Chaco Canyon - View of the cliff

   Chaco Canyon city is a long site, and its north side abuts the cliff wall as you can see.
   The city occupied a pretty large area, and this picture is just a snippet from among the ruins. The edge of a kiva shows at the bottom of the photograph, and the dark round holes in the walls show where the beams for higher floors were built in.

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   As is usual with ruins, most of what we see here are just the foundations that survived after the rest of the building was destroyed by war or by nature --- in this case more by nature than by war since Chaco was abandoned rather than defeated. The bits of still-standing walls give clues to how big and how complex the original constructions actually were.
   The cliff probably shielded them from the worst of winter's cold winds from the North, but living under a cliff has its downsides as well ----- or perhaps I should say, its downslides.

   Sorry about that, but as you are groaning at the Paul-like pun, see