The Pirámide del Adivino (Pyramid of the Magician) at Uxmal.

During the Postclassic Mayan Period, between approximately 800 and 1000 A.D., the center of Mayan urban development shifted to the northern Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. Here a series of notable cities such as Uxmal, located in the Puuc Hills near modern-day Mérida, arose. The Yucatán cities of the Postclassic period had large central cores containing huge buildings with elaborate carved or plaster motifs repeated over and over on the masonry blocks. The so called Casa del Gobernador at Uxmal is 8 meters high, 12 meters tall and extends for almost 100 in length. It contains 24 chambers. The facade of the Casa del Gobernador is made up of limestone blocks with over 20,000 decorative elements such as the mask of the rain god Chac.  To the east of Uxmal the Post-classic pyramid and its temple at Chichen Itza rises some 30 m above the huge central plaza. It is flanked by various stone buildings and a huge ball court. Cities such as Uxmal and Chichen Itza were smaller than the Classic Period cities such as Tikal and may have had a population of around 30,000.

The monumental architecture of Uxmal, Chichen Itza and nearby Postclassic cities

Toltec architecture and Chac Mool sacrificial altar statue from Chichen Itza

reflects both the original influence of the classical Mayan world and later elements of the massive stone architecture and symbolic carvings of the Toltec Empire, centered in the Valley of Mexico. The Toltecs arose in Mexico after the collapse of Teotihuacan. These Mexican related symbols include representations of the feathered serpent, Quetzalcoatl, crossed serpents and  the Mexican rain god Tlaloc At Chichen Itza the Jaguar Temple contains clear Toltec symbolism including the Toltec Jaguar cult emblem. The precise political relationship between the Toltec Empire and the Yucatán Mayan cities of the Postclassic period is unresolved, but clearly there was a strong Toltec influence on the ruling class and symbolism of the cities.

Why did the Mayan civilization shift its center of gravity to the northern Yucatán during the Post-classic period? What allowed these cities to prosper and grow while the southern lowlands were abandoned? At first glance climate and environment would have seemed to have worked against the northern Yucatán. It has much less precipitation than regions to the south such as Tikal and a drier, less verdant vegetation cover. The limestone bedrock is porous and water quickly disappears from the surface. However, these northern Mayan sites show much evidence of the use of groundwater resources rather than surface reservoirs. These include small water catching subterranean basins and large sink holes – called cenotes.  A prominent feature at Chichen Itza is the Cenote Sagrado (sacred cenote). Perhaps the early adaptation of the Maya here to aridity created by the drier conditions of the northern Yucatán coupled with reliance on ground water, rather than evaporation sensitive above ground reservoirs was important in sustaining Mayan urban culture in the Yucatán?

The Cenote Sagrado (Sacred Cenote) at Chichen Itza

The Maya clearly also turned to religion as a defense against drought. The carvings of the Mayan rain god Chac are ubiquitous in parts of Uxmal and other Yucatán Mayan cities. As already mentioned, there are also representations of the Mexican rain god Tlaloc. The cenote sagrado was a

Masks of the Mayan raingod Chac from Uxmal

place of sacrifice – the sacrificial offerings ranged from objects to animals to humans.  In fact even after Chichen Itza had been sacked and burned and was no longer a large and important urban center, Maya came to make offerings at the cenote – right up to the time of Spanish contact in the 16^th century.

Like the Classical cities to the south – the great Post-classic Mayan cities of the Yucatán also came to an end.  The cities appear to have engaged in warfare and petty city states arose and fell, in concert with a decline in architectural and construction quality. Imagery of warfare and human sacrifice abound in the carvings found at many Yucatán Mayan sites. Similar gruesome imagery is associated with the Toltec. The great city of Chichen Itza was destroyed by warfare about 1000 to 800 years ago, at about the same time as the Toltec capital at Tula and the Totec empire collapsed. There is evidence that drought and the displacement of nomadic peoples at the northern edges of the Toltec empire in Mexico may have driven this collapse. With the demise of the Toltec empire in Mexico, the influence of the Toltecs receded from the Yucatán. From the ashes of the Toltec legacy would arise the Aztec empire, but it did not reach into the Yucatán at the time of Spanish contact.  Aridity, drought, soil depletion may all have affected the Postclassic Maya, but human conflict appears to have been the critical element at play in the Yucatán during the Postclassical Period.

