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THE FAR NORTH AND CANADA A.D. 601 to 800
The Dorset Arctic Culture continued its many centuries of existence in the far north. Additional details will be given in the next chapter. We have little definitive information about the Canadian Indian tribes at this particularly period, but certainly the far western groups continued as previously and may well have been the sending-off point for the Polynesian migrations into the Pacific.

A.D. 801 to 900
We have noted previously that since at least 2,300 B.C. northern Canada was inhabited by tribes of the Arctic Small Tool people, who, after about 600 B.C., were called the "Dorsets". A Dorset longhouse, carbon-dated to between A.D. 800 and 900, has just recently been excavated near the shore of the Knud Peninsula of Ellesmere Island by Professor Peter Schledermann and his associates. This house consisted of a framework of waist-high walls built of boulders with the base measuring 16 x 148 feet, which was believed to be the foundation for a row of skin tents. Nearby was a 100 foot row of outdoor, individual stone hearths, 18 in number, with stone platforms, apparently used as tables, between them. The community probably contained 100 people and debris on the longhouse floors would indicate that they dined well on various birds, foxes, arctic hares, seals, walruses, belugas and even narwhals. This particular settlement was evidently among the last for this people, as in the next century or two they mysteriously disappeared. At about this same time in this 9th century the Thule Culture, which appears to have involved a new, invading Inuit people, appeared throughout northern Canada. They had dog teams, kayaks, umiaks and winter igloos. They were seal hunters, ivory carvers and wore tailored skin clothing. Apparently they first coexisted with the Dorset groups, as Dorset artifacts have been found in Thule houses.

Trager says that Greenland was discovered in 900 by the Norseman Gunbjorn, who was blown off course en route to Iceland from Norway.

A.D. 901 to 1000
We have previously mentioned the Thule Inuit Culture which spread all across the Canadian arctic and Greenland after about 800 A.D. No one knows if the Thule people drove off or simply absorbed the Dorset tribes. Perhaps the latter simply couldn't adapt to the warming climatic change that occurred about this time. In summer the Thule people lived in tents, as had the Dorsets, but their winter houses were better. Foundations of these structures were dug into the ground with tunnel entrances, which trapped warm air inside, and walls and roofs were added of stone, sod or occasionally the baleen and bones bowhead whales.

The eastern coast of Greenland is only about 250 statue-miles across the Denmark Strait from Iceland, so it is not remarkable that Icelanders soon knew of its existence. Of course the eastern coast of Greenland is and was very inhospitable to man and the journey around its southern tip to the more livable western coast was somewhat difficult. The fact that the climatic conditions were different in the 10th century and that at A.D. 1,000 parts of Greenland were actually green, probably helped. At any rate, Erik the Red, known as a criminal both in his original Jaeder, Norway home and also in Iceland, took to the sea about 980, landing and exploring southern Greenland, a land which had been reported as seen by another Icelander some 50 years or more previously. After three years of exploration, Eric returned to Iceland, got into more trouble and organized one of the largest arctic expeditions on record to return to Greenland for permanent settlement. He obtained 35 cargo vessels1 with several hundred men, women and children and all their possessions, including horses, cattle, sheep, pigs and dogs. Only 14 of these open ships were actually able to round the stormy south cape of Greenland to safely land on the quieter west coast, but there they built their settlements. Seals, fish, whales and sea-birds were abundant and fur and walrus ivory could be exported to Europe. At the very end of the century Leif Erikson, son of Eric the Red, while on a regular trade trip back to Norway, was entertained by the enthusiastic Christian King Olav Tryggveson and commissioned to take a Catholic priest and several religious teachers back to Greenland. Leif departed Norway just before Olav's death in 1,000 and did bring Christianity to Greenland and shortly thereafter allegedly to Vinland on the true North American continent. This mainland had been accidentally discovered by Bjarno Herjolfsson from Iceland when on his first trip to Greenland he had missed that large island and hit Newfoundland.

Recent excavations on the northern most tip of Newfoundland have revealed remains of houses, boat sheds and bronze equipment, obviously Norse and dated to about A.D. 1000. Brandel quotes from a lecture by Henri Pirenne: "America (when the Vikings reached it) was lost as soon as it was discovered, because Europe did not yet need it."

