Notes
This painted rock is an image of the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde. This image depicts the remnants of a real settlement in Colorado. Sometime during the late 1190s, the Ancestral Pueblo people began moving into these houses that they built into natural cliff alcoves. These dwellings ranged in size from single roomed granaries to complexes of more than 150 rooms. Though the Ancestral Puebloans moved their homes to these natural cliff alcoves, they continued to farm on the mesa tops where they previously lived. For nearly a century, this settlement thrived in their naturally protected villages. However, by the mid 1200s, the population began to migrate to the south, into present-day New Mexico and Arizona. By the end of the 13th century, the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde were empty.