Warrior with severed head of victim, Chichen Itza

Mayan City of Tikal and surrounding rainforest in Guatemala

Driving northeast from the city of Flores in Guatemala it is hard to believe that dense and seemingly uninhabited rainforest once supported a largely agricultural landscape and innumerable human habitations. It is harder yet to imagine that some 1200 years ago the ruins of Tikal, empty and isolated today in the midst of a deep green forest, was once a thriving city of some 300,000 to 500,000 Mayans. In its day it rivaled in size and splendor the contemporary cities of Europe.  I traveled here as part of my Guggenheim research in early 2009.

When Hernán Cortés first arrived on the shores of Lake Flores in 1540 he found a small Mayan Kingdom situated there. In fact, it was here in Guatemala that the last independent Mayan state made its stand against the Spanish in 1697 before at last being absorbed by the Hispanic kingdom of the New World. However, the Maya the Spanish encountered at Flores were not directly from Tikal, but were Itzan refugees from the Maya-Toltec cities of the southern Yucatan Peninsula. They had arrived at Flores only some three centuries earlier themselves. When the Spanish arrived at Flores the great city of Tikal had already lain abandoned for hundreds of years and was likely all but subsumed under a blanket to uninhabited rainforest that extended for hundreds of square kilometers around it. The history of the Maya and their great Classical urban centers, such as Tikal, which flourished from 250 A.D. to 800 A.D. or their later impressive Postclassical cities of the Yucatan remain one of the great objects of interest to archaeologists and climate change scientists alike.

Mayan City of Tikal

Between 400 B.C. and 250 A.D. the Pre-Classic Mayan civilization arose in Southern Mexico and nearby parts of Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Large stone buildings took form in the center of emerging cities. During the Classic Period between 250 and 800 A.D. the Maya used thousands of stone blocks, usually cut from soft limestone and often covered with plaster and various decorative elements, to create huge city centers with expansive plazas, pyramidal temples and other ceremonial structures, palaces and large ball courts. As the Mayan cities grew in importance the monumental architecture of temples, palaces and administrative complexes reached considerable proportions. For example, the urban core and residential areas of Tikal likely covered some 60 square kilometers and included pyramids that exceed 50 m in height. There was also a large central acropolis that covered some 8000 square meters and many other great and impressive structures.  There is evidence of some trade linkages with the great empire of the Valley of Mexico to the north – Teotihuacan -. The Maya also developed a written language, recording events in glyphs written in codices and carved on stone steles placed in city centers. The monumental architecture at Tikal and other Classical Mayan sites is massive, angular and exceptionally well proportioned – giving it a very contemporary or even futuristic air. For example, Tikal served as the background ruins used as a rebel base in the Star Wars movie.

Although the area of Guatemala where Tikal is found, and the other Mayan southern lowlands sites that supported the great cities of the Classic Period are relatively moist, the region can experience prolonged droughts. In fact according to UN reports during 2009 the country is experiencing its worst drought in 30 years with some 2.5 million Guatemalans being affected. Hundreds of thousands are facing severe hunger. Then, as now. It is likely that drought was a potential deadly menace.  The urban infrastructure at Tikal includes extensive canal systems and surface water reservoirs – some of which hold water to this day. The Maya here appear to have depended upon the capture of surface water to hold them through dry periods.

Mayan reservoir at Tikal

The Classic Maya period and the great southern cities appear to have ended in a catastrophic manner. There is evidence of warfare, burning and hasty construction of defensive walls in some city centers. In some cases there is evidence of the massacre of the rulers. Unfortunately, the written history of the Maya provide no insight into what happened. By the end of the classic period the Maya had ceased to erect stone stele with inscriptions. Most of the codices found by the Spanish were destroyed by people such as Bishop Diego de Landa in the 1500 and 1600’s because he thought them satanic. Only four survive today. This must surely be one of the greatest travesties to have occurred in recent times in terms of destroying the history of an entire people.

