MESA VERDE Rules and Regulations 1920

SUN TEMPLE.¹

---

¹This description of Sun Temple and the data following on Far View House were compiled especially for this pamphlet by Dr. J. Walter Fewkes, now Chief of the Bureau of Ethnology, who, during the seasons of 1915 and 1916, excavated these great prehistoric structures.

---

It is impossible to tell when Sun Temple was begun or how long it took for its construction or when it was deserted. There are indications that its walls were never completed, and from the amount of fallen stones there can hardly be a doubt that when it was abandoned they had been carried up in some places at least 6 feet above their present level. The top of the wall had been worn down at any rate 6 feet in the interval between the time it was abandoned and the date of my excavation of the mound. No one can tell the length of this interval in years.

We have, however, knowledge of the lapse of time, because the mound had accumulated enough soil on its surface to support growth of large trees. Near the summit of the highest wall in the annex there grew a juniper or red cedar of great antiquity, alive and vigorous when I began work. This tree undoubtedly sprouted after the desertion of the building and grew after a mound had developed from fallen walls. Its roots penetrated into the adjacent rooms and derived nourishment from the soil filling them.

Necessarily when these roots were cut off, thereby killing the tree, I was obliged to fell it, but the stump remains, cut off about a foot above the ground. A section of this tree at that point was found by Mr. Gordon Parker, supervisor of Montezuma National Forest, to have 360 annual rings; its heart is decayed, but its size suggests other rings, and that a few more years can be added to its age. It is not improbable that this tree began to grow on the top of the Sun Temple mound shortly after the year 1540, when Coronado first entered New Mexico, but how great an interval elapsed during which the walls fell to form the mound in which it grew, and how much earlier the foundations of the ruined walls were laid no one can tell. A conservative guess of 250 years is allowable for the interval between construction and the time the cedar began to sprout, thus carrying the antiquity of Sun Temple back to about 1300 A. D.

From absence of data, the relative age of Sun Temple and Cliff Palace is equally obscure, but it is my firm conviction that the former was later, mainly because it showed unmistakable evidences of a higher sociological condition of the builders; but here again we enter a realm of speculation which, while it adds to the mystery of the building, is beyond our knowledge.

Bird's-eye view of Sun Temple.

THE MYSTERY OF ITS PURPOSE.

Many theories have been advanced to explain the purpose of this structure, but most of these can be eliminated without difficulty. The theory that it was a prison, a Spanish mission, a theater, may be dismissed without serious consideration.

The position of the ruin has led several visitors to suggest that the building was constructed, for a fortification or defense against hostile invaders. This theory is not a fanciful one, but, while it might have been constructed in part for this purpose, protection from foes was only a secondary consideration. The care given to its construction, its shape and size, absence of portholes, and height of walls are not such as we would expect in a fort.

There is no good evidence supporting the theory that it was erected to serve as a habitation. The rooms have not a form adapted for any such utilitarian purpose. They are destitute of windows, and it was not intended to plaster their walls, as the incised stones clearly indicate; there are no evidences of fireplaces, no smoked walls, no ashes or charcoal, no metates for grinding corn, no piles of débris, such as are usually formed about a habitation. Few household implements, such as bowls and baskets, were found. There were no burials, no animal bones, remnants of former feasts.

While it is not impossible that it might have been intended to later add an upper story for dwellings, attention may be called to the fact that, although some of the rooms have walls about 12 feet high, they show no evidence of floor beams or holes for their insertion. The lower rooms were too high for dwellings, for a dwelling room over 6 feet from the floor to ceiling is anomalous in cliff houses or pueblos.

UNITY OF CONSTRUCTION.

The argument that appeals most strongly to my mind supporting the theory that Sun Temple was a ceremonial building is the unity shown in its construction. A preconceived plan existed in the mind of the builders before they began work on the main building. Sun Temple was not constructed haphazard nor was its form due to addition of one clan after another, each adding rooms to a preexisting nucleus. There is no indication of patching one building to another, so evident at Cliff Palace and other large cliff dwellings. The construction of the recess in the south wall situated exactly, to an inch, midway in its length shows it was planned from the beginning.

We can hardly believe that one clan could have been numerous enough to construct a house so large and massive. Its walls are too extensive; the work of dressing the stones too great. Those who made it must have belonged to several clans fused together, and if they united for this common work, they were in a higher state of sociological development than a loosely connected population of a cliff dwelling.

In primitive society only one purpose could have united the several clans who built such a structure, and this purpose must have been a religious one. This building was constructed for worship, and its size is such that we may practically call it a temple.

A TEMPLE FOR SUN WORSHIP.

On the theory that it was intended for that purpose, we can easily interpret one or two facts that otherwise are without significance. The shrine at its southwest cornerstone is worthy of notice in this connection. It bears on its floor a symbol resembling the sun, which implies complex ceremonies.

No one doubts that the three massive, circular-walled rooms, two in the main plaza and one in the annex, are religious rooms, and a glance at the ground plan shows they are prominent architectural features. They show from their prominence that whatever theory of the use of Sun Temple we adopt we must not overlook the ceremonial object. The existence of many rooms entered from the roofs and the absence of external doors in all implies secrecy. The mysteries here performed were not open to all—only the initiated could enter.

Comment has already been made on the fact that practically no household implements were found in the rooms, which has been interpreted to mean that the building was never finished. It also signifies that the workmen did not live in or near by during construction; the question is pertinent: Where did they live?

THEORIES.

On the theory that this was erected by people from several neighboring cliff dwellings for ceremonies held in common, we may suppose that the builders came daily from their dwellings in Cliff Palace and other houses and returned at night after they had finished work to their homes. The trails down the sides of the cliffs which the workmen used are still to be seen. The place was frequented by many people, but there is no evidence that any one clan dwelt near this mysterious building during its construction.

Other questions arise: Was Sun Temple constructed by an intrusive people of different stock from that of Cliff Palace? Is it the work of a migratory band that entered the region from the valleys surrounding Mesa Verde, or was it built by an alien people not closely allied to those of Cliff Palace, but more like Pueblos of New Mexico? The difference between the architecture of Sun Temple and that of the neighboring cliff dwellings and its similarity in form to some of the ruins in the Chaco Canyon, N. Mex., would seem to lend some support to the theory that the builders were aliens, or culturally different from cliff dwellers.

This theory seems to me untenable, for where did these incoming aliens live while building it? How could they work there unmolested?

THE MYSTERY OF THE BUILDERS.

The argument that cliff dwellers in the neighborhood built Sun Temple and that incoming aliens had nothing to do with its construction seems to me very strong. The architectural differences between it and Cliff Palace are not objections, for the architectural form of Sun Temple may be regarded as a repetition, in the open, of a form of building that developed in a cliff house; the rounded north wall conforms with the rear of a cave and the straight south wall reproduces the front of a cliff dwelling. The recess midway in the south wall of Sun Temple could be likened without forcing the comparison to a similar recess which occurs at the main entrance into Cliff Palace.

Sun Temple was not built by an alien people, but by the cliff dwellers as a specialized building mainly for religious purposes, and, so far as known, is the first of its type recognized in the Mesa Verde area.