Mohenjo-Daro - Pakistan

The city of Mohenjo-Daro (“hill of the dead”) was the largest settlement of a culture that for more than 600 years from 2500 b.c. extended over 600,000 square miles (1.5 million square kilometers) of India and Pakistan—larger than western Europe. The city’s ruins, on the west bank of the Indus River about 200 miles (320 kilometers) north of Karachi, evidence careful urban design combined with a sophisticated infrastructure that was undreamed of in the contemporary river-valley civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia. Although presented with undeniably nationalistic and political bias, recent archeological evidence from the subcontinent suggests that there, and not in Mesopotamia, was the cradle of civilization. Mohenjo-Daro has been chosen here as simply representative of a great achievement, the invention of city planning.

The first traces of the ancient cities were accidentally discovered on the Indus River floodplain in 1856. The occupying British, building the East Indian Railway between Lahore and Karachi, plundered hundreds of thousands of bricks from the site of Harappâ, a metropolis on the Ravi River, 400 miles (640 kilometers) northeast of Mohenjo-Daro. In 1920 Sir John Marshall, director general of archeology in India, initiated investigation of these “twin capitals,” and discoveries were made by Daya Ram Sahni (at Harappâ) and R. D. Banerji. Nani Gopal Majumdar worked in the Sindh region (now in southern Pakistan) from 1927 to 1931. About a decade later, Ernest Mackay discovered Chanu Daro, and Sir Aurel Stein found more sites in Baluchistan and Rajputana. From 1946 into the early 1950s, Sir Mortimer Wheeler continued excavations at Mohenjo-Daro and Harappâ.

The terms “Indus valley civilization” and “Harappân culture” spring from the collective work of all these men, but Hindu scholars in India and Pakistan recently have challenged that nomenclature. Some insist that the civilization was created by Vedic people. Hard evidence is displacing earlier speculative myths about origins. Since the early 1990s archeologists have uncovered several cities east of the Indus. The settlement known as the Dholavira

excavation, about 150 miles (250 kilometers) from modern Bhujin in India; another under modern Rakhigarhi in the Haryana district; and Kunal, also in Haryana and close to the dry Ghaggar-Hakra River (thought to be Mother Saraswati of the Rig Veda), are evidence of how widespread Harappân culture was. It extended from the mountains of northern Afghanistan south to the Arabian Sea, and from the Baluchistan highlands in the west eastward to the Thar Desert, once a fertile plain watered by the Saraswati. Of about 1,400 sites now uncovered, about 900 are in India, 1 is in Afghanistan, and the remainder are in Pakistan. Because there are more Harappân settlements along the Saraswati than along the Indus, it has been suggested by some Indian archeologists that the name “Indus-Saraswati” civilization be adopted; their peers in Pakistan prefer “Hakra” civilization.

However modern scholars choose to classify them, well-structured barley- and wheat-growing communities existed in the region around 4300 b.c., and by 3200 b.c. large villages stood along the great rivers. The historian Arnold Toynbee has suggested that such locations were chosen not because they offered an easy life but because of the challenges presented by annual flooding. Whatever the case, the Harappâns made a dizzying leap from villages to cities between 2600 and 2500 b.c. As elsewhere, there was no intermediate, evolutionary step. The U.S. archeologist Gregory Possehl describes this as a century of cathartic changes, and Gordon Childe coined the expression “the urban implosion.” Quite suddenly, there existed commercial centers with high levels of municipal control; complex social organization; specialized occupational structures; administrative expertise; and tools, such as a system of writing (that of the Indus-Saraswati culture is as yet undeciphered), mathematics and especially geometry, survey instruments, and standard weights and measures.

Although there were other locations of comparable size and importance, Mohenjo-Daro was certainly a principal—and typical—city. This largest Indus valley settlement covered more than 200 acres (80 hectares) and was over 3 miles (5 kilometers) around. Like most Indus-Saraswati cities, it had two principal and functionally disparate districts, each built on a huge mud-brick platform, which raised it above the annual floods. To the west stood the 45-foot-high (14-meter) “citadel,” measuring 1,400 feet (430 meters) by 450 feet (140 meters). Fortifications have survived at its southeast corner and the entire platform may have been enclosed by a wall. Several public buildings stood on it. Archeologists once imagined these to include a large granary (with a wooden superstructure), an assembly hall, a college, and a ritual tank, but more recent scholarship has found no evidence for those conclusions. Whatever their purpose, the layout and juxtaposition of the structures demonstrates careful urban design. Noteworthy among the buildings was the so-called Great Bath, about 29 by 23 feet (8.8 by 7 meters) and 8 feet (2.4 meters) deep, entered by steps at each end. It was built of fired bricks laid in gypsum mortar and sealed with bitumen.

