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I've been to Mesa Verde and other archeological sites of the Anastazi and never heard about the cannibalism. What guides told us at those sites was more related to climate change back then as Ruth said. Water sources dried up and they had to move on.
They did leave us the Anastazi bean variety, which we used to enjoy frequently when we lived in SE Utah.
I've seen so many petroglyphs and ancient paintings all over Utah, some on private property. You can hardly protect them all, though I wish it were possible.
The climate change explanation is a fairly recent construct. It's a plausible sounding "idea" that is now being perpetuated without any actual scientific consensus. In fact, recent research points to that there was plenty of water from the underground seeps.
As someone who grew up here & became very familiar with the history ... It makes me raise an eyebrow when I hear it presented as gospel because it's still a hypothesis.
There is no evidence that the people established there for centuries just eventually dispersed & moved on ... In actuality; when it was "accidentally" discovered in 1888 (by a local rancher out looking for some stray livestock); it was FULL of artifacts ... Baskets, pottery, tools, etc ... All just sitting there, as if someone had set them down, turned around & poofed into thin air. Unfortunately, looters eventually stole a good amount of the artifacts but when the site was first found, it was very obvious that something else besides packing up & moving on had happened.
One nearby tribe does claim to be descended from the Anasazi, as mentioned here (also mentions cannibalism):
Thank you for linking those articles, coschristi and MegaTomb! I spent a good chunk of yesterday evening reading them.
The Smithsonian article says, that the theory on cannibalism, which was resoundingly rejected by specialists and local tribes when it first came out, has now been widely accepted not only among archaeologists, but also by some tribal representatives. I hadn't heard about this change in opinions.
I'm not surprised a connection to Mesa Verde has been found among some tribes, but I think it's going too far, to say all the Pueblo communities originally spring from MV. A couple of tribes near Chaco Canyon view themselves as ancestral to that complex, and still use it ceremonially. While some estimates of Chaco's founding state, that it was a later development after MV, some say the Chaco area was inhabited at the same time or even prior to MV. Perhaps future investigations of tribal histories and archaeological evidence will shed more light on this.
But, back to topic, if there was group violence and cannibalism, I imagine that some people might pick up on a creepy vibe when in those locations...
So, I was checking out real estate prices in my part of the world when I came across a property listed at $1.3 million dollars and located a thousand miles from nowhere. I noticed right away that the builder had attached his ultra modern home right smack onto an ancient Anastasi ruin that has to date back to 800 AD if not earlier.
For those not familiar with the Anastasi (or Ancient Ones as the Native Americans call them), they flourished here in the Southwest for hundreds of years and then abruptly vanished into thin air around 600 - 800AD. They left behind some pretty sophisticated architecture for those days, beautiful clay pottery, and the bones of the members of their families.
Archeologists say that probably severe drought and over population were among the causes for the disappearance of an entire people. They also tell us that the end of this culture was sudden and brutal. There is strong evidence that people were killed in their homes by some brutal enemy. Skeletons with broken skulls, skeletons with every limb broken before they died, even skeletons of children and babies that had apparently been dashed against the unforgiving stone and brick walls.
There is also strong evidence for cannibalism towards the very end of these people's existence in this area. Did they turn on one another and eat the bodies of those they killed due to famine and extreme hunger? Or were the Anastasi members of some cult that demanded that they should eat the bodies of their enemies or even family members? We will never probably know the answers, but we do know that these things happened everywhere around the Four Corners region.
OK, so I am mostly not very superstitious, but you couldn't PAY me $1.3 dollars to live in that house attached to the ruins of an entire people. I don't believe in ghosts, but my hackles always go up when I visit ancient places like Mesa Verde or Chaco Canyon.
Who knows what happened in that dwelling to which that house is attached? And the desolation of the place is just overwhelming. If you ask me, it's got all the ingredients for a horror novel written by Stephen King.
Am I over re-acting? Would YOU actually pay $1.3 million to buy that home attached to the haunted remains of a vanished people? My roommate thinks I'm being silly. Am I?
"Cannibalism?" lol Come on man.
Obviously, burial sites should be respected, otherwise, I believe some weird stuff can really happen.
If I were interested in that property, I would make sure it wasn't built on or near a cemetery. But anybody who needs that much isolation, probably has head issues to begin with.
Jeffrey Epstein would have loved that place. No one could hear you scream
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