I Discovered Proof of a Lost Civilization Hidden on a Vertical Cliff
Chandler Magoo
7,290 views
Deep in the American Southwest desert, hunting for ancient artifacts, ruins, and whatever else this landscape’s kept hidden, I came across something most people will never see. This isn't on any map; it's just a fragile site tucked away under the sandstone where nobody goes.
Getting out into this kind of country takes more than just following a trail—you've got to commit to the terrain and trust your footing when the canyon walls start closing in. In this video, I work my way down through the slickrock and narrow corridors to check out a remarkably preserved cliff dwelling hidden right in the rock.
Timestamps:
0:00 The Trek Begins
1:41 Arriving to the first Cliffs
6:00 Finding Bear Prints
7::23 A Very Call
10:00 Finding More Animal Prints
12:05 Finding First Proof of Ancient Civilization
17:05 Arriving To First Native American Ruins
22:55 Finding Even More Proof of Ancient Civilizations
27:25 Finding Last Native American Ruin Cliffside
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#AncientRuins #DesertHiking #Backcountry #Exploration #exploration
20 Comments
Throughout most of the four corners area, the Ancestral Puebloans experienced a severe, decades-long drought about 700 years ago. It limited their farm crops like corn, beans and squash, as well as their foraged foods. They and their neighbors were starving, and it created unrest and marauding, raiding to steal food stores.
During that drought, most of the inhabitants of the four corners area were driven from their larger pueblo communities in the creek bottoms into the upper reaches of the canyons, in search of places to build homes that were well disguised, and hidden under over-hanging rocks. The site Chandler found here strikes me as the sort of site where a group of five or six people might have built stealth shelter in the canyons, after having been driven from their former homes downstream. If they limited their fires until after dark, the smoke would not give up their location, and they could occupy that safe protected rock overhang while they scouted around the area for a more permanent home with similar protection.
When I hike around the canyons hunting for these ruins, I enjoy imagining the lives of those refugees who built their homes hidden up in the rocks during the final decades before that drought drove the Ancestral Puebloans out of this area. They built some really impressive and creative homes up in the canyons.
Before they were driven up into the canyons, their people had mostly been living downstream near the river bottoms where water flowed more often, and the soil was fertile. If my understanding is correct, they lived or centuries in the river bottoms in larger groups, and only for decades higher up in the canyons, during the dangerous drought years. Sadly, most of their earlier homes in the river bottoms have eroded much further, since they were exposed to the weather. Th e reason we see more of the smaller settlements higher up the canyons is that they were built more recently (about 700 years ago) and because the same rocky overhangs that protected them from the weather also provided stealthy locations to hide homes that were built mostly from the nearby stone and mud, easily obtainable nearby.
When I hike those canyons I make mental notes about where I find springs in the canyon walls like the one shown earlier in the video. The people living in those mud hut ruins would probably have relied on a spring like that one as their water supply. I was intrigued by those mud structures. I haven't seen others built that way before. It wasn't the usual woven sort of jacal or wattle and daub mud wall types. The huts chandler found seemed to be built from wood lying in horizontal layers on the ground, held together with mud mortar and probably covered entirely in that same mud, when built.
I Discovered Proof of a Lost Civilization Hidden on a Vertical Cliff
Chandler Magoo
7,290 views
Deep in the American Southwest desert, hunting for ancient artifacts, ruins, and whatever else this landscape’s kept hidden, I came across something most people will never see. This isn't on any map; it's just a fragile site tucked away under the sandstone where nobody goes.
Getting out into this kind of country takes more than just following a trail—you've got to commit to the terrain and trust your footing when the canyon walls start closing in. In this video, I work my way down through the slickrock and narrow corridors to check out a remarkably preserved cliff dwelling hidden right in the rock.
Timestamps:
0:00 The Trek Begins
1:41 Arriving to the first Cliffs
6:00 Finding Bear Prints
7::23 A Very Call
10:00 Finding More Animal Prints
12:05 Finding First Proof of Ancient Civilization
17:05 Arriving To First Native American Ruins
22:55 Finding Even More Proof of Ancient Civilizations
27:25 Finding Last Native American Ruin Cliffside
If you enjoyed this look into the wild, please Subscribe and hit the notification bell. Your support helps fund future explorations into the hidden corners of the desert.
#AncientRuins #DesertHiking #Backcountry #Exploration #exploration