Megalithic Marvels - What Really Happened to the Anasazi? (rewind)

Episode Date: September 18, 2026

This episode combines two of my favorite topics when it comes to history: the discovery of ancient hidden ruins and cowboy exploration of the wild west. In this episode I read a chapter from the book "Mysteries of the Old West," that recounts a fascinating true story from 1888 where two cowboys mistakenly stumble upon a lost city hidden in the cliffs of southwest Colorado while searching for their lost cattle. How would they find their way inside the ancient cliff dwellings? What did they see and experience deep inside? Who were these ancient inhabitants and why did it seem that they had suddenly vanished without a trace? So what really happened to the Anasazi? Why do the legends of the other four-corners tribes whisper that the Anasazi disappeared? Why does the ancient rock art of the Anasazi seem to depict strange spiral vortexes, portals, and what appears to be entities that came through them such as humanoids, chimeras and giant, six-fingered and six-toed footprints? At the end of this episode I share the shocking details of an archaeological excavation that appears to reveal that the Anasazi met a horrific end... SHOW NOTES:JOIN ME ON A TOURBook: Mysteries of the Old West by E.B. WheelerBook: Unearthing the Lost World of the Cloudeaters by Tom HornVideo: Tom Horn talking about the Anasazi

So this episode is going to be a reading from a true story in this book called Mysteries of the Old West by E.B. Wheeler. And a shout out to my father-in-law who had bought this book on Amazon. He was reading it and he was telling me about how awesome it was and these mysteries. And I said, man, that sounds pretty amazing. Can I borrow that when you're done reading it? So he gave it to me tomorrow. I read the first story and I was hooked. So what I'm loving about this book and specifically this true story that we're going to get into is that it mixes some of my favorite parts of history, which is the Wild West and Mysteries of the Old West, with discovery of ancient structures.

And so I think you're really going to enjoy this. A little bit about this author real quick. E.B. Wheeler attended B.U. majoring in history with an English minor and earned graduate degrees in history and landscape architecture from U.S. Utah State University. So she's got a great book here. I'll link it in the show notes so that you guys can buy it and read the story yourself and all the others in it.

On a bitterly cold December day in 1888, two Cowboys, Richard Weatherall and Charles Mason set out to look for lost cattle on the tablelands of southwest Colorado. Their horses pressed on through a steady snowfall. They were on Ute Indian lands, but Richard Weatherall was friends with the local Native Americans. He spoke both Ute and Navajo and was allowed to graze his cows on the Ute's mesas, the Spanish word for table, which was what the high flat land resembled. The cowboys wouldn't find their cattle that day, but the discovery they made would be much more important and more mysterious.

The wind whipped ice and snow around the two cowboys. as they rode. I can't feel my feet, Richard called. Charles nodded. His fingers were stiff and numb with cold. They dismounted and led their horses through the storm to get the blood moving in their limbs and avoid frostbite. Richard and Charles walked to the edge of the mesa which overlooked the cliffs of the opposite canyon wall. The wintry sin of ice and pinion pine rode on the wind. As they gazed, the curtain of snow parted and Richard cried out grabbing Charles' arm. An entire city of stone houses appeared on the side of the steep cliffs across from them, filtered under a huge ledge and guarded by walls and towers. It looks just like a palace, Charles whispered. If Richard hadn't seen it too, Charles would have

thought it was a hallucination brought on by cold and exhaustion. The canyons harbored the ruins of stone houses, but the cowboys had never seen anything like this. Aute leader named Ackowitz had told Richard's stories about ancient stone villages hidden in the canyons, but he had also warned them that the cliff houses were sacred places, possibly even cursed, and that the yute did not visit them. Richard and Charles were too amazed to worry about the curses. They left their horses and searched for a way down the steep canyon walls to the cliff palaces on the other side. They managed to scramble over fallen boulders and down old rock slides to reach the bottom of the canyon. The cliff walls were steep and there was no clear path up to the

ruins, especially with a storm blasting them the sharp cold snow. It would be easy to give up or try to come back another time. Richard's brother Alfred had once described seeing a cliff palace like this one from the canyon floor, but he'd never been able to find it again. Many of the smaller cliff houses had been destroyed by Spanish miners looking for lost Indian gold or thieves, hoping to sell ancient Indian artifacts. Was it possible that this immense village had stayed hidden in the canyons for hundreds of years? It could hold ancient treasures or even answers about the mysterious people who once lived in the canyons. Richard and Charles wouldn't give up yet.