Studies of past climate and environmental change, often based on sediment records from lakes or the ocean, suggest that the close of the Classic

Mayan pyramid at Tikal

Mayan period coincided with a period of extended drought in Central America and portions of northeastern South America. There is also evidence of pronounced soil erosion at this time. Could drought have caused the collapse of the Classic Mayan cities in the southern lowlands, or was it simply one component that included societal breakdown due to over population, soil depletion, inter-urban warfare, and an unsustainable social structure with a lavish lifestyle for the rulers and priests and brutal conditions for most others? Finally, the collapse of the Classical Mayan civilization appears to coincide with the collapse of the great empire Teotihuacan to the north. Perhaps the severing of trade and military-political linkages may have played a role in the decline of the Classical Maya. It is hard to point to any one of these factor after 1200 years. It is also hard to decipher why at no time after 800 A.D. did the Mayan people reoccupy the former fields or city centers at places like Tikal? What kept them away for over a thousand years and allowed the rainforest to reclaim the fields, buildings and silent plazas of the once great cities?

Detail of the a Ptolomaic aged stele on a small island above Aswan telling the story of drought and famine during the Old Kingdom reign of Djoser - some 4700 years ago.

With drought in Ethiopia and East Africa comes famine in Egypt. Rainfall is sparse and cannot replace the water of river. The failure of the Nile can have profound impacts on a land with so many people dependent on one source of water. The Old Kingdom of Egypt ended at around 2200 BC – a period which experienced widespread drought in many parts of the Bronze Age world (See Syria Blog Entries). There may have been other issues promoting instability at this time, but there is evidence people lost faith in the divine abilities of the Pharaoh. The crown of Upper and Lower Egypt no longer represented a strong and unifying government and the country split into smaller satraps – this was the time of the First Intermediate Period. A time of extinguished central government and uncertainty. both contemporary carvings of famine and Ptolomaic era carvings provide evidence of severe drought and famine in Old Kingdom Egypt well before the collapse of the last dynasty.

Detail of carving from Saqqara showing famine in Old Kingdom

What does the future hold for Egypt in terms of climate change? It is difficult to predict at present in some ways. Climate models suggest that with increasing greenhouse gasses the Northern Africa and the Near East will become drier. However, for Egypt the critical question is what will happen with the flow of the Nile and this depends on conditions in Ethiopia and East Africa – here it is not as clear what will happen with increasing greenhouse gasses. It is possible that conditions will be become so dry that not even the High Dam and Lake Nasser will provide complete insulation against drought and famine.

In addition to decreased flow of the Nile, drying in the desert will drive nomadic herders off the land and put additional pressure on the Nile Valley.  Finally, drought can destabilize adjacent countries such as Sudan, exacerbate social tensions and cause carnage. The bloody and bleak situation in Dafur could be a taste of things to come.

Although what will happen to the climate and hydrology of the upper reaches of the Nile as greenhouse gasses increase remain a question – the impact of the inexorable rise of sea level if climate continues to warm is more certain. Even a modest rise of sea level would produce a loss of a significant proportion of this productive farm land – not to mention the inundation of coastal ports such as Alexandria. A rich  and technologically sophisticated nation such as the Netherlands, might be able to produce extensive dike systems to protect low lying lands, however, Egypt with a small average per-capita annual income and much less in terms of financial resources would be helpless to confront such a challenge alone. For a nation with a growing and still relatively poor population  it seems all too possible that climate change and rising sea levels could produce profound social disruption and unrest – with potential repercussions far beyond the rim of the Nile Valley.  Much to ponder as I returned to California in late November at the end of the 2008 portion of my Guggenheim Fellowship.

Egypt has always been at the mercy of the Nile. If the headwaters to the south in Ethiopia and East Africa experience drought than the floods which irrigate and replenish the soils fail and famine was the result. Since dynastic times temples along the river had gauges called Nilometers that allowed the priests to accurately gauge the height of the river and estimate the magnitude of the annual flooding. Word of the Nile’s height at the southern edges of the kingdom at Aswan could be quickly carried down river to Thebes and Memphis to inform Pharaoh. The Priests, and Pharaoh as the embodiment of the gods, were responsible for invoking divine intervention to stave off droughts. The god representing flood and fertility was called Hapi and offerings were made to curry his favor.  However, the Egyptian pantheon also had a god of drought and desert – Seth – the slayer of Osiris and a far more powerful figure in Egyptian religion.

