Anasazi

On December 18, 1888, two cowboys, Richard Wetherill and Charles Mason, looking for a stray cow, stumbled upon long forgotten cliff houses in a canyon of south-western Colorado. These stone dwellings were the homes of the Anasazi, the “ancient ones,” whose culture in the Four Corners area of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona vanished before the arrival of Europeans. Little is known of the Anasazi except what is revealed by their stone and bone tools, bits of clothing, human and animal bones, woven baskets, pots, and buildings. They left no written record. These silent remains bear witness to a once thriving civilization. Relying on archaeological clues, Leonard Everett Fisher pieces together the history of the Anasazi.