They searched the canyon until they found a way to climb to the mesa on the other side. From there they backtracked until they stood above the cliff palace. They couldn't see anything below them. There was no hint that an immense village waited just under their feet. Unless the ancient people could fly, though. They had to have a way in and a way out of their cliff. Palace. Richard and Charles searched the edges of the mesa. Here, Charles gestured, deeply worn stone steps cut along the cliff toward the cliff palace. They were carved from the cliff itself, camouflaged

among the rocks. Was it possible that Richard and Charles were the first in hundreds of years to discover them? Clinging to the canyon walls, the two cowboys followed the steps into the shelter of the cavern that held the cliff palace. In the protection of the overhang, the storm could not touch them. The city in the cliff was warm, still, and dry. Each step they took raised clouds of powdery dirt. They inhaled it and coughed, imagining the dust of ancient people sticking in their lungs. No other footprints disturbed the ground. Nothing living had passed to that way for hundreds of years. It feels like someone's watching us, Richard said. Charles nodded, ghosts.

There were no signs of life except an old buzzard nest, and even those birds had abandoned the Cliff Palace. Richard and Charles crept along. The silent buildings, several stories tall, sat along streets, connected like apartments. The stones were held together with mortar made of mud, and they could still see the fingerprints of the long-vanished people who built the palace.

Some of the fingerprints were large like theirs, but others were small, perhaps belonging to women, and others were so timely only children could have made them. Everyone worked together to create this amazing refuge in the cliffs, but what had happened to them? The cowboys carefully poked their heads into some of the rooms. Pots with black and white designs waited on floors and tables,

still holding cobs of corn or unfinished weaving. Cooking implements sat by the ashes of fires ready to make dinner. In one room it looked like a child had been playing houses with pots and stone tools. Everything appeared as if the people had just stepped outside for a moment planning to return, or had to flee for their lives without even taking food or a knife for protection. This is strange. Richard pointed to the ceiling. You can see holes where there were rafters, but the wood is good.

gone. If it had rotted, the cloth and corn cobs wouldn't have survived either. Maybe there was a fire and the walls aren't black. Every room was the same. Someone had pulled out all the wooden rafters but left everything else in place. Did they take it somewhere to make up on fire? Perhaps to keep warm or to send a signal for help as a warning? Did they intend for their building to collapse after they left. In some of the rooms, the ancient inhabitants had left paintings in red on the wall. One showed pyramids with what looked like an open book or weaving patterns above it. But as far as anyone knows, the ancient Americans didn't have books, and the nearest pyramids are far to the south in Mexico. Other paintings might show lunar events. The ancient people probably studied the stars

in the sky to know when the best times were to plan. and harvest crops. Two unusual rooms were left unfinished. One was round in contrast to the rectangular rooms in the rest of the Cliff Palace. The cowboys marveled at how smooth the circular walls were, despite the simple stone tools the ancient people used. The other unfinished room was huge compared to all the others. But what were these projects meant to be? Maybe they served a religious purpose or were supposed to be a final defense against whatever enemy drove the people from the cliffs. When West Jet first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different.

People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to WestJetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at WestJet. In the front of the Cliff Palace, there were large round structures that extended underground. Richard and Charles recognized that they were similar to the kivas that the modern Pueblo people of Arizona and New Mexico used for religious ceremonies,

suggesting a link between the cultures. The ancient Puebloans may have used the kivas the same way, or maybe they were just important gathering places. Yet some of the kiva's were filled with trash like broken pottery and animal bones. Why would the people turn an important gathering place, especially a religious one, into a trash sheep? Had they argued over their leadership or religion, or was it their enemies who had done this? Behind the buildings Richard and Charles found a large open space. In one area, there were many stones for grinding grain into flour. Another part was covered in dry bird droppings with no sense.

sight of birds or nests in the ceiling above. I bet they kept turkeys, Charles said, like the Pueblo Indians do today. Richard and Charles also found a trash sheep and a burial ground, but the burial ground wasn't the only place they found dead bodies. Some were left among the ruins. Had they died defending their homes from invaders, or were these the bodies of the enemies, It seemed clear that someone attacked the Cliff Palace, but who were they? And why did they leave food and so many valuable goods behind? Richard and Charles left with more questions than answers. And they would spend the rest of their lives studying the cliff dwellings

and advocating for more protection for the ruins so treasure hunters didn't steal the pots and other artifacts. They learned to conduct archaeological digs to discover more about these ancient people whom the Navajo called the Anasazi. They discovered shells from California and feathers from Mexico in the ruins, showing that the cliff dwellers had traded with other cultures. They found carved channels and stone basins that the ancient people used to collect water during drowns. Despite the many discoveries made by Richard and Charles, as well as later scientists and archaeologists, the fate of the cliff dwellers remains a mystery. Agoer's warned Richard Weatherall to stay away from the places of the dead.

