This storage area, just below the ceiling at Cliff Palace, could only be reached through houses in half of the architectural complex. Thus, the contents were controlled/secret. Why? Because it mattered so very much….

At Mesa Verde, the Ancestral/Ancient Puebloan* peoples abandoned their mesa-top and cliff dwellings in the late 1200s long before the Spanish arrived. They were small-statured people, in the 5-2 to 5-4 range. I’m figuring a big part of that was restricted calories. Sure, a pound of piñon nuts is something like 5K calories, but the rest of the dietary assortment is pretty low fat and the carb loads had to be, um, light, everything considered (like the calories it would take to navigate up and down cliff-faces…).

Speaking of food management, we enjoyed a lovely organic Nero d’Avila from Sicily that we found at the Log Cabin liquor store in Mancos—a pleasant surprise.

* More PC to use Ancestral/Ancient Puebloan rather than Anasazi….

This entry was posted in anthropology, archaeology, architecture on Friday, 12 April 2013 at 10:22 pm.
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