Cliff Palace facts for kids
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Cliff Palace is the biggest cliff dwelling in North America. It was built by the Ancestral Puebloans, an ancient Native American people. You can find it in Mesa Verde National Park, which was once their home. The park and Cliff Palace are in southwestern Colorado, in the United States.
History of Cliff Palace
Scientists used tree rings to figure out when Cliff Palace was built. Most of it was constructed between 1190 CE and 1260 CE. A lot of the building work happened in just 20 years during that time.
The Ancestral Puebloans built Cliff Palace and other similar homes in the cliffs. They moved to these safe, high places because of changes in the weather and more competition for resources. The people left Cliff Palace around 1300 CE. Experts think that long periods of very dry weather, called megadroughts, made it hard to grow food. This might be why they left their homes.
Cliff Palace was found again in 1888 by two cowboys, Richard Wetherill and Charlie Mason. They were looking for lost cattle when they stumbled upon it.
What Cliff Palace Looks Like
Cliff Palace was mostly built from sandstone, mortar, and wooden beams. The builders shaped the sandstone using harder stones. They made mortar from soil, water, and ash to hold the stones together. Smaller "chinking" stones were put into the mortar to fill gaps and make the walls strong. Many walls were once decorated with colorful plaster, but this has worn away over time.
Many visitors notice that the doorways at Cliff Palace are quite small. This is because, back then, the average man was shorter than 5 feet 6 inches (168 cm). The average woman was even shorter, closer to 5 feet (152 cm).
Cliff Palace has 150 rooms and 23 kivas. Kivas are round, sunken rooms that were important for ceremonies. About 100 people lived here. One kiva, in the middle of the ruin, divides the whole structure. Walls with no doorways separate the two sides. The walls of this kiva were plastered with different colors on each side.
Experts believe Cliff Palace was an important place for the community. It was likely a center for social gatherings and important ceremonies. Archaeologists think that more family groups, or clans, lived in Cliff Palace than in other nearby communities. This is because Cliff Palace has a higher number of kivas compared to its rooms. This suggests it might have been the main center for many smaller communities around Mesa Verde.
A tall square tower stands to the right and almost touches the cave roof. It was in ruins by the 1800s. The National Park Service carefully rebuilt it to look like it did before. This makes it one of the most memorable buildings at Cliff Palace. It is the tallest structure at Mesa Verde, standing 26 feet (7.9 m) high, with four levels. Slightly different colored materials were used to show that it was a restoration.
Images for kids
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Cliff Palace dwellings
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A 13th-century mural in the Square Tower, Cliff Palace
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Round tower, Cliff Palace in 1941. Photograph by Ansel Adams.
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Cliff Palace in 2018
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See also
In Spanish: Cliff Palace para niños