Across an area of probably unused land, the residential “lower” city of Mohenjo-Daro occupied a more extensive platform to the east. It also was set out on a north-south, east-west grid of properly drained, brick-paved streets, 30 feet (9 meters) wide, forming rectangular urban blocks measuring about 400 by 270 yards (360 by 240 meters). Tightly packed courtyard houses and places of business, all built of fired brick, faced the streets. It is likely that internal walls were plastered, and most houses had stairs leading to either a second story or a flat roof. The houses normally had a private bathing area supplied with water from their own wells, and a properly drained toilet. A secondary grid of narrow service lanes subdivided the main blocks, and chutes from most residences were connected to a system of covered sewers—more evidence of well-developed municipal controls that still cannot be found in many Asian cities. Because of the high water table beneath Mohenjo-Daro, it is impossible to extend archeological investigation to its foundation level. Exploration continues, and in the early 1980s German scholars discovered a “suburb” about 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) from the “downtown area.”

Harappâ and many other Indus-Saraswati sites are almost identical to Mohenjo-Daro in layout and organization, indicating that, at the peak of the civilization, regional centers may have been built to a

standard city plan. There are exceptions in detail, if not in overall form.

This remarkable civilization remained unified for nearly 700 years. Then, partly because of overexpansion of its trade networks, after about 1900 b.c. it gradually disintegrated into a regionalized pattern of cultures, referred to as late or post-Harappân. Within 150 years Mohenjo-Daro’s efficient urban government had deteriorated. Administrative breakdown was augmented by ecological factors. Recent research has established that most protohistoric cultures suffered three centuries of persistent drought from about 2200 b.c., perhaps activated by a sudden global climate change. The passing of the Indus-Saraswati cities can be attributed in part to changing river patterns, upsetting a river-based agricultural and trade economy that had already outgrown its strength. The Saraswati dried up, the Hakra-Nara’s tributaries were diverted eastward to the Jamuna River and westward to the Indus, and the course of the Indus itself began to change, resulting in frequent violent flooding of its southern reaches.

Moai monoliths

The small Pacific island of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), 2,300 miles (3,680 kilometers) west of Chile, is the most remote inhabited island in the world, with Pitcairn, its nearest neighbor, 1,400 miles (2,240 kilometers) away. The staggering architectural

achievement of the people of Rapa Nui was the creation, but especially the transportation and erection, of hundreds of monolithic moai—stylized giant human heads-on-torsos—carved in hardened volcanic tufa. On average, the statues are 13 feet (4 meters) high and weigh 14 tons (14.22 tonnes). But the largest ever raised once stood at the prominence known as Ahu Te Pito Kura; nearly 33 feet (9.80 meters) high, it weighed about 91 tons (83 tonnes). Even it would have been dwarfed by another found incomplete in a quarry: measuring almost 72 feet (21.6 meters), its weight was perhaps 185 tons (168 tonnes).

Since the Dutch seafarer Jacob Roggeveen made Rapa Nui known to Europe in the 1720s, scholars have debated the origins of its culture. Local legend has it that the canoes of Hotu Matu’a (the Great Father) arrived from Polynesia around a.d. 400. Some scholars, citing archeological evidence, assert that they came between 300 and 400 years later. Whatever the case, among the lush palm forests the newcomers planted their gardens of bananas, taros, and sweet potatoes. The South American origin of the latter led the adventurer Thor Heyerdahl to conjecture that Polynesia had been colonized by pre-Inka people, a view refuted by later scholars, who cite biological, linguistic, and archeological evidence to support Southeast Asian origins. As compelling as it is, the question is not our present concern.

Unique in Polynesia, the mysterious moai are thought to have been carved between a.d. 1400 and 1600 by specialist master craftsmen using tools made from obsidian found at Orito. The figures, always male, are believed to be iconographic representations of powerful beings—ancestors, chiefs, or others of high rank—rather than portraits. The red volcanic stone for their headdresses (pukaos) came from the Puna Punau volcanic crater; their eyes were made of shell and coral. They were the product of a spiritual and cultural imperative that seems to have become an obsession.

