THE ANASAZI — Why They Abandoned the Cliff Cities of the Southwest

They built a city in the cliffs and then, the story goes, they vanished. But the people we call the Anasazi did not disappear, and even that name is not their own. This is the honest history of the Ancestral Puebloans, the master masons and farmers of the Colorado Plateau, the builders of Chaco Canyon and the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde, and of why they left the Four Corners in the late twelve hundreds. We follow the whole interlocking system that emptied the region: the Great Drought of 1276 to 1299 charted by A.E. Douglass and his tree rings; the slow exhaustion of forests and soils behind the rise of Chaco's great houses; the breakdown of the old Chacoan religious and political order; and the documented surge of violence in the final decades, from Timothy Kohler's trauma studies to the end-stage massacres at Castle Rock and Sand Canyon investigated by Kristin Kuckelman. Along the way we look at Patricia Crown's discovery of cacao in the cylinder jars, the matrilineal dynasty of Room 33 revealed by Stephen Plog and ancient DNA, and the contested evidence handled with care. Most of all, we follow them where they actually went, south and east to the Rio Grande, to the Hopi mesas, to Zuni and Acoma, where their descendants live today. This is not the story of a people who vanished. It is the story of a people who moved, on purpose, and who are still here. Part of the Civilization Collapse in History series, where we trace how great societies failed, transformed, or endured, and what their endings can teach us. Chapters: 0:00 — Introduction 1:50 — The Name and the People 7:11 — The Chaco Phenomenon 9:35 — The Center of the World 14:45 — Into the Cliffs 17:51 — The Great Drought 22:05 — The Land Used Up 25:39 — When Neighbors Turned 30:11 — The Migration 34:03 — The Vanishing That Wasn't Search context: anasazi, ancestral puebloans, why did the anasazi disappear, chaco canyon, mesa verde, cliff palace, pueblo bonito, the great drought, anasazi migration, what happened to the anasazi. #Anasazi #AncestralPuebloans #ChacoCanyon #MesaVerde #CliffPalace #PuebloBonito #Hopi #Zuni #CivilizationCollapse #Archaeology #AncientHistory #Southwest #GreatDrought #NativeAmerican #history