The Indian cliff dwellings of the southwestern United States are a source of interest and mystery for archeologists. Located in the Four Corners area of the U.S., where Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico meet, the cliff dwellings were constructed during the 5 Great Pueblo period, from approximately 1050 to 1300. The cliff dwellings are whole series of contiguous rooms built in layers into the sides of cliffs. The sleeping rooms of the cliff dwellings were very tiny, often only one to two meters wide and little more than one meter high, and they were built in complexes of up to several hundred rooms 10 together. The front rooms of the complexes were considerably larger. These larger rooms were apparently the rooms where daily life took place. When the cliff dwellings were first found by explorers, they had been abandoned. Archeologists today are uncertain as to when or why they were abandoned and where the inhabitants went. There 15 is some evidence, however, that the inhabitants left the cliff dwellings near the end of the thirteenth century because of a serious drought that is known to have occurred in the area from 1276 to 1299. Archeologists believe that the inhabitants could have left the cliff dwellings to move southwest and southeast. Today the descendants of the cliff 20 dwellers are probably members of the Indian tribes of that area.
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