The archeologist Jo Anne van Tilburg of the University of California at Los Angeles suggests that the statues acted as ceremonial mediators “between sky and earth, people and chiefs, and chiefs and gods.” The statues were transported, probably by conscripted labor, from where they were quarried and set up on the perimeter of the island, mostly on the southeast coast. Some were moved up to 14 miles (22.4 kilometers) and placed facing inland upon flat mounds or stone pedestals (ahu) about 4 feet (1.2 meters) above the surrounding ground. The word ahu also conveys a sacred site, and some, comprising massive masonry blocks and tons of fill, supported a whole group of moai.

For fifteen years van Tilburg carried out a “census” of the moai, finding a total of 887 statues. Fewer than one-third (288) had been transported to their coastal locations. She recorded another ninety-two as “in transport,” that is, on their way to their intended locations. The remainder were still in the quarries at what van Tilburg calls the central production center, in the volcanic caldera known as Rano Raraku near the eastern end of Rapa Nui. Perhaps they were abandoned because flaws were found in the stone, perhaps they were too large to move, or perhaps deteriorating social conditions forced the work to end.

How were they moved to their solemn stations around the coast of Rapa Nui? Several possibilities have been suggested. There is a local tradition that the moai “walked” to their sites, which led Heyerdahl to conclude that they were stood upright and rocked from side to side, thus “walked” along. A poorly rendered Dutch illustration of 1728, showing a statue standing upright on a base at which people are working, has been interpreted as moving the moai on rollers. Both systems have been tested using pseudo-moai and both worked. Others have suggested that the gigantic figures were laid prone, just as they had been carved, and dragged on sleds. Working from computer models that took account of many variables, including the food needed for the workers, van Tilburg proposed a plausible alternative, tested by experiment: the massive figures were moved in the prone position, supported on long logs that were rolled on smaller ones. In fact, no one knows with certainty how such loads were moved over the difficult terrain of the island.

Around a.d. 1550, Rapa Nui’s population reached a peak of about 10,000, placing an untenable load

on the tiny island’s resources just when moai carving and, more significantly, transportation reached a climax. Over the next century or so, radical change occurred, heralding the collapse of the society. Some scholars lay most of the blame for decline on the compulsion to construct the colossal figures. The once abundant palm forests were cleared for housing and crop production and to provide tools and pathways for moving the moai. Deforestation allowed the erosion of topsoil, and crops failed. Soon, driven by territorial imperatives, the island clans descended into civil war and even cannibalism. All the coastal moai had their eyes smashed out and the statues were toppled and decapitated by the islanders themselves.

Contacts with the West from the beginning of the eighteenth century served only to make matters worse, and in 1862 Peruvian slavers and exotic diseases together ravaged the population, reducing it to little more than a hundred. The process was reversed after Rapa Nui was annexed by Chile in 1888, and in 1965 it received the same privileges as other Chilean provinces. The economy now depends on sheep ranching and tourism. The main attraction for tourists is the mysterious moai, whose uniqueness led to the island being inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1995, with the following description:

Rapa Nui … bears witness to a unique cultural phenomenon. A society of Polynesian origin … established a powerful, imaginative and original tradition of monumental sculpture and architecture, free from any external influence. From the tenth to the sixteenth centuries this society built shrines and erected enormous stone figures, moai, which created an unrivalled cultural landscape and which today continue to fascinate the entire world.

Mishkan Ohel Haeduth (the Tent of Witness)

The Mishkan, or sacred tent, was a unique portable temple constructed under the direction of Moses as a place of worship for the Hebrew tribes. It was used during the forty-year period of wandering between their liberation from slavery in Egypt and their arrival in the Promised Land (ca. 1290–1250 b.c.). According to chapters 25 and 26 of Exodus, the warrant and exact specifications for its construction were given by God. The tent seems to have been still in use in the first half of the eleventh century b.c., but it no longer served a religious purpose after Solomon built a permanent temple in Jerusalem in 950 b.c.