A.D. 1001 to 1100
The Arctic Thule Culture of northern Canada, northwestern Alaska and western Greenland existed at least from about A.D. 1000 to 1800. The people lived in circular houses, partially subterranean, with whalebone, turf and stone roofs and they used dog sleds with the dogs harnessed in a fan-shape, rather than in tandem. They had Umiak and Kayak boats and represented the final Eskimo Culture of the northern maritime tradition.

Rose Palmer of the Smithsonian Institute confirms the distinct physical and language characteristics of the Northwest coastal Indians. She describes the Nootka and Kwakiutl people of Vancouver Island as having long, distinct faces with high hooked noses. They used copper and had well built houses 40 to 60 feet square, with gable roof s, fireplaces and doors facing the sea, along with family totems. The Haida of the Queen Charlotte Islands were also of a unique Indian type, larger, more stalwart and of lighter complexion. The women were tall and athletic in contrast to other typical Indian women, who tend to be short and fat. The Haida made long voyages in dug-out canoes of red cedar, some carrying 100 persons and equipment, to as far as Vancouver Island and Puget Sound. Wood carvings on totem poles often 50 to 60 feet high, formed part of the front of their buildings. All of the north coastal Indians remained fairly well isolated from the remainder of the continent and other Indian tribes by virtue of the high coastal mountain ranges which made access inland very difficult.

Carbon-14 dating of recent excavations of several buildings and a great hall of an old Viking settlement in northern New Foundland, puts the date as A.D. 1060 (+70 years).

This settlement was probably founded by Leif Erickson, who also apparently went ashore on Baffin Island, calling it "Helluland" and then on down the American coast to Labrador, which he called "Markland". "Vinland", also described by the Norse, undoubtedly was somewhere on the North American coast, possibly Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Labrador or Newfoundland. The latter seems most probable because of the recent excavations, but if so, its wine industry certainly disappeared quickly. At any rate, subsequent to Leif's visit to Vinland, Thorfinn Karlsefne settled this new land with 60 men and 5 women, along with cattle and other animals. Although at first friendly with the native aborigines, eventually there was war, with the Indians attacking in swarms by canoe, ultimately driving out the newcomers. Two Indian boys were captured, however, subsequently taught Norwegian, baptized and taken to Greenland where the colonies were thriving. The warm climatic situation of this century, which allowed an ice-free North Atlantic Ocean, certainly was a factor in these Norse voyages.

A.D. 1101 to 1200
The Thule Arctic and the Northwest Indian cultures have been described in the preceding chapters. The west Greenland settlement of Norse was prospering in this 12th century and there were at least 16 stone churches and a fine cathedral at Gardar. Pope Paschal II appointed Erik Gnupsson as the first bishop of Greenland and Vinland in 1112. At this time the southern half of Canada undoubtedly had a great number of Indian tribes, but information about them is scanty. The Norse and the Indians were apparently hostile to each other.



THE UNITED STATES A.D. 601 to 700
By 600 A.D. the cultural primacy in North America had passed from the Hopewell area to the lower Mississippi valley, particularly in the fertile flood plain between St. Louis and New Orleans, the land of the Mound Builders.

In the southwest the Anasazi Indians continued to multiply, with Basket-maker sites extending from the region of present day Lake Mead in Nevada, through southern Utah into the southwest corner of Colorado and then down to northwestern New Mexico and northeastern Arizona. By both archeomagnetism dating of charred wood beams of burned pit-house ceilings and tree-ring dating, their society can be followed in this large area quite exactly. The Hohokam Colonial Period and the Mogollon Cultures continued south of the Anasazi.

About A.D. 600 a distinctive group of Indians appeared near the lower end of the Colorado River (southwestern Arizona and an extreme eastern slice of California). These were called the Patayan (also Hakataya) and were Yuman-speaking people who used the flood plains of the Colorado delta for farming, had a unique paddle and anvil pottery decorated with red paint and ground their corn on a trough-shaped metate. Living in this area for 900 years, they became then the modern Yumas, Cocopah, Maricopa, Havasupai, Mojave and Walapai. Consistent with his other claims, Fell purports to read Islamic inscriptions on certain Nevada rocks and feels that Arabic Libyans made these shortly after A.D. 650 when Islam came into North Africa.

