10/22/18 Interesting Features of the Cliff Dwellings

At different times of the day, sunlight shines through  the openings in the cliff dwellings. Here you see the sun shining through an opening in a wall, while above the wall you see the cliff on the other side of the canyon.

Standing on a step inside the caves you can look across the maze of walls and see the only two-story 'building' in the dwellings.

Close-up, the 'building' looks like this. The 'bottom' floor was probably used for storage. The walls of the top floor extend all the way up to the cave wall. There is a small smoke hole at the top where the wall meets the cave. (None of the other walls in the dwellings extend up to the cave wall; probably so the smoke could escape.) No one knows what the function of the top floor was since it is quite small.

Beneath the two-story 'building' is this huge cave!

The ceiling of the cave has soot on it. There is a short wall at the bottom of the cave. What was it used for? Why build a two-story 'building' above the cave? It's very mysterious.

Everywhere in the caves, you see these round depressions. They are not natural. They are man-made.

They range in size from 1 inch to 6 inches in diameter. The depressions range from 1 inch to 3 inches deep. Obviously someone was grinding something, but what? Spices, spears? No one really knows.

This depression is under a huge rock slab! It is about 6 inches in diameter and 3 inches deep! What would someone be grinding under there?  

These depressions are not like the others. The others are on a horizontal rock surface. These are on a rock surface that is nearly vertical so if someone was grinding spices in there, the spices would fall right out of the depression! What were they grinding there? a spear or arrowhead? It would have been nice if the people who lived in the dwellings left us a You-tube video explaining what these depressions were used for!