Weatherall was too curious about the past to listen, and for many years he continued exploring and excavating cliff dwellings along with his brothers. Then his luck took a turn for the worse. He had wanted the government to take more of a role of preserving the cliff dwellings, but as they did, they forbade him from doing any more of the research he loved, and he lost the credit for much of his own work. Struggling to support his family, Richard ended up opening a trading post in New Mexico. There, one of his Navajo customers ambushed and shot him

for reasons that were never clear. Had the ghosts of the past finally caught up with him for disturbing the secrets of the dead. And that concludes Chapter 1 titled Empty Villavic, in the cliffs of the book Mysteries of the Old West by E.B. Wheeler. And again, I'll link this book in the show notes if you want to purchase it. So as the Cowboys allude to in this true story, it was as if the Anasaze had literally just disappeared. So what really happened to them? where did the anisazzae go now the mainstream high of mind theorizes that the anasazi were basically just absorbed into the navajo and hopi tribes

however according to the oral traditions of the other tribes around this four corners area the ones who tracked the anasazi according to oral traditions they tracked the anasazi to the chaco valley but they were gone again vanished and it is said that these other tribes mourned the anisei and they cried and it's interesting that chaco means to cry so the oral traditions amongst these other four-corner tribes is that the anasazi it just disappeared now what's fascinating is that when you look at the ancient rock art of the anise especially the ones they call newspaper rock in utah you see strange a spiral vortex what looks like portals, stargates, and what appears to be entities that possibly came through these portals. You see humanoid shapes.

You see what almost looks like human animal chimeras. And what's most crazy is you see giant six-fingered and six-toed footprints, which appear to be in pursuit of much smaller, normal, five-fingered, and five-toed human. footprints. So this almost beckons back to Genesis 6-4 that speaks of the Nephilim and these hybrid ancients that often were depicted and talked about even in the Bible with extra digits in these genetic anomalies like six fingers, six toes, or giant stature. Now it's somewhat decipherable as to which images are older in this rock art due to the fading in the darkness of the earliest depictions, which are. certainly the most mysterious. Now most archaeologists believe the writings on this great wall date from about 1000 BC or earlier all the way up until about AD 1300 which is about the same time the anise suddenly disappeared. So one of the

big questions is what was the motive behind these painstaking and time-consuming efforts of these painted messages of this art Were they painting what they heard about in their ancient legends and or were they painting what they saw in their day? Now there was a gentleman by the name of Tom Horn who sadly passed away years ago, but he was a great researcher, filmmaker, and author. And he had went down and visited these cliff dwellings and made a documentary or a couple of them about the Anasazi and how they mysteriously vanished. Tom had pointed out in his documentary that the University of southeastern Colorado was excavating at the Sand Canyon Pueblo archaeological site many years ago. And they'd been excavating what appeared to have been an Anasazi community that was suddenly attacked. And whatever happened to them doesn't even compare to any other kind of tribal war that they'd ever excavated.

So here's what I mean. They documented how these people had literally been ripped to shreds. Their bodies and bones had been mangled. And they had even discovered parts of their bodies and bones that had been carried for over a distance of 200 miles. So something horrific happened specifically at this site. Now the Anasazi were small people like, four and a half to five feet tall. But this university also unearthed two very large seven plus foot long skeletons. And again, all of this was documented on this university's website. It's in Tom Horn's book. If you Google Tom Horn and the Anasazi, you'll find his documentary films and book that gives all of these sources on this. So in closing, that only do we have this fascinating, true story of these Wild West Cowboys stumbling upon these ancient Anasazi ruins, but we have the Anasazi themselves who apparently literally vanished into thin air. And then we've got these strange, enigmatic rock art depictions all over the four corners area that shows what looks like portals.

It shows what looks like entities and chimeras and hybrids and and giants with six fingers and six toes. We've got seven plus foot tall skeletons, and we've got archaeological evidence of anisase bones being mangled and pieces of the same body scattered for over 200 miles. Something horrific seems to have happened to the anise and is this why they built their cities in the

the cliffs. Were these cliff dwellings, strategic defensive positions to protect them from other enemy tribes, or was it to protect them from something more sinister? I hope you enjoyed this episode. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast from wherever you are watching or listening. If you're on Spotify, do me a favor and give me a five-star rating. And until next time, keep exploring.