A.D. 701 to 800
"The scale and flamboyance of Mississippian social dwarfed anything known before in North America."1 There were enormous ceremonial centers, with truncated pyramids and huge plazas (as at Cohokia, Mississippi) resembling Mexican centers, with brilliant artistry and a new religious symbolism, reflecting a fascination with human sacrifice, sun and fire. The people had corn fields, pottery, obsidian knives, warehouses, administrative buildings, copper, shell, stone and wood objects. Copper sheets were embossed with human portraits. There was apparently a nobility who lived in special homes arranged about the temples. This society flourished for at least 8 centuries.

The central and lower Mississippi cultures were centered between St. Louis and Memphis but spread to Wisconsin, Oklahoma, and Alabama and was still in existence when the Spanish came with the white man's diseases. The Encyclopedia of Archeology says that the new traits of this culture were:

1. Rectangular, flat topped mounds used for temple bases
2. New pottery - using pulverized shell for temper with new shapes and decorations
3. Maize, as the chief crop

Some of the truncated platform temple mounds were up to 100 feet tall, with structures for religious and/or political purposes on top. Frequently there were several in clusters, spread over several acres. The temples area and residences were surrounded by maize fields with the Corn Mother goddess playing a vital role in the lives of the Mississippian people. Beans, peas, squash and sunflowers rounded out their crops.

The historic Indian tribes of the plains such as the Pawnee, Osage, and Arikara, for example, perpetuated the mixed horticultural and bison hunting economy of the previous 800 to 1,000 years. Some of their ancestors' large villages have been excavated along the Missouri and its tributaries.

The Colonial Period of the Hohokam continued in the southwest. Their ball courts varied greatly in size from 20 meters to over 100 meters in length. Some believe they were used for the religious Meso-American style ball games but others believe they were stages for a dance. According to the remaining available arrow heads, it was sometime between 700 and 900 that the bow and arrow began to be used, rather than the spear, by the Mogollon tribes. These people, first to use pottery in the southwest, developed increasing skill in this endeavor, as they made it by coiling and scraping, not with a pottery wheel. In northern Arizona and New Mexico the Anasazi Culture now shifted from the Basket-maker into the Pueblo Period, with five sub-divisions extending up to modern times. The Pueblo I period lasted two centuries from A.D. 700 to 900, with their pottery showing some strange new shapes, including some made to look like birds. Masonry rubble in the Chaco Canyon suggests a gradual shift to ground-level construction of multi-roomed houses which were the first pueblos. It was at this time that the Anasazi mothers started strapping their babies to hard, wooden cradleboards producing flattening of the back of their heads. Kivas became focal points of community and religious practices.

A.D. 801 to 900
In the central and southeastern United States the Mississippian Mound-builders Culture continued, with perhaps an increasing Mexican influence from extensive trading activities. This culture seemed to spread throughout the southeastern United States just before A.D. 900. Exquisite carved wooden figures have been found from the Key Marco Culture of Florida, dating to as early as A.D. 800.

The Anasazia Culture, which had originally developed from the Desert Archaic in Colorado, New Mexico and northern Arizona, had now reached a high level of development with elaborate pueblo dwellings. At Mesa Verde, Colorado, some apartment houses had 800 rooms. There was some irrigation and the people were skilled in weaving, basketry, pottery, masonry, and masonry architecture. They led a ceremonial and artistic life and were skilled artisans in turquoise jewelry as well as wooden and bone tools and utensils. All through this century, however, much of the southern Colorado plateau became climatically unfit for growing corn, with even the best areas marginal. Below elevations of 5, 500 feet the land was too dry and above 7,500 it was too cold. As a result, the Anasazi were constantly moving, looking for more favorable sites. Excavations indicate that of 2,000 to 3,000 inhabitants of the Dolores Valley all were gone by the next century. Their salvation came with new irrigation practices, using shallow channels to divert run-off onto small fields and check dams that collected eroding soil and held the water that carried it. In archeological classification the Pueblo I phase terminated at A.D. 900.

The Hohokams, living south and west of the Anasazi, had a much more extensive irrigation system. Fell (Ref. 66) agrees with most that the Pima Indians of today are direct descendants of the Hohokams but be believes that Hohokam relics in ancient Libyan language can be identified in the Pima chants, and this not all would concede. Fell believes that the degree of cultural advancement of these 9th century, southwestern Indians is not readily appreciated today. There is a petroglyph in the so-called Court of Antiquity in Washoe County, Nevada, which he interprets as Arabic Kufi, giving instructions on how to find the area of a circle by dividing it into six equal sectors and then rearranging them. The method gives an approximation of "pi" at 3.0. At that time painted pottery was becoming more and more complex in the Mogollon area of southern New Mexico and Chihuahua.