Portable shrines existed in Egypt as early as the Old Kingdom (2800–2250 b.c.), and fine examples were discovered in the tomb of Tutankhamen, (ca. 1350 b.c.). But they are small in comparison with the Tent of Witness, which differed from all contemporary religious buildings in several remarkable ways. First, it was the only temple constructed by the monotheistic Israelites, in contrast to the many—often several dedicated to the same deity—built by their polytheistic neighbors. Second, it was never associated with one particular sacred geographical location, peculiar to the deity; rather, it was set up wherever Yahweh, the God of Israel, indicated, in the belief that his presence made every location sacred. Third, it was small and outwardly unimposing,

and although constructed of the choicest durable materials, it did not have (indeed, could not have) the appearance of weighty permanence common to contemporary religious buildings. Fourth, the materials used imparted a brightness that contrasted with the dark tents of the tribespeople who camped around it and that marked it out against the somberness of other shrines. Finally, its construction was not financed by temple taxes but by the voluntary offerings of the Israelites: according to Exodus, they gave 2,800 pounds (1,270 kilograms) of gold, 9,600 pounds (4,360 kilograms) of silver, and 6,700 pounds (3,050 kilograms) of bronze besides the necessary yarn and textiles. Its architectural character was inextricably linked to the Hebrews’ nomadic life for the first forty years of its existence. The Law of Moses provided instructions for the Levite families of Gershon, Kohath, and Merari responsible for assembling, demounting, and carrying the Mishkan and its court.

The complex invariably stood at the very center of the Israelite camp. It comprised a large courtyard around a comparatively small building that may be regarded as the Tent of Witness proper. The outer court was enclosed by a white linen wall, 150 feet (46 meters) long by 75 feet (23 meters) wide and 7.5 feet (2.3 meters) high, hung on 60 pillars of the brownish orange wood from the durable desert acacia. The pillars, each crowned with a silver capital, stood on bronze sockets, and their guy ropes were fastened with bronze pins. Access to the court was through a “gate” at the eastern end, also of white linen but distinguished from the general walls by an embroidered pattern in blue, purple, and scarlet and fastened to its pillars with gold hooks. Immediately inside the gate was an altar made of bronze-sheathed acacia wood. It is a comment upon the portability of the sanctuary that, at only 7.5 feet (2.3 meters) square and 4.5 feet (1.35 meters) high, this was the largest of the furnishings, designed to be carried on poles, rather like a sedan chair. Nearby stood a bronze basin holding water used for the priests’ ritual ablution.

The Tent of Witness itself stood at the western end of the court. An oblong enclosure, about 45 feet long by 15 feet wide (13.5 by 4.5 meters) and 15 feet high, was framed by walls assembled from 48 gold-sheathed acacia boards, each 27 inches (about 70 centimeters) wide. Standing on foundation blocks of solid silver, the boards were locked together by a system of bars passed through brackets on their outer faces and through their centers.

The plain exterior gave no clue to the richness and brilliant color of the rooms it contained. The ceiling was a draped curtain of the same textile as the courtyard gate, covered with another of goat’s hair, then red-dyed rams’ skins; an outer layer of porpoise skins provided durable protection. The interior was reached through a door of the same embroidered fabric hung on gold-sheathed pillars. By absolute contrast, the floor was simply the earth of the desert. The first compartment, 30 by 15 feet (9 by 4.5 meters), was called the Holy Place. It was furnished with a gold-sheathed table; a small altar for burning incense, also covered in gold; and a seven-branched menorah (lamp stand) hammered from solid gold. Beyond an inner curtain emblazoned with embroidered cherubim (angelic beings) was the Holy of Holies. The only furniture in that inner sanctum was the Ark of the Covenant, a gold-sheathed wooden box containing the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments. This was the dwelling place of the God of Israel, who sat invisibly enthroned above the gold “seat of atonement” that rested on the Ark. Access was denied to all except the High Priest, and then only on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement). Because of the uniqueness of the spiritual beliefs that the Tent of Witness expressed, it was never a prototype for anything else. When Solomon built the great temple in Jerusalem, the architectural emphases were quite different.

