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The Anasazi are ancestors of the present- day Pueblo, Zuni, and Hopi tribes of New Mexico and Arizona. The Anasazi fished, hunted small game, and gathered wild foods. They eventually started to build elaborate structures called cliff dwellings, moving away from the subterranean pit houses. They used a sophisticated irrigation system to support their civilization. Using dams and dikes, contoured terraces, and reservoirs, the Anasazi made the most of the sandy soil and limited rainfall in their desert climate. Some archaeologists and historians believed that a lack of rainfall led to the demise of the Anasazi. Other scientists believe that cannibalism caused the downfall of the Anasazi. Along with attacks from the neighboring tribe, the Navajo, the Cannibalism theory provides a more practical explanation for the disappearance of the Anasazi.
What caused the Anasazi people, who had one of the most sophisticated civilizations in North America, to abandon their beautiful stone dwellings in the mid- 12th century? One of the earliest theories was the Great Drought theory, presented by A.E Douglass, an historian and archaeologist. He discovered new techniques fo
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Although the Great Drought theory has been used to explain the disappearance of the Anasazi for many years, scientist and archaeologists are uncovering new evidence that could improve the understanding of why the Anasazi left their homes in the Midwest. Then massive forces like cannibalism and the Navajo attackers were the last straw for a civilization on the verge of extinction. Patricia Lambert of Utah State University, and Brian Billman of Soil Systems, the contracted archaeology firm, proposed that cannibalism was associated with violent conflict between Anasazi communities. There may have been a massive epidemic or civil war could have spread throughout the Anasazi civilization, yet there are no large graves. The Navajo tribe has been listed as the most likely suspects and possible culprits, but this simple scenario has some built-in problems. To historian and archaeologist Harold Gladwin, writing in 1957, the solution was obvious: the Anasazi were under attack.
It is possible that the combined demands on the land in northern Arizona by the increasing populations of Anasazi, Ute, Paiute, and Navajo tribes may have been more
than the fields and hunting grounds could support.
Many other theories are used to explain the disappearance of the Anasazi such as
a religious upheaval, in which the Anasazi were drawn by the Kachina religion. When the Navajo arrived in the Four Corners, a region in which the Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah meet, is uncertain, but there is little in the archaeological record to suggest that it was coincident with the abandonment of the large Arizona Anasazi dwellings. r tree ring dating, called dendrochronology, he then charted the tree rings in ‘living’ trees and overlapped and matched them with those found in wooden beams from increasingly older archaeological sites. This might have lead to hostility between the highly traditional and religious Anasazi, and the Navajo. This mystery may never be completely solved, but the cannibalism theory brings the scientific world one step closer to a more complete and reasonable explanation on the disappearance of the Anasazi from the Midwest. The Navajo people, however, quickly began to multiply. With a severe lack of rainfall, problems arose for all tribes.
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