Palace of the Anasazi Cliff Dwellers

Just beyond the western slope of the Rockies, Mesa Verde sits on the edge of the Great Basin desert, near Utah's border. The Ancestral Puebloans seem to have reached a guilded age around 1100 AD, having spent many hundreds of years perfecting the technique of carving homes from the side of a mountain before they vanished mysteriously over night ... at least that's the popular view. It's more likely they abandoned the high, arid desert for more tenable land; archaeologists tell us most of North America experienced a profound drought starting around 1150 that likely provoked a change of this scale.

Modern Pueblo nations like the Hopi, Hohokam and Patayan - spread across the Four Corners region - descend from the Anasazi. The Cliff Palace is remarkably similar to the Canyon de Chelly in New Mexico, and other sites around the southwest. These peoples had a distinct artistic style, expressed in pottery, architecture, and petroglyphs scattered from Nevada to Taos or perhaps even Mexico, and east beyond the Front Range.

Anasazi is a Navajo word meaning "ancestral enemies," and not surprisingly, it's falling out of favor.