Where did the Anasazi People Go?

From 100 B.C. to 1300 A.D. an ancient tribe of presumed Native Americans inhabited a desert area in the Southwestern United States. This tribe was called the Anasazi, which in Navajo means "Ancient Enemy", however, some have stated that the translation can also mean "Ancient Strangers" or "Ancient Visitors".

The mystery of the Anasazi people has fascinated many historians and Ancient Alien Theorists because the tribe seemingly disappeared without evidence as to what happened to them. What is more intriguing is the fact that this civilization was known as the Anasazi not because this was the name the chose for themselves, but because this was the name their neighboring Navajo tribes gave them. This is one example of a civilization that existed amongst other civilizations that can attest to their existence and shed light on some of their histories. In many cases, ancient civilizations are examined based upon archeological studies and artifactual evidence.

In this case, it can't be dismissed that the only other witness to the Anasazi people stated that, in fact, there was something strange about them; the Navajo encountered many different tribes during their history, but never called them "Ancient Strangers". This Anasazi tribe was different.

Now, the idea behind the Anasazi having been Ancient Aliens also stems from the artwork that was left behind by the tribe, some of which depict beings with extraterrestrial features. Around the world, ancient civilizations tell stories about the origin of their culture, many of which state that beings from the sky visited their earliest ancestors and taught them about agriculture, religion, and science. Some notable civilizations with these beliefs include the Egyptians who believed that the God Thoth came to them and gave them the gift of knowledge and civilization, the Native American Hopi tribe and their belief of the Sky People who came down from the heavens to teach them many things, and the ancient Sumerians who also believed their Gods, the Anunnaki, came from the sky to teach them about society, math, science and promised to one day return.

Throughout history, almost every civilization states that their origins are in the stars, from the smallest, lesser known tribes like the Dogon people of Africa who say they come from Sirius B, a star that can't be seen with the naked eye, to well-traveled civilizations like the Vikings that wrote about how their Gods came from the heavens to create and teach them. However, none of these civilizations lived around others who proclaimed them strangers and unworldly like the Anasazi.

Like many ancient civilizations, the Anasazi people used the stars and constellations to map their seasons, agricultural calendars and for navigational purposes; they were what we call Sky Watchers. The tribe, located in the southwestern Four Corners, an area where the borders of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona meet, built an ancient observatory used to study the stars.

But around 1300 A.D. the Anasazi people disappeared from history, with a few of their cultural aspects being found with other Native American tribes like the Hopi, but not enough cultural influence to definitively state that they simply left the area and populated another location altogether, the sudden disappearance of their cultural artwork and pottery suggest otherwise.

Mainstream archeologists contend that the Anasazi people's disappearance from history is a direct result of their rapid change of culture, suggesting that the tribe underwent massive and rapid changes in their sociological structures destabilizing their progress and leading to their destruction. This is a highly debated fact, as it gives no credible substance on what social changes could have caused such a fate. A similar explanation was given by mainstream archeology once, citing deforestation as the cause of the destruction of the Mayan people. According to this theory, the Mayan's lust for limestone plaster for their pyramids led them to cut down an exponential amount of trees to burn a fire hot enough to pulverize limestone rocks to make their infamous, white plaster. This idea is plausible, but this type of specific analysis is not offered for the Anasazi case. The questions of "why?" and "how?" have never been answered.

What is known, or at least theorized, is that around 1250 A.D., 50 years prior to their disappearance, the Anasazi people were under some kind of threat large enough to send them running for the hills, literally. They began building nearly inaccessible cliff dwellings that offered protection and defensive advantages. However, near the same time, the cliff dwellings were abandoned, believed to be the result of an unknown cataclysmic event that sent the Anasazi people fleeing toward the Rio Grande and the Little Colorado River. The ancient astronaut theory says that the Anasazi people were ancient aliens who came from the heavens and their disappearance is attributed to them having simply gone back to where they came from, the sky.

At this point, it has to be stated that according to archeological records, the Anasazi did not completely disappear, in fact, their descendants are today's Pueblo Native Americans. Modern Pueblo Indians have oral tales of the tribe's migration, but even these raise questions as to what went awry when the Anasazi decided to leave. Their tales included stories of warfare and cannibalism leading up to an era around 1200 A.D. where the tribe seemingly looses all control over itself and begins to fall apart.

Archeologists have tried looking toward environmental factors that could have led the Anasazi people to abandon their dwelling, citing that tree rings suggested that there was a major drought lasting 23 years between 1276 to 1299 A.D. However, the Anasazi people had survived harsher environmental disasters, including a drought between 1130 and 1180 A.D.

Some professors believe that what happened to the Anasazi was a sociological breakdown, where the governing bodies of villages were losing control over their subjects. These rulers engaged in cannibalism and executions of the insubordinate subjects, throwing the entire society into a constant state of fear. Many chose to head for the hills, others built fortified cities. One angle that has hardly been examined is whether or not the Anasazi people were a violent race. Another Native American tale tells of a savage northern tribe that came to the Anasazi villages. They were treated kindly but soon began to pillage the tribe and later massacre them. The tribe fled to the cliffs, building perched homes to hide from the savages until they left, but this strategy failed and the homes were left with the riddled bodies of the conquerors and the conquered. Those who survived fled south, never to return.

Even if any of these theories are correct, this leaves two major questions. What could have happened to make an otherwise peaceful community revolt against their leaders and who were these savage northern savage tribes that are completely unaccounted for as nomads or travelers? What we do know is that in many of the Anasazi sites, remnants of a protein called myoglobin, a human muscle protein, in their cooking pots. Many also had evidence of other cannibalistic activity such as pot-polishing, a sheen left on bone after boiling for a long time in clay pots. Some of the dead found were found in mass numbers as if massacred brutally and left where they lay. In other cases, there was evidence of cannibalizing the victims and defecating next to the remnants of the bodies 8-16 hours after consumption. What we don't know is if the victims were the Anasazi killed by the savages, or is the Anasazi became savages and later victimized nearby tribes. But by 1300A.D., they were gone from the area and never returned.

This leaves more questions and one could speculate if the savages from the North were from the far, far north, up above in the sky. These attacks were confined to the Anasazi, none of the nearby settlements were attacked in this way. Perhaps the tribe upset the Sky People in some way.