Scorpion Mace (Photo courtesy of Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)

The Egyptian response to water resource challenges were not always passive. Evidence exists for canal building including the Scorpion Mace from the very dawn of the Protodynastic period which shows a ruler carving a canal. In more recent times flood barrages were built across channels of the Nile in the Delta to control water height there. Some incorporating castellated architecture of the British period. However, the most colossal of all the works along the Nile is the High Dam at Aswan. Completed with Soviet support in 1970 the High Dam stretches over 3 km across the Nile and holds the waters of Lake Nasser which extend south for 550 km to the Egyptian-Sudan border region. Aside from generating energy, the High Dam allows the storage of water from periods of high flow for release during dry times. The High Dam not only regulates the flow of the Nile, it is a form of insurance against the vagaries of climate and drought.

However, the benefits of the High Dam are not without costs. The creation of Lake Nasser inundated many Nubian villages along the former course of the Nile. The Nubians are an African rather than Semitic people and developed a vibrant and powerful civilization during the dynastic period that incorporated many elements of Egyptian architecture and religion. During the period of 745 to 650 BC the powerful Nubian Civilization, called Kush by the ancient Egyptians, expanded its reach to the very Delta of the Nile. During this, the 25^th Dynasty, Nubian kings became the Pharaohs of Upper and Lower Egypt. During the 1960’s tens of thousands of Nubians were displaced by Lake Nasser. They have resettled along the Nile from Aswan to Luxor and beyond. Some follow traditional farming as can be seen in villages near Aswan while many of these kind and hospitable people have become workers in the tourist industry – particularly between Aswan and Luxor where  hundreds of tourist boats of various sorts cruise the Nile taking visitors to the temples along the river.

Filming in a Nubian village.

The lack of flooding also impacts agriculture. Energy must be expended to drawn water from the river as it no longer floods freely, typically using gasoline and diesel pumps, to irrigate the fields. The soil-nourishing silts of the river floods have also declined.

Aswan High dam and the Nile below.

Unas pyramid, causeway and funeral temple ruins, Saqqara

Egypt is one of the great early civilizations of the world. Owing to its arid climate and the use of stone to build its  massive burial pyramids, monumental statues, obelisks and temples it is also the best preserved of the early bronze age cultures in terms of its remaining buildings. At the time of Christ and the start of the Roman Empire some of these edifices were already 2000 years old and served as tourist attractions for the classical world.

Temple at Karnak

Although we know much of Egyptian funeral, religious and monumental structures, little remains of the ancient cities and villages where people actually lived. Take for example the great city of Memphis south of Cairo.  A complex of Old Kingdom pyramids and funeral temples lies today on the dry desert ridge just above the former site of Memphis. Almost nothing remains of the urban center itself. The reasons for the loss of the mundane urban and village structures lies partly in the use of adobe brick, the flooding and shifting of the Nile and the habit of cities to build new structures on the rubble of older ones – often using the old stone for new structures. The life of the common person disappears with time.

Occasionally we can catch glimpses of the ancient commoner’s Egypt through archaeology. Tomb paintings from Saqqara south of Cairo show day-to-day life in the Old Kingdom – some 4000 years ago. Men work in the field and at other tasks, women carry produce on their heads, scribes record transactions. Hundreds of figures provide a snapshot into the ancient past and lives of the common person

In the western desert the remains of an ancient alabaster mine contains piles of broken pottery and stone tools – while rough stone outlines show the former location of closely spaced tiny structures that workers probably lived in while mining in the hot inhospitable locations. A far cry from the temples and luxurious boats of the Pharaoh plying the Nile to the east.

However, one does not have to travel to the remote desert to find vestiges of an ancient Egyptian existence You can still see sun-baked adobe blocks used in building small homes and other farm buildings along the Nile, the Nile Delta and Fayum. Life in rural Egypt today is in some ways a curious mixture of the modern and ancient. Cell phones mix with waterbuffalo, people carry produce on their heads down shady farm lanes while a short distance away modern cruise ships transport tourists up and down the Nile. Honey is gathered on Delta farms from adobe bee hives and then poured on flatbread that has been hand-shaped and then cooked in gas grills. Although Egypt is rapidly urbanizing a large part of the population still works the land. However, despite the almost unbelievable fertility of these bottom lands, not enough is produced to fully support Egypt’s growing numbers.

