Who were the descendants of the Anasazi?
What kind of buildings did the Anasazi build?
Who are the Pueblo and the Hopi Indians?
The Anasazi, or ancient ones, who once inhabited southwest Colorado and west-central New Mexico did not mysteriously disappear, said University of Denver professor Dean Saitta at Tuesday’s Fort Morgan Museum Brown Bag lunch program. The Anasazi, Saitta said, live today as the Rio Grande Pueblo, Hopi and Zuni Indians.
The Anasazi cultivated crops in a desert environment with a long history of climate change. Originating in Asia, the first people came to what is now the American Southwest about 10,000 years ago. These hunters and gatherers were constantly on the move.
The religion of the Anasazi people was based on their belief of Earth, not only the source of their food and protection, but also as a sacred place connecting them to a Great Spirit.
Ancestral Pueblo culture, also called Anasazi, prehistoric Native American civilization that existed from approximately ad 100 to 1600, centring generally on the area where the boundaries of what are now the U.S. states of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah intersect.
The Anasazi (“Ancient Ones”), thought to be ancestors of the modern Pueblo Indians, inhabited the Four Corners country of southern Utah, southwestern Colorado, northwestern New Mexico, and northern Arizona from about A.D. 200 to A.D. 1300, leaving a heavy accumulation of house remains and debris.
The term “Anasazi” was established in 1927 through the archaeological Pecos Classification system, referring to the Ancestral Pueblo people who spanned the present-day Four Corners region of the United States, including Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon, Canyon De Chelly, and Aztec.
The airy settlement that we explored had been built by the Anasazi, a civilization that arose as early as 1500 B.C. Their descendants are today’s Pueblo Indians, such as the Hopi and the Zuni, who live in 20 communities along the Rio Grande, in New Mexico, and in northern Arizona.
