Life in the southwestern corner of colorado can be difficult in the best of times. Rainfall is scarce, making growth hard even for the scrubby sagebrush and tough piñon and juniper trees that dot the arid land. In summer the heat is oppressive on the flatlands, and only slightly more tolerable on top of the flat, high mesas that jut above the horizon. Winter is not much better. Chapin Mesa, one of the largest features in the area, dominates the landscape and the imagination. Tucked away within its hidden canyons are the famous cliff dwellings built long ago by the Anasazi Indians. Sheltered by enormous natural overhangs, each village is a dense cluster of brick-walled rooms stacked two or three stories high, fronted by sunny plazas. Tiny windows in some rooms yield glimpses of paintings on inside walls; subterranean gathering rooms—called kivas—feature benches and elaborate ventilation systems. Everything is constructed of reddish-gold sandstone, which seems to glow in the unforgiving southwestern sun. Magnificent as these homes were, however, the Anasazi lived in them for fewer than a hundred years. For some unknown reason, they completely abandoned the area around a.d. 1300. Today, most of the cliff dwellings are preserved in Mesa Verde National Park, and every summer throngs of visitors ponder the mysterious departure of the Anasazi. Drought, warfare, and the harsh environment are all cited as possible explanations. But another, deeper mystery lies just a dozen or so miles west of Mesa Verde, in an area known as Cowboy Wash, a broad, flat floodplain in the shadow of Sleeping Ute Mountain. A century and a half before the abandonment of Mesa Verde, Cowboy Wash was home to another group of people, probably Anasazi as well. Recently archeologists discovered several piles of human bones at the site. These bones, they say, show clear evidence of cannibalism. What’s more, they maintain that this find does not represent an isolated incident. In the last few years, at least 30 nearby digs have yielded similar evidence of humans eating humans. Some archeologists speculate, naturally, that only people forced to desperate measures by starvation in this harsh environment would resort to cannibalism. The excavators of Cowboy Wash, however, propose a new theory. The cannibalism that occurred there, they say, was an act of prehistoric terrorism.
Traditionally, the anasazi have been portrayed as peaceful farmers who quietly tended their corn and bean crops. Archeological records indicate that they occupied the Four Corners area—the juncture of present-day Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico—from the beginning of the first millennium to around 1300. During that time they developed complex societies, farming methods, and architectural styles, culminating in life among the cliff dwellings. But recent work hints that the Anasazi world was far more turbulent than suspected. The clues come from an archeological dig conducted by Soil Systems, Inc., a private consulting firm in Phoenix, Arizona. Under contract to the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, ssi excavated several ruins in the Cowboy Wash area so the tribe could relocate any ancient human remains before the launch of a new irrigation project. The site where the bones were found, a dwelling known as 5mt10010, is believed to have been occupied between the years 1125 and 1150. It includes three pit structures, the roofed, semi-sunken rooms typical of Anasazi homes at that time, as well as other rooms and trash heaps known as middens. Some 15 to 20 people, divided into three households, probably lived there.