A.D. 901 to 1000
In mid-continent the Mississippi Culture flourished. In the Ozarks of Arkansas, Oklahoma and Mississippi, bluff dwellers constructed rock-shelters, caves and open village sites. Baskets of twilled weave, flour sieves and containers, hunting, fishing, farming bone hoes and tools as well as antler and wooden digging sticks and pottery have been found. These sites were occupied throughout this century and after. It is probable that at about the end of the century the Mississippi group of tribes began to feel the sting of Iroquois attacks from the south, as there are reasons for suspecting that these fierce warriors came via the Gulf of Mexico, probably from South America.

Marvin F. Kivett, of the Nebraska State Historical Society, has identified the "Initial Coalescent Culture" that existed from about 900 to 1,400 in the Dakotas. This culture was formed when corn farmers of the central plains (now Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma) were forced by droughts to move up the river valleys northward into the Dakotas, where they merged with the initial middle Missouri Culture already established along the river of the same name. Today their descendants are believed to be the Arikara Indians of North Dakota.

In the west the Fremont rock art existed at the same time along the Fremont River in Utah as the Anasazi Pueblo Culture existed a little farther south, all of this dating from 750 to 1,200. Construction began on the Pueblo Bonita at Chaco Canyon in New Mexico about A.D. 900. Although building materials of mud, stones and wood was the same as those used by the Mesa Verde Indians, the architecture was markedly superior in principle as well as in technical detail and artistry. The population appears to have been fairly consistent, running between 800 and 1,200 people. Studies of excavation sites and skeletons have revealed much about these people. One-third died in infancy; forty years meant old age, with teeth worn to the gums from the grit that ended up in the corn meal from the metate, jaw abscesses and arthritis. Clothes were made of hides and cotton cloth, stitched with yucca leaf fibers. Hundreds of tons of sandstone blocks were carried varying distances for construction of the pueblos. The men spent much of their time searching for firewood and hunting for animal food. When the hunt was poor, the remaining protein deficient diet sapped strength and when famine did occur there may have been cannibalism.

Snaketown, on the Gila River southeast of Phoenix, Arizona, was the capital city of the Hohokam until A.D. 1,200. In the 10th century these people entered the Sedentary Period. Population increased, as evidenced by the more numerous villages and longer canals. Specialized villages procured marine shells from the Gulf of California and worked them into jewelry that was traded as far north as Flagstaff. Their technique included a method of etching designs on shells using an acid solution made from the giant cactus, saguaro.

Harold Gladwin, in his book History of the Ancient Southwest, gives the end of this century as the time of the first serious incursion of the Athapascan tribesmen into the Pueblo areas. These were the Apaches, who had slowly migrated down from the northern reaches of Canada, bringing their variety of the Athapascan tongue. This century also was the time of the Pueblo II period, with still further pottery changes.

At A.D. 1,000 the Mogollon farming period was coming to an end, but in the Mimbres River area of southern New Mexico, the pottery was decorated with very beautiful and complex triangles, scrolls and zigzag lines with life-like decorations of animals and men inside the bowls. No one knows what happened to these people. They may have been absorbed by others coming down from the northern plateaus. There is little question but what the modern Hopi and Zuni Indians, later considered as part of the pueblo builders, were influenced by the Mogollons.

In southern California the desert tradition continued until the end of the century when present day Yuma and Shoshone Indians may have moved into the area. The Shoshone language is related to the later Aztec.

A.D. 1001 to 1100
The Mississippian and related cultures continued to exist in the mid-continent. Please see the preceding chapters. It should be mentioned, in passing, that Barry Fell feels that numerous artifacts which have been found along the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers, as well as among the Algonquin and Iroquois Indians, are in fact replicas of old Irish-Norse coins and English pennies which had been paid as Danegeld, and originally distributed along the North American coast and rivers by additional voyages of Leif Erickson. Gloria Farley, a co-worker of Fell, has described finding Norse runes in Oklahoma rock inscriptions, dating to about 1050.

