The Anasazi are ancestors of the present- day Pueblo, Zuni, and Hopi tribes of New Mexico and Arizona. The Anasazi fished, hunted small game, and gathered wild foods. They eventually started to build elaborate structures called cliff dwellings, moving away from the subterranean pit houses. They used a sophisticated irrigation system to support their civilization. Using dams and dikes, contoured terraces, and reservoirs, the Anasazi made the most of the sandy soil and limited rainfall in their desert climate. Some archaeologists and historians believed that a lack of rainfall led to the demise of the Anasazi. Other scientists believe that cannibalism caused the downfall of the Anasazi. Along with attacks from the neighboring tribe, the Navajo, the Cannibalism theory provides a more practical explanation for the disappearance of the Anasazi.

What caused the Anasazi people, who had one of the most sophisticated civilizations in North America, to abandon their beautiful stone dwellings in the mid- 12th century? One of the earliest theories was the Great Drought theory, presented by A.E Douglass, an historian and archaeologist. He discovered new techniques fo

As the Anasazi cultivated more food, their society grew, and with that, art and culture flourished. A series of roads led straight to Chaco Canyon, a canyon containing many large cliff dwellings for the Anasazi. Most roads were about thirty feet wide and were most likely used to transport timber for the roofs of houses and gems from mines because large deposits of turquoise were found in the area. Though the Anasazi have disappeared, their descendants are believed to have settled along the Rio Grande Valley and at the foot of the Black Mesa.

a religious upheaval, in which the Anasazi were drawn by the Kachina religion. Indeed, this is a possibility, but it is unlikely that the archaeological record of Kachina icons and artifacts put the religion in the area early enough to have attracted the Anasazi. There may have been a massive epidemic or civil war could have spread throughout the Anasazi civilization, yet there are no large graves. Also remains the question of why the victors did not stay?

Another one of the more commonly accepted theories on the disappearance of the Anasazi that there was an invasion by a neighboring hostile group. To historian and archaeologist Harold Gladwin, writing in 1957, the solution was obvious: the Anasazi were under attack. The Navajo tribe has been listed as the most likely suspects and possible culprits, but this simple scenario has some built-in problems. When the Navajo arrived in the Four Corners, a region in which the Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah meet, is uncertain, but there is little in the archaeological record to suggest that it was coincident with the abandonment of the large Arizona Anasazi dwellings. The Navajo could have reached the Four Corners before the crisis of the Thirteenth Century.

None of these factors would have had an overwhelming effect if the Navajo population had remained small, as the Ute and Paiute populations did. The Navajo people, however, quickly began to multiply. The first significant competition for resources between the N

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