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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey

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Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren Bolga bam here. If you were one

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Speaker 1: of the unfortunate Ancestral Pueblo people who happened to have

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Speaker 1: a fear of heights, well, you might not have gotten

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Speaker 1: out much. The cliff dwellings at what's now known as

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Speaker 1: massa Verde National Park certainly would have made you wish

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Speaker 1: for a less lofty home. Now, these sprawling structures in

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Speaker 1: the sky attract adventure seekers and history lovers from around

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Speaker 1: the world. Sandstone blocks and wooden beams make up these

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Speaker 1: gravity defying structures, which are built right into the steep

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Speaker 1: and spectacular cliffs of southwest Colorado at an elevation of

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Speaker 1: some seven thousand feet that's about tucked away in rocky

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Speaker 1: alcoves underneath jagged cliff tops, some only accessible by thirty

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Speaker 1: foot or nine meter ladders. Mortar made from ash and

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Speaker 1: soil mixed with water completes the structures, and though their

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Speaker 1: original hues have long since disappeared, some rooms were once

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Speaker 1: painted brilliant shades of yellow, red, pink, and white to

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Speaker 1: preserve these structures. The park was established by then President

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Speaker 1: Theodore Roosevelt in nineteen o six. Msa Verde was the

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Speaker 1: seventh National park to be added to the country's roster,

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Speaker 1: a year after wind Cave National Park and four years

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Speaker 1: prior to Glacier National Park. It's the only national park

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Speaker 1: formed to protect a historic cultural site as opposed to

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Speaker 1: a natural space. In designating the site of national Park,

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Speaker 1: Roosevelt aimed to preserve the heritage of the ancestral Pueblo

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Speaker 1: communities that thrived there for seven centuries from around five

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Speaker 1: fifty to hundred CE. To this day, no one is

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Speaker 1: certain why an entire community abandoned their hard earned homes,

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Speaker 1: nearly six hundred of them in all. The structure most

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Speaker 1: associated with the park is the hundred and fifty room

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Speaker 1: Cliff Palace, a twenty six foot or eight meter behemoth.

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Speaker 1: It's likely the biggest cliff dwelling on the continent, at

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Speaker 1: tucked into an alcove far above the ground. In total,

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Speaker 1: the park contains more than five thousand archaeological sites, making

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Speaker 1: it the biggest preserve of its kind in the country.

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Speaker 1: What's more, there may be thousands of sites still undiscovered

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Speaker 1: due to its historical importance, as well as the mind

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Speaker 1: boggling trove of architectural and perishable materials in the Alcoves

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Speaker 1: massa very day is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site,

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Speaker 1: one of twenty four in the United States. Under normal circumstances,

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Speaker 1: visitors can roam some areas unattended. For others, like tours

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Speaker 1: of specific buildings and tunnels, you must register for ranger

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Speaker 1: led tours for The article of this episode is based

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Speaker 1: on How Stuff Works. Spoke by email with Scott Ortmann,

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Speaker 1: a Colorado University Boulder assistant professor. He explained that the

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Speaker 1: cliff dwellings were the homes of ancestral Pueblo familys and

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Speaker 1: often the central gathering places of larger communities. For example,

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Speaker 1: at some point view in the park you can see

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Speaker 1: many contemporaneous settlements in adjacent canyons that were part of

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Speaker 1: a single community. He said, it's important to emphasize that

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Speaker 1: while the settlements in the alcoves are much better preserved,

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Speaker 1: the vast majority of ancient settlements in the park occur

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Speaker 1: on the Mesa tops and Talus slopes outside of the alcoves.

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Speaker 1: In other words, the cliff structures were in the minority

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Speaker 1: in this community. Portman continued, most of the structures you

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Speaker 1: see in the alcoves today date from the final century

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Speaker 1: of occupation, but earlier structures were likely periodically raised and rebuilt,

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Speaker 1: and this is why the archaeological record of the alcoves

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Speaker 1: is somewhat biased towards the final period. But why you

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Speaker 1: might ask, particularly if heights happened to give you the

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Speaker 1: heeb gbs, would people live in homes where the front

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Speaker 1: steps led straight to vertical oblivion been explained. Probably the

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Speaker 1: most basic reason that people built in the alcoves is that,

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Speaker 1: except for north facing alcoves, they are nice, passive solar environments,

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Speaker 1: shady in the summer, sunny in the winter. Additionally, because

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Speaker 1: the alcoves are formed by water action, most also have

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Speaker 1: seeps or springs useful as domestic water sources in them.

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Speaker 1: But there might be more ominous reasons. Violence may have

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Speaker 1: played a role in the community's decision to build cliff

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Speaker 1: high rises. Portman said, during the thirteenth century people really

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Speaker 1: packed into these places, and the architecture has some defensive

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Speaker 1: aspects to it. So perhaps the packing during the final

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Speaker 1: decades of occupation was due to increasing competition related to

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Speaker 1: population density, or perhaps defense against enemies and defensive positioning.

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Speaker 1: Aside It seems that virtuosity in architecture played a role

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Speaker 1: in Messa very day society, as many structures exhibit evidence

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Speaker 1: of being built for beauty as well as function. The

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Speaker 1: structures exhibit startling precision with amazing geometry and positioning that

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Speaker 1: relates to astronomical events. Sherry Towers, an Arizona State University

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Speaker 1: statistician with a doctorate in experimental particle physics, published a

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Speaker 1: paper in the Journal of Archaeological Science in that demonstrated

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Speaker 1: how the D shaped sun temple corresponds to the heavens.

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Speaker 1: Incorporated into the structure are staples of geometry, including forty

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Speaker 1: five degree right triangles, equilateral triangles, the Pythagorean triple, and

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Speaker 1: the Golden rectangle. And somehow these builders did all this

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Speaker 1: work without modern tools of any kind, or even any

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Speaker 1: sort of written language or number system that we know of.

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Speaker 1: Twenty four modern tribes of the Four Corners region trace

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Speaker 1: their lineage to the people who made their lives on

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Speaker 1: these cliffs. Of course, their lives look much different than

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Speaker 1: those of their ancestors. Today's episode is based on the

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Speaker 1: article msa Verde National Park Preserves sky high Native American

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Speaker 1: the dwellings on how stuff works dot Com written by

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Speaker 1: Eric Baxter. Brain Stuff is production of by Heart Radio

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Speaker 1: in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com and is produced

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Speaker 1: by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio,

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Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

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Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.