1. The Anasazi (Ancient Pueblo People)
(Anasazi is the Navajo name, not what they call themselves.)
They lived around 100 AD through AD
Anasazi is a Navajo term for Ancient Ones or Ancient Enemies—Modern Puebloans DO NOT prefer to use this term when referring to their ancestry.

2. While civilizations such as the Maya, Aztec, and Inca were flourishing in Mesoamerica and South America, distinct civilizations were also emerging in North America.
These civilizations developed unique cultural traits that were greatly influenced by their geographic location and their ability to adapt therein

3. How they began
After the emergence of agriculture in Mesoamerica, knowledge of farming began spreading northward, first to the American Southwest.

4. Geography (Where were they?)
Settled in the arid regions of what is now known as Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado, the Anasazi peoples established an agriculturally-based civilization that flourished in the shadows of the rugged cliffs of the Chaco Canyon between 500 and 1200 AD

5. Housing
The Anasazi used adobe and stone to build multistoried, apartment-like structures built into or along the walls of protective cliffs or around large plazas
The Spanish would later call these structures, pueblos, or "villages"

7. Pueblo Bonito
Pueblo Bonito is the most famous of the Chaco Canyon great houses.
These dwellings were built with huge blocks of sandstone. Workers shaped an estimated one million blocks of sandstone weighing some thirty thousand tons to construct Pueblo Bonito.

8. The heart of the Anasazi civilization in Chaco Canyon was Pueblo Bonito, a massive complex that housed more 1000 people in over 800 rooms.
From here, they built extensive road networks for trade

9. Details of Pueblo Bonito
Skillful architectural engineering was needed to build these cliff dwellings.
At its peak, it had seven hundred or more rooms, thirty-seven family kivas, and two community kivas.
It covered over 4 ½ acres
The workers hauled spruce and fir timbers more than fifty miles to construct the floors and roofs.
Adobe (dried mud bricks) were also used to build the cliff dwellings.
Despite the obvious engineering ability of the Chacoans, there is no evidence that they used the wheel.

10. Villages were built facing East to get morning sun for warmth, and shade in the mid-day/afternoon heat.

11. Other tribes associated
While the Anasazi eventually abandoned Pueblo Bonito and other sites in the region, perhaps as the result of years of successive drought, aspects of their culture such as art and architecture continued to influence later peoples such as the Hopi and Zuni, two of the largest Pueblo groups today.

12. Technology and Advancements
The Anasazi were able to cultivate the land through the use of dams, ditches, and canals captured rain from the tops of mesas and channel it to gardens located on the canyon floor.
They were expert craftsmen who were known for their turquoise jewelry, intricately woven baskets, and black-on-white pottery illustrated with elaborate designs

13. The Anasazi used grasses to make baskets, they used these as storage and carrying containers; some were woven tight enough to hold water.

14. Plain gray pottery, and occasionally black on white pottery, was being used as storage containers for the excess food.

15. The Anasazi Disappear!
The Anasazi Indians left the cliff dwellings. No one truly knows why…
Possible reasons:
The Drought Theory
The Conflict Theory

16. #1-The Drought Theory
THEORY: Around 1100 AD, there were great droughts in the area where the Anasazi lived. (This period of drought may have lasted several hundred years!) These droughts either killed off the entire population or drove them to migrate out of the region.
Problems with the Theory:
Doesn’t make sense that thousands of Anasazi left their homes without taking tools or food.
Not enough bones are left to account for all of them dying.
If they moved, where did their culture go? There aren’t people with their appearance, art, culture, and religion in a new area .

17. The Conflict Theory
THEORY: Another great tribe may have attacked the Anasazi, and killed off their entire population that was scattered over several modern-day states.
Problems with Theory:
No signs of battles large enough to destroy whole nation.
The winners did not loot and destroy the cities of the conquered people.
They did not disturb burial grounds and the bodies that were buried inside the cities
Not enough bodies found for a mass killing. Wouldn’t have carried off thousands of bodies of the warriors (plus wives and children) that were killed in battle.
No evidence of a war that drove the Anasazi to extinction has ever been discovered. The cities show no sign of a siege and mass graves have never been unearthed.

18. Gone but not Forgotten…
The Anasazi Indians have piqued the curiosity of countless researchers. A lot has been learned about this tribe, but there are many mysteries remaining.

19. Eastern Woodlands

20. While the Anasazi can be considered the foundational civilization of the Southwest, the ancient peoples of the Southeastern United States were greatly influenced by the Mississippian culture

21. The Eastern Woodlands Indians were native American tribes that settled in the region extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Mississippi River in the west and from Canada in the north to the Gulf of Mexico in the south.

23. Eastern Woodlands
This region of North America was home to many tribes known collectively as the Eastern Woodlands peoples
Two of the earliest Eastern Woodlands culture groups that would later influence the Mississippians were the Adena and the Hopewell

24. Where were the Adena located?
By 700 BC, the knowledge and practice of agriculture had spread to the Adena who lived primarily in the Ohio Valley region; here, they were among the first of the Eastern Woodlands cultures to grow such crops as squash, sunflowers, gourds, and barley

25. Mound Builders
While the Adena were known for producing exquisite copper jewelry and fine pottery, they are most remembered today for building elaborate burial mounds comprised of log structures covered by massive piles of earth.

26. Mound Builders
Around 300 BC, the Hopewell people arrived in the Ohio Valley region and began building elaborate mounds, often 40 feet high and 100 feet wide.

27. Mound Builders
Because of their cultural similarities, especially in architectural practice, the Adena and Hopewell are collectively referred to as the "Mound Builders"; however, it is the Mississippian culture that created the largest and most extensive mound networks of all.

28. Mississippians
Around 800 AD, the Mississippian culture arose along the valleys of the river for which it is named

30. In the flood plains of these fertile valleys, the Mississippians began growing maize and beans
When added to the plants that were already cultivated, these new crops allowed the Mississippian populations to increase in number leading to a desire for more land and the subsequent expansion of the people throughout the Southeast

31. large-scale farming gave rise to the creation of numerous cities, some of which were home to as many as 10,000 people

32. These cities centered around large, pyramid-shaped mounds that were often topped by temples or houses of the elite
The largest of the Mississippian cities was Cahokia, located near modem East St. Louis

33. At its center was a massive mound that was approximately 100 feet high with a base of more than 14 acres, larger than that of the Great Pyramid in Egypt; surrounding this were more than 120 smaller mounds; t is estimated that in 1250 AD, Cahokia had a greater population than both Paris and London

34. What happened to the Mississippians?
For reasons that remain a mystery, the Mississippian civilization collapsed by the beginning of the 1300s AD

35. This largest of the Mound Builder civilizations greatly influenced successive Eastern Woodlands peoples through the spreading of their agricultural practice of large scale farming with beans and corn as well as their cultural practice of mound building.