Egyptian farm life

Early Morning Fayum Oasis

Surprisingly, agriculture came late to Egypt compared to Syria and Iraq which lay to the east. By 10,600 to 10,000 years ago (8600 to 8000 BC) agriculture had taken firm root in ancient Mesopotamia and adjacent regions in Near and Middle East. According to archaeologists from UCLA and the University of Groningen in the Netherlands agriculture did not arrive in Egypt until about 7200 years ago (5200 BC).

Neolithic grain grinding basin west of Fayum.

The evidence for the earliest agriculture in Egypt comes from just west of Fayum Oasis. This massive agricultural region south of Cairo remains an important source of food for modern Egypt. On in the desert sands just west of current cultivated areas Dr. Willeke Wendrich from UCLA (a Co-leader of the project) and her colleagues have found evidence of grain cultivation and processing and domesticated animal use by Neolithic peoples. Today the stone implements and pottery of these peoples, their refuse piles of shell or bone and other traces are found on the surface and just under the sands of the desert.

 

Why did agriculture came so late to Egypt? What caused people to transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture?  Why are these early traces of agriculture found out in the desert west of Fayum, where massive irrigation would be required to grow crops today? Archaeologists continue to search for definitive answers to these questions, but some insights are available. Perhaps early agriculture was also practiced in the Nile Valley and Delta, but the flooding of the Nile and shifts in river channels may have erased most traces.  The answer to how Neolithic people were able to practice agriculture west of Fayum, in what is arid desert today, lies just below the surface of the sand. In many areas one can find geologic deposits of lake sediment and marsh sediments that show us a much moister environment existed in the past. Indeed, at about 11,000 years ago this area of Egypt and the Sahara desert in general was much moister than today. Over time the climate became more arid, the wetlands and savanna vegetation disappeared, the sands became dry and mobile and the modern Sahara developed. The remains of the Neolithic agriculturalists and the lake and wetland deposits date back to this moister time. The ancient farmers lived along the lake shores and near wetlands and used those resources. Then natural climate change and increasing drought became too much and the people were forced to leave as the wetlands disappeared and the sands advanced.

Neolithic agriculturalists worked stone and flakes in desert west of Fayum

The country of Egypt is known throughout the world for its incredible history, richness of ancient monuments and stunning archaeological finds. It is also home to about 82 million people. One third of the active labor force remains employed in agriculture. Main crops today include grains, cotton, sugar cane and various fruits.

However, it would be a disservice to think of Egypt in strictly historical or rural terms. It is the home of rapidly growing urban areas. The city of Cairo has a population of over 8 million people and the greater Cairo metropolis expands both up and down the lower Nile and outwards into the eastern and western deserts. Indeed the great pyramids at Giza are now surrounded by suburban neighborhoods of Cairo. The city of Cairo, with its sometimes overwhelmed infrastructure, environmental problems including significant air pollution and its deep divisions between rich and poor, is also one of the most exciting and cosmopolitan cities in the Middle East and the World at large.

Egypt, Nile Delta, Nile River, Fayum Oasis and Lake Nasser from Terra/MODIS satellite 2000-08-10 (NASA)

Given its large population and the importance of its agriculture sector for employment, it is odd to think that most areas of Egypt received an average rainfall of a few mm’s per-year. Aside from some notable oases, Egypt largely depends upon one source for its water – the Nile. A satellite image of Egypt shows the situation well, a thin, thin green band of agriculture and human settlement along the Nile River terminating in its expansive delta. This thread of green is surrounded by almost completely vegetation-free desert. The boundary between the desert and the moist lowlands along the Nile are often as sharp on the ground as they appear in the satellite image on the right. One can have one foot in a green and almost impossibly fertile field and the other in sterile sands that stretch out to the horizon.