Southeastern Indians knew much more about metallurgy than generally realized. They made decorative and utilitarian objects from lead and had acquired and used copper from local sources. They fashioned beads, bracelets, earrings, ceremonial knives and axes, gorgets, and breast plates, some elaborately decorated with an eagle or hawk. This metallurgy seemed to be associated with the so-called Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, a cultural association variously called the Eagle, Hawk, Buzzard or Southern Cult. It was associated with fire and sun worship and bird motifs. Sun circles, bi-lobed arrows, forked eyes, hand and eye and crosses can all be found engraved on copper and shell. Before Europeans arrived the south was not rural, as the aborigines lived in towns. Although no one is sure of the location, there were Cofitachiqui, Mabila and Apalachee Indian centers, each of whose populations numbered in the thousands. Some were fortified and palisaded. A pole 50 or more feet in height erected on a small mound in a ceremonial ball game area was important in the culture. Certain death practices were similar throughout the South, in that bones of the dead were cleaned and stored in boxes or baskets. Granaries were commonplace and any town of consequence had a sweat house, or sauna.

Some writers have stated than in the southwest the Hohokam way of life began to disappear as the people pulled back to their original homeland in the desert. More recent material indicates, however, that they had not yet even reached their "Classical Period". The Anasazi and/or related pueblo people, survived at Bonito Pueblo (Chaco Canyon, New Mexico) with their new buildings showing a masonry of facing stones carefully applied to rubble cores, a Mexican technique suggesting contact with missionaries or traders from Mexico. This concept is disputed by some, however, when they point out that new road systems of this period appeared to radiate out of Chaco northward, rather than to the south and that many of the Chaco artifacts, particularly marine shells, were probably acquired by trade with other, native southwest tribes, such as the Hohokam. The inhabitants of Chaco Canyon cut down some 50,000 trees for pueblo construction and fuel, so that the once extensive forests were stripped, allowing erosion of the canyon. Some of the heavy logs for roofing beams may have been carried as far as 30 miles. To elaborate on the remarks above, Pueblo Bonito was reconstructed in this 11th century, with workmen tearing out old walls and building new ones of a core-and-veneer type involving outer walls of sandstone blocks with earth and ruble in the center. Lower walls were more than 3 feet thick, tapering as they rose, until the rear wall was 5 stories high. When finished this pueblo held 650 rooms and may have been occupied by 1200 persons. Seven other great pueblos were also constructed, some only a few hundred yards apart, each of similar design, in one complex. Overall there were about a dozen pueblo complexes in the Chaco Canyon with well over 2,000 rooms. At least 70 communities, similar in design but generally smaller, existed outside the canyon from a few to 100 miles away. Recent aerial studies have indicated that the great road system, mentioned above, connected these outliers to the center. The roads ran arrow straight, with cuts through some mounds and steps carved in cliff faces, all up to 30 feet wide. One of the larger outlying pueblos was on the San Juan River, 40 miles north of Chaco and known now as the Salmon ruins. Started in 1088 it was completed in 5 years and contained 300 rooms. Huge wooden beams were obtained in the La Plata mountains, more than 75 miles away. It had a great kiva and great tower with 6 feet thick walls rising from the second story of the town. The walls were supported by solid buttresses.

The Bonito people monitored the solar cycles with a solar observatory on Fajada Butte. Spiral patterns carved into native rock caught shafts of light between other rocks in a precise way, which indicated the solstices and equinoxes. A scarcity of burials at the Great Chaco complex has posed some questions and resulted in numerous theories. Was this only a large ceremonial center serving as a mecca for pilgrims coming in on the great road system? Or was it a type of federal city for handling the outlier's trade and political alliances? Near the end of the century the pueblo dwellers increased their defenses, building watch towers, doubling wall thicknesses and restricting access to their homes, suggesting that the Apaches were reaching this territory.

According to ancient Indian beliefs the San Francisco Peaks1 which are surrounded by a large volcanic area in northern Arizona, are the home of Kachina spirits. Some Indians had lived in pit-houses near those peaks since about A.D. 600 but suddenly in A.D. 1065 there was a violent volcanic eruption, with a cone of cinders and ash thrown a thousand feet high and a stream of lava flowed on the ground. Black ash covered 800 square miles and the terrified Indians left. When they eventually cautiously returned they found that the ash had trapped water beneath and had produced a very fertile area which could be farmed with very little extra moisture needed. Archeologists have given those Indians the name "Senagua", meaning "without water". The rich soil attracted others, including Hohokam, Mogollon and Cohonina and there was an interchange of ideas and cultures.

