A photograph of Monarch Cave Anasazi Ruin. This particular ruin is located along Comb Ridge, a geologic monocline that traverse southeastern Utah and northeastern Arizona for more than 80 miles. Comb Ridge hosts a number of Indian Ruins.
The Anasazi (also known under the wider descriptor Ancestral Puebloans), were a culture of Native Americans that inhabited the Four Corners region of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico from about 1 A.D. to 1300 A.D. However, depending on where you draw the line on what seperates the Anasazi from earlier groups that inhabited the region, the start date may go back as far as 1500 B.C. The Anasazi are known best for their development of a mostly sedentary people rather than past tribes of migrating hunters and gathers. They engaged significantly in agriculture, growing beans, squash and corn, and developed monumental architecture to house their families, provide a defense against hostile neighbors, and to protect their food supply from rodents and other animals.
The Anasazi are believed by many to be related to the modern Puebloan tribes, the Hopi, Keres, Towa and Zuni, as well as their contemporaries in the southwest the Mollogon and Hohokam
Suggested Reading:
- Sandstone Spine: First Traverse of the Comb Ridge – David Roberts
- House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest – Craig Childs
- The Lost World of the Old Ones: Discoveries in the Ancient Southwest – David Roberts
- Non-Technical Canyon Hiking Guide to the Colorado Plateau – Mike Kelsey
- Grand Gulch, Cedar Mesa Plateau Maps – National Geographic Trails Illustrated Maps
Related Articles:
Top Ancient Archaeological Sites in the United States
Top Pictograph/Petroglyph Sites in Utah