Since before the times of the pharaohs most agriculture in Egypt has depended upon the annual cycle of flooding of the Nile. In fact the ancient Egyptian calendar was divided into three seasons rather than four – Ahket – flooding in June through September, Peret – crop planting and growth in October through February and Shemu – harvest time in March through May. Not only did the flooding bring water to the valley and delta, but the sediment of the river fertilized the land each year, allowing abundant and predictable harvests from rich and well watered soils. Since ancient times also, the river provided a geographic demarcation of the country. The Delta region has long been known as Lower Egypt and the region along the Nile above the Delta is Upper Egypt. Pharaohs were the kings of Upper and Lower Egypt and are often depicted with the double crown of the two Egypts or with the symbols of Lower Egypt (the cobra, papyrus or the bee for example) and Upper Egypt (the vulture, lotus or the sedge plant for example). The Nile defines Egypt.

A double image of Ramses II (19th Dynasty - ruled 1279-1212 BC) holding the knotted lotus and papyrus symbols of Upper and Lower Egypt

The build-up of Chaco Canyon extended over many centuries and seemed to reach a peak around 1000 years ago. Then, decline set in and by AD 1300 the great pueblos and the entire canyon itself was abandoned by its creators and inhabitants. Much speculation has been made on the causes of the Chaco abandonment. Factors that have been mentioned include drought and famine, disease due to malnutrition, warfare and cannibalism, environmental degradation that caused the loss of trees, soils and the downcutting of steams, and societal inbalances created by a stratified society of haves and have nots. It is known that the time of Chaco’s decline and abandonment coincided with a period of natural global warming and enhanced aridity in the Southwest. Not only might it have been generally drier, but seasonal patterns of precipitation may have changed and droughts become more prolonged. Given that the Chacoans had weathered earlier droughts, and developed the Chaco phenomenon in a generally arid environment it seems likely that the aridity of the 12th through 13th centuries may have simply been an added pressure that pushed a society already facing strains over the edge.

Evidence suggests that the Chacoans and other ancestral Pueblo peoples moved across the landscape of the Southwest to find sustainable areas of occupation. Some Chacoans went south and there is evidence that some went northward. The great cliff palaces of Mesa Verde, Colorado show ties to Chacoan influences. The great stone pueblo at Aztec, New Mexico may have served as a regional center of sorts. However, the northern areas of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico had their own climate induced problems coupled with evidence for very high human population densities and associated demands for resources. After the 14th century the climate began to cool and may have made corn farming uncertain in the northern areas and higher mesas. Some evidence exists of violence and warfare. Perhaps the cliff palaces at Mesa Verde served a defensive role. Like Chaco, the ancient Puebloans eventually abandoned the northern areas too.

Cliff Dwelling, Mesa Verde, Colorado

However, it is wrong to stop our account of the Pueblo peoples with the abandonment of places like Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde and consider them lost peoples. When the Spanish arrived in the Southwest and occupied it during the 16th and 17th centuries they found a vibrant pueblo culture with large settlements of farmers along rivers such as the Rio Grande and the Little Colorado. The Rio Grande tribes, the Hopi and the Zuni farming peoples all can lay claim to long history in the Southwest and the great pueblos and settlements of the past. By the time the Spanish arrived these peoples had found a sustainable means to occupy and harvest the lands. Was the abandonment of places like Chaco and Mesa Verde indications of some sort of failure or better viewed as a choice towards sustainability that has allowed these remarkable people and their cultures to persist to the present day?

Pueblo Ruins, Aztec, New Mexico

When Europeans first began to explore the American Southwest they found both native North American agricultural people and hunters and gathers. However, they also encountered in various desolate or uninhabited portions of the region the huge ruins of stone and adobe structures. Many such ruins contain round ceremonial chambers called kivas. In some cases the ruins seemed to dwarf the physical size of the existing agricultural pueblos. Fanciful explanations were constructed around these grand ruins. No one less the eminent geographer and explorer Alexander von Humboldt subscribed to the belief that the ancient pueblo ruins of the southwestern US were the works of the Aztecs themselves. In his 1810 map of New Spain von Humboldt ascribed pueblo ruins in modern day New Mexico to the Aztecs whom he thought had migrated south to the Valley of Mexico from an ancestral homeland in the Southwest. Another set of ruins located between modern Phoenix and Flagstaff, Arizona was called Montezuma’s Castle by American settlers in the 1860′s under the belief that the last Aztec emperor had been there.

