Nothing Lasts Forever

What Old Dog said about the Navahos and the Pueblos is consistent with what I remember reading over the years. The Anasazi were an ancient people who probably built the cliff dwellings and subsequently abandoned them long before the Pueblos arrived on the scene and reoccupied them. Although those dwellings are commonly called "pueblos", the folklore of the Pueblo people tells that they were built by the Anasazi, which means "ancient ones", or something like that, in their language.

The cliff dwellings were almost certainly built for defense, because there's nothing to eat up here except what people carried up on a series of portable ladders, which could be pulled up behind them. It is believed that the Anasazi had an extensive irrigation system that brought water down from the surrounding mountains. I don't remember if the Pueblos still do that but, if they do, it's probably on a reduced scale. I understand that, when modern canals were built to bring water to Phoenix, Arizona, they dug them where their engineers told them would be the best route to take. In the process of digging, evidence was uncovered that somebody had dug canals in the exact same place a long time ago. Those ancient canals had previously filled in with sand and dirt, and nobody knew they were there until the new canals were being dug.

I don't think anybody knows for sure what became of the Anasazi. Theories range from war to climate change to plague, or possibly all of the above. The same may be said about the Mayans of Central America. The descendants of the Mayans are still around, but the ancient cities of their ancestors lay in ruins, swallowed up by the jungle, until being rediscovered by modern archaeologists. Similarly, the civilizations of ancient Egypt rose and fell at least three times over a period of several thousand years. The famous Sphinx was buried in the sand until some modern explorer stubbed his toe on it and started digging.

Desert climates are generally not conducive to peaceful lifestyles, one look at the Middle East should tell you that. Both the Huns and the Mongols came from the Gobi Desert, and they were anything but peaceful. I suppose some desert dwellers have always been content to stay in the desert, but many others have longed for some decent waterfront property, and didn't mind kicking ass to get it.

Then there's the Eskimos, or Inuit if you prefer. They are generally considered to be peaceful, or even timid, compared to their Indian neighbors to the south. It's not clear whether they got that way from living in the frozen north, or if they live in the frozen north because they were too timid to fight the Indians for nicer real estate.