Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Bolga bam here. If you were one of the unfortunate Ancestral Pueblo people who happened to have a fear of heights, well, you might not have gotten out much. The cliff dwellings at what's now known as massa Verde National Park certainly would have made you wish for a less lofty home. Now, these sprawling structures in the sky attract adventure seekers and history lovers from around
the world. Sandstone blocks and wooden beams make up these gravity defying structures, which are built right into the steep and spectacular cliffs of southwest Colorado at an elevation of some seven thousand feet that's about tucked away in rocky alcoves underneath jagged cliff tops, some only accessible by thirty
foot or nine meter ladders. Mortar made from ash and soil mixed with water completes the structures, and though their original hues have long since disappeared, some rooms were once painted brilliant shades of yellow, red, pink, and white to preserve these structures. The park was established by then President Theodore Roosevelt in nineteen o six. Msa Verde was the seventh National park to be added to the country's roster, a year after wind Cave National Park and four years
prior to Glacier National Park. It's the only national park formed to protect a historic cultural site as opposed to a natural space. In designating the site of national Park, Roosevelt aimed to preserve the heritage of the ancestral Pueblo communities that thrived there for seven centuries from around five fifty to hundred CE. To this day, no one is certain why an entire community abandoned their hard earned homes,
nearly six hundred of them in all. The structure most associated with the park is the hundred and fifty room Cliff Palace, a twenty six foot or eight meter behemoth. It's likely the biggest cliff dwelling on the continent, at tucked into an alcove far above the ground. In total, the park contains more than five thousand archaeological sites, making it the biggest preserve of its kind in the country.
What's more, there may be thousands of sites still undiscovered due to its historical importance, as well as the mind boggling trove of architectural and perishable materials in the Alcoves massa very day is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site, one of twenty four in the United States. Under normal circumstances, visitors can roam some areas unattended. For others, like tours of specific buildings and tunnels, you must register for ranger led tours for The article of this episode is based
on How Stuff Works. Spoke by email with Scott Ortmann, a Colorado University Boulder assistant professor. He explained that the cliff dwellings were the homes of ancestral Pueblo familys and often the central gathering places of larger communities. For example, at some point view in the park you can see many contemporaneous settlements in adjacent canyons that were part of
a single community. He said, it's important to emphasize that while the settlements in the alcoves are much better preserved, the vast majority of ancient settlements in the park occur on the Mesa tops and Talus slopes outside of the alcoves. In other words, the cliff structures were in the minority
in this community. Portman continued, most of the structures you see in the alcoves today date from the final century of occupation, but earlier structures were likely periodically raised and rebuilt, and this is why the archaeological record of the alcoves is somewhat biased towards the final period. But why you might ask, particularly if heights happened to give you the heeb gbs, would people live in homes where the front
steps led straight to vertical oblivion been explained. Probably the most basic reason that people built in the alcoves is that, except for north facing alcoves, they are nice, passive solar environments, shady in the summer, sunny in the winter. Additionally, because the alcoves are formed by water action, most also have seeps or springs useful as domestic water sources in them. But there might be more ominous reasons. Violence may have played a role in the community's decision to build cliff
high rises. Portman said, during the thirteenth century people really packed into these places, and the architecture has some defensive aspects to it. So perhaps the packing during the final decades of occupation was due to increasing competition related to population density, or perhaps defense against enemies and defensive positioning. Aside It seems that virtuosity in architecture played a role in Messa very day society, as many structures exhibit evidence
of being built for beauty as well as function. The structures exhibit startling precision with amazing geometry and positioning that relates to astronomical events. Sherry Towers, an Arizona State University statistician with a doctorate in experimental particle physics, published a paper in the Journal of Archaeological Science in that demonstrated how the D shaped sun temple corresponds to the heavens.
Incorporated into the structure are staples of geometry, including forty five degree right triangles, equilateral triangles, the Pythagorean triple, and the Golden rectangle. And somehow these builders did all this work without modern tools of any kind, or even any sort of written language or number system that we know of. Twenty four modern tribes of the Four Corners region trace their lineage to the people who made their lives on these cliffs. Of course, their lives look much different than
those of their ancestors. Today's episode is based on the article msa Verde National Park Preserves sky high Native American the dwellings on how stuff works dot Com written by Eric Baxter. Brain Stuff is production of by Heart Radio in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.