Mir space station

Mir (Russian for “peace”) was conceived in 1976 as the climax of the (then) Soviet program to achieve the long-duration presence of a man in space. Its first component was launched into orbit ten years later. The first modular station assembled in space, it is the pioneer work of extraterrestrial building; constructed in a virtually gravity-free environment, it is unique among architectural and engineering works. Earlier space stations had been integral units, completed before launching. Mir circled the earth for over fifteen years. As first proposed, it was 43 feet (13.1 meters) long and 13.6 feet (4.2 meters) in diameter; its mass was 46,200 pounds (20,900 kilograms). By 1985 the Russian Space Agency had decided that four to six additional modules, each with a mass of 46,000 pounds (20,800 kilograms), would be moored at docking ports on the station. By the time the final module was in place, the total mass was about 221,000 pounds (100,000 kilograms). Mir, humanity’s first landmark—if that is the correct word—in space, orbited the earth at an altitude of 225 miles (390 kilometers) and an inclination of 51.6 degrees.

The primary function of the station was as a location for scientific experiments, especially in the areas of astrophysics, biology, biotechnology, medicine, and space technology. At various times, Mir was “leased” as a laboratory. Cosmonauts, astronauts, and scientists of many nationalities—Russian, American, Afghan, British, Canadian, German, Japanese, and Syrian among them—conducted over 20,000 experimental programs on board. However, space-watcher David Harland observed that Mir was the first station

to be permanently manned, extending the time spent in space for periods between one month and six; “learning how the technology degrades, and how to repair it, and do so in space” showed its real mission as a technology demonstrator.

The Mir module, the core of the station, was launched on 20 February 1986. Most of it was occupied by the main habitable section—crews’ quarters, a galley, a “bathroom” with shower, hand basin, and toilet—and the operational section, forward of which were the primary docking module and air lock. The galley was furnished with a folding table with built-in food heaters and refuse storage. For privacy, each crew member had a separate cubicle containing a folding chair, sleeping bag, mirror, and porthole. To provide a familiar environment in microgravity, the living quarters had identifiable surfaces: the floor, above several storage compartments, was carpeted in dark green; the light green walls had handrails and devices for securing articles; and the white ceiling had fluorescent lights. The other part of the core module was the station’s control area, set up for flight control, as well as systems and medical monitoring. There were six docking ports on the core’s transfer compartment for secondary modules or the Soyuz and Progress-M transport vehicles: one on the long axis, four along the radius, and another aft, connected to the working module by a 6-foot-diameter (1.8-meter) pressurized tunnel. The engine and fuel tanks were in the assembly compartment.

Five more modules, added between 1987 and 1996, completed the space station. The first, located on the aft docking port, was the astrophysics module known as Kvant-1. Nineteen feet (5.8 meters) long and 14 feet (4.3 meters) in diameter, it contained a pressurized laboratory compartment and a store. Kvant-2, about twice as long as Kvant-1, was the scientific and air-lock module added in 1989 that allowed cosmonauts to work outside the station. It also included a life-support system and water supply. Kristall, a 39-foot-long (12-meter) technological module, was attached to the station in 1990; it carried two solar arrays as well as electrical energy supply, environmental control, motion control, and thermal control systems. In 1995 U.S. astronauts installed a special docking port that allowed the U.S. space shuttle to dock without obstructing the solar arrays. Also in 1995, the Spektr remote-sensing payload arrived at Mir with equipment for surface studies and atmospheric research and four more solar arrays. Mir was completed when the Priroda remote-sensing module arrived on 26 April 1996.

The station could not remain in orbit indefinitely, and two options for closure were available. Mir could be fitted with booster rockets and moved to a higher orbit or simply abandoned and allowed to crash into the ocean. Mir fell into an uninhabited part of the South Pacific late in March 2001. That course of action was chosen so that efforts could be refocused on the construction of the International Space Station (ISS). The decision fits in with the claim of NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) that the nine U.S. collaborations with Mir since 1994 formed Phase One of the joint construction and operation of the ISS.

The ISS is a joint venture of the United States, Russia, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and Brazil. The first components of the station, the Zarya and Unity modules, were put into Earth orbit in November and December 1998, respectively. Scheduled for completion in 2004 after a total of 44 launches deliver over 100 components, the ISS will have a mass of 1 million pounds (454,500 kilograms) and measure 356 by 290 by 143 feet (109 by 88 by 44 meters). It will orbit Earth at about the same altitude and inclination as its predecessor. A crew of up to seven will have pressurized living and working space about twice as big as the passenger cabin of a jumbo jet. Mir was there first.

