above the canyon floor. They farmed maize in an arid land, tracked the heavens, and traded for macaws and seashells. In the late 1200s a prolonged megadrought, combined with social upheaval, drove them to abandon these settlements. They did not vanish — their descendants are today’s Hopi, Zuni, and Rio Grande Pueblo peoples.