Q 01/05

Nineteenth-century settlers wrongly credited which civilisation with building Mesa Verde's cliff dwellings?

A) The Maya

B) The Inca

C) The Aztecs

D) The Olmecs

Answer · why

C) The Aztecs

The Aztecs got the credit, and the map still shows it: Mesa Verde's county was named Montezuma for their emperor, and a great Puebloan site to the sou...

Q 02/05

What does Mesa Verde mean in Spanish?

A) Green valley

B) High table

C) Green table

D) High valley

Answer · why

C) Green table

Green table is how Spanish explorers saw it, though no true mesa tilts as this one does: its gentle slope to the south was essential to forming the al...

Q 03/05

What kind of home did Mesa Verde's first farming families build, centuries before the cliff dwellings?

A) Hogans

B) Pithouses

C) Wickiups

D) Tipis

Answer · why

B) Pithouses

Pithouses, sunk partly into the earth, came first, around 550 CE; the kiva, the round ceremonial room of the later villages, grew out of them.

Q 04/05

Roughly how many cliff dwellings does Mesa Verde National Park protect?

A) 20

B) 100

C) 600

D) 3,000

Answer · why

C) 600

600 cliff dwellings are only a fraction of the story: the park protects thousands of other archaeological sites, most of them far less famous than the...

Q 05/05

Which president signed the act creating Mesa Verde National Park?

A) Theodore Roosevelt

B) William McKinley

C) William Howard Taft

D) Grover Cleveland

Answer · why

A) Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt signed it three weeks after the Antiquities Act of 1906; both laws answered the same alarm, as collectors and pot hunters stripped ...