Indians of the Mesa Verde

Cliff Palace rises from the sandstone cliffs of southwestern Colorado, a city suspended in time. Here, Don Watson traces the arc of a civilization that built upward into the impossible and then vanished without warning. The Mesa Verde cliff dwellings represent one of archaeology's most compelling mysteries: a people who constructed apartment complexes into vertical cliff faces, who mastered astronomy and agriculture, and who between 1270 and 1300 AD simply walked away from their homes. Watson reconstructs the daily life, social structure, and architectural genius of the Pueblo people, bringing specificity to their remarkable culture before its disappearance. He weaves in the tragic circumstances of their abandonment, the arrival of explorers who uncovered these ruins centuries later, and the enduring questions that still puzzle researchers today. This is a book about permanence and impermanence, about a people who built for eternity and then chose to leave.