The most impressive collection of such ruins exists in the Chaco Canyon region of New Mexico. One stone structure there is called today Pueblo Bonito and covers about 3 acres of land, rises several stories high and may have had 800 rooms. It dwarfed the American apartment buildings of the mid-19th century. Not only did Chaco Canyon have a number of huge pueblos, but there is evidence of many other smaller structures, rock staircases, irrigation works and even long, straight roadways. Yet, during the 17th through 19th century Spanish period and during the first survey of the ruins in 1849 by a US Army expedition the canyon was abandoned.

Today the builders of these ancient pueblo ruins are typically referred to as the Anasazi – which itself is a Navajo word meaning ‘old enemy’. We know that the builders were not the Atztecs, but more likely the ancestors of the modern Pueblo indians of the Southwest. We also know that many of the abandoned sites were occupied over 1000 years ago and then deserted around AD 1200. We know who these ancient farmers and builders were in general – why though did they desert such impressive settlements? In the Fall of 2008 I visited a number of these sites as part of my Guggenheim research.

Pueblo Bonito Ruins, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico (with author setting up to film)

Scattered among the canyons, mesas and lake shorelines of northern Utah and adjacent areas of Colorado, Nevada and southern Idaho can be found evidence of an ancient agricultural people who inhabited and farmed the region for centuries before the arrival of Europeans – and then mysteriously disappeared. These native farmers, who raised crops such as corn (maize), squash and beans are referred to as the Fremont People by archaeologists. Exactly who they were and which native North American linguistic group they belonged to remains a mystery. They certainly did not refer to themselves as Fremonts – this name comes from the Fremont River region of Utah and is a modern designation applied to these lost people.

Fremont watch tower ruins at Nine Mile Canyon, Utah

From roughly AD 700 to AD 1300 the Fremont held sway over a large portion of the intermountain west. To their south were the Anasazi farmers of the Southwest. Elsewhere around the Fremont lived a number of different hunting and gathering cultures. Evidence of their presence can be seen in the ruins of stone and adobe villages and towers with broken pottery and stone artifacts. In many areas, careful searching of high cliff faces and ledges reveals hidden storage cysts or granaries. Who were these caches of food so carefully being hidden from?

Between AD 1200 and AD 1500 the Fremont disappeared, their villages and fields fell into ruin and no other agriculturists tilled the fields of northern Utah until the arrival of Europeans. When the Spanish led Dominguez-Escalante Expedition crossed northern Utah in 1776 they reported the following from near present-day Roosevelt

“We continued upstream along the latter and after going west one league we saw the ruins near it of a very ancient pueblo where there were fragments of stones for grinding maize, of jars and of pots of clay. The pueblos shape was circular as indicated by the ruins now almost completely in mounds.“

Despite these ruins there was no evidence for current agriculture to be found by the Spanish for hundreds upon hundreds of miles of the region.

So, what happened to the Fremont and why did agriculture retreat southward from the interior of western North America during the late prehistoric period. This remains an enduring mystery. It is difficult to invoke land mis-management as all evidence suggests the Fremont had a relatively light imprint on the environment. Nor were the Fremont rigid in their life ways and strictly dependent upon one crop. The evidence is that they switched to hunting and gathering easily and supplemented crops with things like pinyon pine nuts. One interesting fact is that the period of AD 1100 to 1300 was a time of natural global warming and there seems to have been enhanced aridity and more prolonged droughts in southwestern North America. Perhaps prehistoric climate change produced a tipping point at which environmental pressures and societal pressures combined to cause the frontier of agriculture to retreat and remain absent for hundreds of years until the arrival of a new group of farmers – European immigrants.

As a last thought – driving in search of Fremont sites one sees many abandoned farmsteads and ranches in the hard country of eastern Utah and western Colorado. In some ways, just as remarkable as their disappearance is the fact that using only stone tools and ancient styles of farming the Fremont were able to persist so long in many of their now remote and forgotten sites.

Abandoned homestead in northeastern Colorado