What is it like to live in the AZ heat? True story.

[Zorra]

21. I live in rural Arizona. The Hohokam and Sinagua lived by water.

I have probably visited 150 - 170 distinct sets of non-commercialized ruins, mostly Sinagua. Some are individual cliff dwellings, some fairly large ancient pueblos, some are groups of cave/cliff dwellings, one of them consisting of 100 cavates with about 350 rooms, and old pueblos on the mesa above. i've found evidence of a few pit houses as well. I can see cliff dwellings from my back deck, and there are a few small cliff dwellings below my house near my swimming hole on the creek. I found most of the ruins by exploring the areas around creeks and the rivers, anywhere there is water. Most of the ruins are 600-1000 yrs old. I believe some of the oldest ruins may be Hohokam, judging by the type of pottery shards. I've seen and encountered many fascinating things exploring here.

We have a river, several fair sized creeks, and several small creeks in our general area. There is a network of what were farming communities, several that used irrigation canal systems to water crops. I have spent many hot summer days camping near and swimming in deep holes where the old ones spent their summer days playing with their children. In my opinion, before probable overpopulation and overuse of the the land took its toll on the environment, it may actually have been some seriously easy living.

I feel that the Sinagua spent a great deal of time of time swimming and working in the canyon shade during the hot summer months, and the majority of their main thoroughfares were along watercourses or on trails that connected watercourses.

The short story is, they most likely dealt with the heat by staying in or near the water as much as possible.

Here are some cavates, part of a very large community, above the river, which flows into the Salt River, where many of the Hohokam folks lived.