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Mesa Verde is the center of the prehistoric Anasazi culture. It is located in the high plateau lands near Four Corners, where Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona come together. This high ground is majestic but not forbidding. The climate is dry, but tiny streams trickle at the bottom of deeply cut canyons, where seeps and springs provided water for the Anasazi to irrigate their crops. Rich red soil provided fertile ground for their crops of corn, beans, squash, tobacco, and cotton. The Anasazi domesticated the wild turkey and hunted deer, rabbits, and mountain sheep.
For a thousand years the Anasazi lived around Mesa Verde. Although the Anasazi are not related to the Navajos, no one knows what these Indians called themselves, and so they are commonly referred to by their Navajo name, Anasazi, which means "ancient ones" in the Navajo language. Where did the Anasazi move during the Great Pueblo Period
A. To settlements on ledges of canyon walls.
B. To pueblos in the south.
C. Onto the tops of the mesas.
D. Onto the floors of the canyons.

Around 550 A. D. , early Anasazi--then a nomadic people archaeologists call the Basketmakers—began constructing permanent homes on mesa tops. In the next 300 years, the Anasazi made rapid technological advancements, including the refinement of not only basket-making but also pottery-making and weaving. This phase of development is referred to as the Early Pueblo Culture.
By the Great Pueblo Period (1100 -1300 A. D. ), the Anasazi population swelled to over 5,000 and the architecturally ambitious cliff dwellings came into being. The Anasazi moved from the mesa tops onto ledges on the steep canyon walls, creating two-and three-story dwellings. They used sandstone blocks and mud mortar. There were no doors on the first floor and people used ladders to reach the first roof. All the villages had underground chambers called kivas. Men held tribal councils there and also used them for secret religious ceremonies and clan meetings. Winding paths, ladders, and steps cut into the stone led from the valleys below to the ledges on which the villages stood. The largest settlement contained 217 rooms. One might surmise that these dwellings were built for protection, but the Anasazi had no known enemies and there is no sign of conflict.
But a bigger mystery is why the Anasazi occupied these structures such a short time. By 1500, Mesa Verde was deserted. It is conjectured that the Anasazi abandoned their settlements because of drought, overpopulation, crop failure, or some combination of these. They probably moved southward and were incorporated into the pueblo villages that the Spanish explorers encountered two hundred years later. Their descendants still live in the Southwest.
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Which of the following statements is NOT true about ;he characteristics of the art of the Middle AgesA. It follows a kind of mathematics.B. It’s religious art, employing symbols to convey its meanings.C. Art becomes an allegory, beyond each painting some profound meanings are hidden.D. Art of the Middle Ages embodies the personality of the artist in a diffused way.
A second characteristic of this iconography is obedience to a sacred mathematics. "The Divine Wisdom," wrote Saint Augustine, "reveals itself everywhere in numbers", a doctrine attributable to the neo-Platonists who revived the genius of Pythagoras. Twelve is the master number of the Church and is the product of three, the number of the Trinity, and four, the number of material elements. The number seven, the most mysterious of all numbers, is the sum of four and three. There are the seven ages of man, seven virtues, seven planets. In the final analysis, the seven-tone scale of Gregorian music is the sensible embodiment of the order of the universe. Numbers require also a symmetry. At Charters, a stained glass window show the four prophets, Isaac, Ezekiel, Daniel, and Jeremiah, carrying on their shoulders the four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.A third characteristic of art is to be a symbolic language, showing us one thing and inviting us to see an other. In this respect, the artist was called upon to imitate God, who had hidden a profound meaning behind the literal and wished nature itself to be a moral lesson to man. Thus, every painting is an allegory. In a scene of the final judgment, we can see the foolish virgins at the left hand of Jesus and the wise at his right, and we understand that this symbolizes those who are lost and those who are saved. Even seemingly insignificant details carry hidden meaning: The lion in a stained glass window is the figure of the Resurrection.
These, then, are the defining characteristics of art of the Middle Ages, a system within which even the most mediocre talent was elevated by the genius of the centuries. The artists of the early Renaissance broke with traditional at their own peril. When they are not outstanding, they are scarcely able to avoid insignificance and banality in their religious works, and, even when they are great, they are no more than the equals of the old masters who passively followed the sacred rules. (523)