In August 1934 the undisturbed skeleton of an old woman was found on the bare floor of a small ruin just across the canyon from the public camp grounds. This skeleton, of particular importance because of fusion of the spinal column, had apparently remained exposed and undisturbed through more than seven centuries.
Because of the fact that no detailed, comprehensive survey has ever been made of the archeological resources of the park, the findings of new ruins, artifacts, and human remains are more or less regularly reported at the park museum.
PREHISTORIC INHABITANTS OF THE MESA VERDE
The so-called “Mesa Verde cliff dwellers” were not the first of the prehistoric southwestern cultures, nor were they the first human occupants of the natural caves that abound in the area of the park. Centuries before the cliff-dweller culture with its complex social organizations, agriculture, and highly developed arts of masonry, textiles, and ceramics, it is thought that small groups of primitive Mongoloid hunters crossed from the northeastern peninsula of Asia to the western coast of Alaska. The Bering Strait, with but 60 miles of water travel, offered the safest and easiest route.
Just when these migrations to the east had their origin and how long they continued cannot definitely be said, but it is thought the earliest Mongoloid hunters were in northwestern America about twelve to fifteen thousand years ago. When Columbus “discovered” America the continent was inhabited from Alaska to the Strait of Magellan and from the Pacific to the Atlantic coasts.
For perhaps several thousand years following the first migrations little of great significance developed. There undoubtedly was cultural progress, but it was slow, and in the long perspective of time its evidences are hardly discernible. With the knowledge and benefits of agriculture, which was probably developed first in Mexico, hunting gave way to husbandry, nomadism to sedentary life, and there followed a great period of change and advancement. The introduction of corn or Indian maize into what is now the southwestern United States may be called the antecedent condition for all advanced cultures of the area.
Evidence has not yet been established that the first of the maize-growing Indians of the Southwest were permanent occupants of the Mesa Verde. Nevertheless, in the Cliff Palace cave, well below the horizon or floor level of the cliff dwellers, archeologists have found a yucca fiber sandal of a distinctive type which is associated only with the first agricultural civilization. From this evidence it would be reasonable to assume that the caves of Mesa Verde at least offered temporary shelter, if not permanent homes, to the people of this period.
The earliest culture so far definitely identified as having permanent habitation on the Mesa Verde is the Basket Maker III or the Second Agricultural Basket Maker first found in Step House cave on the west side of the park below the debris of the latter cliff-house occupation. Recent excavations and archeological surveys furnish conclusive evidence that the second agricultural people were most numerous in the area now included in this national park, and they constructed their roughly circular subterranean rooms not only in the sandy floor of the caves but also in the red soil on the comparatively level mesas separating the numerous canyons. Late Basket Maker House A, formerly known as Earth Lodge A, is an excellent example of this early type of structure. Up to this time excavations have failed to uncover a single house structure of this type not destroyed by fire.
These early inhabitants made basketry, excelled in the art of weaving, and it is believed were the first of the southwestern cultures to invent fired pottery. The course of this invention can be traced from the crude sun-dried vessel tempered with shredded cedar bark to the properly tempered and durable fired vessel.
Then followed a long development in house structure, differing materially from this earlier type. Horizontal masonry replaced the cruder attempts of house-wall construction; rectangular or squarish forms replaced the somewhat circular and earlier type; and gradually the single-room structure was grouped in ever-enlarging units which assumed varying forms of arrangement as the development progressed. The art of pottery making improved concurrently with the more complex house structure. This later period represents the intermediate era of development from the crude Late Basket Maker dwellings to the remarkable structures of the “Cliff House Culture.”