The growing season in the lower elevations the arid grasslands and river bottoms, where, again, where we find many more Anasazi ruins lasts seven months or longer. Typical daily midwinter temperatures range from 18 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and daily midsummer temperatures, from 55 to 85 degrees Fahrenheit. Some 15 to 20 inches of precipitation fall in an average year at a rate of one to two inches per month. The growing season in the middle elevations 6000 to 8500 feet, where we find numerous Anasazi ruins lasts four to five months. Winter temperatures can drop to an Alaska-like 40 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit below zero. In modern times, 35 to 40 inches of precipitation, much of it in the form of heavy winter snows, fall on the mountain peaks in a typical year. The growing season at the highest elevations lasts no longer than a few weeks. (In historic times, Euroamericans have profoundly altered the face of the Anasazi region by clear-cutting mountain forests, overgrazing the grasslands, clearing river bottoms, redirecting stream flows and suppressing natural fires.) Cottonwoods and willows crowded the edges of rivers and streams along the mountain slopes and across the arid grasslands. Bunchgrasses and shrubs grew in the lower elevations, from about 4000 to 6000 feet. Mountain grasses, including bunchgrasses, fescue, needlegrasses and wheatgrasses covered alpine meadows and plateaus in the 7000- to 10,000-foot range. Stands of ponderosa pines and Gambel oaks and patches of montane chaparral and scrub characterized the forests between the elevations of 6000 to 8000 feet. Firs, spruces and pines mixed with quaking aspen grew between some 7500 to 10,500 feet.
Engleman spruce, subalpine fir and, in some areas, bristlecone pine, grew in the 10,000 to 11,500 foot range. It spanned northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, southeastern Utah and southwestern Coloradoa land of forested mountain ranges, stream-dissected mesas, arid grasslands and occasional river bottoms.ĭuring the time of the Anasazi, mosses, herbs, lichens and low woody shrubs grew at the mountain peaks, above 12,000 feet elevation, in an environment of strong winds, heavy snowfalls and short growing seasons. The heart of the Anasazi region lay across the southern Colorado Plateau and the upper Rio Grande drainage. The Anasazi would prove be resourceful, adaptable and, ultimately, the most enduring of the Pueblo cultural traditions.
In the second half, they left their mark on a much grander scale, through the construction of perhaps the most stunning prehistoric communities in the United States. In the first half of their history, the Anasazi distinguished themselves primarily through the artistry of their basketry, which they crafted from the fibers of plants. They still hunted and gathered, not as their only avenues for acquiring food, but as a complement to cultivated corn, beans, squash and other crops. Over time, they acquired more possessions, stored food, made pottery, adopted the bow and arrow, domesticated dogs and turkeys. They broke the land and took up agriculture. Perhaps in a response to Mesoamerican influences from Mexico, they began to turn away from the nomadism of the ancient hunting and gathering life, the seasonal rounds calibrated to the movement of game and the ripening of wild plants, the material impoverishment imposed by the limitations of the burdens they could carry on their backs.
Like their cultural kin - the Mogollon and the Hohokam - in the deserts to the south, the earliest Anasazi peoples felt the currents of revolutionary change during the first half of the first millennium.