Great Drought and the Ancestral Puebloan departure from Mesa Verde
A long drought completed a crisis on the Mesa Verde plateau: the Ancestral Puebloans left their villages and cliff dwellings and moved south, to the Rio Grande and into what are now Arizona and New Mexico.
- Date
- 1276–1299year known · duration: ≈ 23 years
- Place
- Cliff Palace (Mesa Verde)today: Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado, USA · North America
- Participants
- Ancestral Puebloans (Anasazi)
- Threads
- Asia, Africa and the Americas in the 13th century
- Also known as
- Великая засуха; Анасази; Клифф-Пэлас
The drought of 1276–1299 was identified from tree rings by dendrochronology, the method developed by the astronomer Andrew Ellicott Douglass, who also named it the “Great Drought”. The same rings show that the last timber for buildings on the mesa was cut in 1281; the last inhabitants left around 1285, and by 1300 the region was almost deserted.
The drought only brought a long crisis to its end: the population had grown, the land was exhausted, after 1250 the familiar rhythm of summer rains and winter snows was disrupted, after 1270 it became especially cold, and armed clashes grew more frequent. The migrants joined communities on the Rio Grande and the Little Colorado; their descendants live in the pueblos of Acoma, Zuni, Jemez, Laguna and others.
Connections
Related events
- Eruption of Samalasbetween May and October 1257 · Southeast Asia and OceaniaThe drought fell during the transition to the Little Ice Age, whose onset is linked in part to the Samalas eruption; no direct connection between the two has been established
Adjacent events in the thread
- Yekuno Amlak founds the Solomonic dynasty1270 · Africa
- Mongol invasion of Javabetween December 1292 and January 1293 – August 1293 · Southeast Asia and Oceania
Meanwhile in the world
Other regions, within a year of this event
Western and Central Europe
- Sicilian Vespers30 March 1282
- “Summa Theologica” by Thomas Aquinas1265–1274
Eastern Europe
- Formation of the Principality of Moscowbetween 1263 and 1283
Middle East and Egypt
- Fall of Acre18 May 1291
South Asia
- Alauddin Khalji becomes Sultan of Delhi21 October 1296
East Asia
- Travels of Marco Polo1271–1295
- Death of Kublai Khan18 February 1294
- Second Mongol invasion of JapanJune–August 1281
- Battle of Yamen19 March 1279
Southeast Asia and Oceania
- Mongol invasion of Javabetween December 1292 and January 1293 – August 1293
- Founding of Majapahit10 November 1293
The same period
Sources
- Wikipedia (English): Mesa Verde National Park
- Wikipedia (English): Ancestral Puebloans
- Wikipedia (Russian): Меса-Верде (национальный парк)
- Wikipedia (Russian): Анасази
- Douglass A. E. The Secret of the Southwest Solved by Talkative Tree Rings // National Geographic Magazine. — 1929. — December.