The Mogollon Culture of southern New Mexico and eastern Arizona had continued through the centuries in various stages of development. The people of that area now began to build houses in the pueblo style with buildings above ground. They had fine, polychrome member pottery, some with red designs on brown and some with rectangular designs with white stripes. Other pottery was black on white with complicated curvilinear and rectilinear designs. Cotton was grown and used as cloth.

A unique Indian culture, which was earlier considered of unknown antecedents and descendants, flourished about 950 to 1150 in southwestern New Mexico, just east of what is now Silver City. They were called Mimbrenos, after their river valley and were peaceful corn growers who created some of the most beautiful of American Indian pottery. This had imaginative decorations and was all accomplished without the use of the potter's wheel or the kiln. This work is coveted by museums and collectors throughout the world. It is known now that these people were part of the Mogollons.

A.D. 1101 to 1200
In the central and southern parts of the United States the Mississippi and coalescent cultures continued as noted in the preceding chapters. In the southwest, some- time after 1150 the Mesa Verde Anasazi constructed the famous Cliff Palace, some 325 feet long, 100 feet deep, with many subterranean, sacred rooms and turret-like towers. In mid-century, however, the building stopped and the population of this and the Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, began to decline and the pueblos were soon abandoned, perhaps as a result of loss of arable fields as the water table lowered or incident to the severe deforestation mentioned in the last chapter. It has been estimated that Chaco Canyon's population dropped to less than 20% of its 11th century peak. Increasing cold may have been another factor. Only the Mesa Verde people hung on in a slightly better climate. Other sources believe, however, that these pueblo Indians were driven or fled as the result of invasion by barbarian Athapascans (Apache and Navaho). In the northwestern part of Arizona at Wupatki in the sunset crater area of the Sinague, there was a structure containing over 100 rooms, with 3 stories, as well as an open air amphitheater resembling a ceremonial Anasazi kiva and a ball court. But the volcanic soils were now drained of their nutrients and farming was getting less productive.

McGuire and Schiffer state that the Classic period of the Hohokam began about A.D. 1150, to last for 300 years. This was characterized by adobe compounds enclosing rectangular rooms and plazas, platform mounds, extensive irrigation canals and polychrome and polished redware ceramics. The red-on-buff pottery was distinctive of all Hohokam sites. Hundreds of villages were scattered over the Gila and Lower Salt rivers of central Arizona. In the past other writers have claimed that the Hohokam had begun a sharp decline by this century and that any advancements seen were due to invasion of the area by another group, the Salado. This view has been discarded in the last 5 to 8 years. The most obvious change in the Classic period was in architecture. Multi-storied houses appeared and the canal system was further refined, with extensive networks and some canals carried water as far as 32 kilometers. Polished red vessels tended to replace the earlier red-on-buff pottery. Although some northern frontier villages were abandoned at this time, the population of the Gila-Salt Basin increased to perhaps 20,000.

The Chaco Anasazi emerged in the northern U.S. Southwest around approximately A.D. 900 from earlier Anasazi roots. They subsequently developed a fascinating culture that appears to have been focused on Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico. Featuring lengthy roadways, impressive monumental architecture, astronomical observatories, and a far-ranging exchange system, the Chaco Anasazi continued to develop until approximately A.D. 1150, at which point their distinctive culture disappeared. Researchers interested in the Chaco Anasazi are attempting to answer questions ranging from the origins of this tradition to the reasons for its downfall. View and contribute to a growing list of online academic papers that focus on the prehistory of the Anasazi.

Chetro Ketl Great Kiva This site presents a three-dimensional reconstruction of a Great Kiva, an architectural feature found in many prehistoric Anasazi communities in the Southwestern United States. This particular model was created using archaeological records from the excavated Chetro Ketl Great Kiva, which is located in Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico. The model, which contains over 1,000 objects, mostly in the roofing, was created using Metacreations Infini-D on a Mac platform and took about three years of very sporadic work to assemble.

Explore a Chaco Anasazi "great house," a large above-ground masonry structure that likely served an important social and political function in the community in which it is found.

1000 A.D. - Leif Ericson, a Viking seaman, explores the east coast of North America and sights Newfoundland, establishing a short-lived settlement there.

Sinagua (1100 A. D. to 1400 A. D.) The Sinagua are the best known regional group of a tradition anthropologists refer to as the Western Anasazi. The Sinagua occupied an area between Flagstaff and Phoenix, Arizona between 500 and 1300 AD. They led a simple life based on corn farming and subsistence hunting and gathering at the periphery of the three major Southwest cultures

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