Meteora, Greece

The almost flat valley of the Pineios River, north of the town of Kalambaka in Thessaly, is punctuated by spectacular formations of iron gray conglomerate rock, huge, sheer-sided columns abruptly projecting up to 2,000 feet (600 meters) above the plains. On the seemingly inaccessible pinnacles of many of these weathered outcrops there stand, as though growing out of the rock, the monasteries of Meteora. Were they architectural feats? We believe so. Although most conventual buildings by definition demonstrate some degree of preoccupation with solitude, those at Meteora are unique, built where it appears virtually impossible to build. Not only were there no materials in situ, the task of delivering the imported materials to the builders—indeed, of getting the builders themselves to the precarious sites—could hardly have been more difficult. The logistical problems were subordinated to the need for isolation.

Christian monasticism originated in Egypt and spread throughout the Byzantine Empire between the fourth and seventh centuries. For a hundred years after the accession of Emperor Leo III in a.d. 717, the Iconoclasts attacked the eastern monasteries, seizing their treasured relics, thus greatly diminishing their wealth and power. As the rabid movement waned, Christian ascetics, perhaps moved with fear of a recurrence or perhaps with an eye on the restless power of Islam, sought secure places in which to follow their religious exercises. Throughout the ninth century hermits settled in rock crevices and caves in the great brooding pillars of the Pineian valley, long known as a retreat by mystics of pre-Christian religions.

As their numbers increased, the Thebaid of Stagoi Monastery was created at Doupiani, and its community grew during the eleventh century. Meteora

became a sanctuary, especially after about 1300, when it provided asylum for secular as well as religious refugees under Ottoman rule. Around 1356 St. Athanassios Meteoritis founded Great Meteoron (from which the region derives its name), and about eighty years later the Serbian Orthodox prince John Uresis joined the community, endowing it with such wealth and privilege that it soon became the region’s dominant monastic house. The growth of other foundations—Varlaam, commenced in 1350 and rebuilt in 1518; Holy Trinity of around 1470; and Roussanou, established in 1288 and rebuilt sometime before 1545—led to a golden age of monastic life and produced an environment in which scholarship and Byzantine ecclesiastical art flourished. At its peak the whole community numbered thirteen coenobite monasteries and about twenty smaller foundations. The patriarch Jeremias I (ruled 1522–1545) raised several of them to the rank of imperial stavropegion.

The monks set out to create places of inaccessible isolation. In the completed buildings entry could be gained only by a series of vertical wooden ladders of dizzying length (65–130 feet, 20–40 meters), which could be drawn up at night or when intrusion was imminent, or by nets hauled up by windlasses housed in cantilevered towers. Great Meteoron, or the Monastery of the Transfiguration, largest and highest of the houses, stands on the Platylithos (Broad Rock) 1,780 feet (534 meters) above the valley. Varlaam was originally reached by using scaffolding dug into the rock, and its windlass and rope in the tower (built 1536) were used for materials and supplies until 1963. Roussanou is built on a site only just large enough for it, and its walls stand right at the edge of the precipice. Whatever the reason for such a defense against the world—whether to protect the souls and minds of the monks or the wealth of the monasteries—the construction of these buildings in the sky, some of which are large and complex, represents a formidable challenge to the resolve and skill of the builders. It has been well met.

The monasteries generally declined in the seventeenth century (although some had failed long before), and by about 1800 they were little more than a “decaying curiosity,” a unique sight for tourists. They surrendered their independence to the Bishop of Trikkala in 1899. At the beginning of the twenty-first century only five are still occupied: the monasteries of Great Meteoron, Ayia Triadha, Varlaam, and the convents of Agios Stefanos and Roussanou

Mesa Verde Cliff Palace - Colorado

Mesa Verde National Park is spread over more than 52,000 acres (21,000 hectares) of a well-wooded mesa between Cortez and Durango, Colorado, at a general elevation of 7,000 feet (2,100 meters). Within its boundaries are the ruins of almost 4,000 Amerindian settlements, some up to 1,300 years old. The largest and most remarkable is the so-called Cliff Palace, a multistory building like a modern apartment block built under overhanging cliffs. It accommodated probably 100–150 people in its 151 rooms and 23 kivas, and its size and complexity make it a preeminent feat of “architecture without architects.”

Who were these exceptional builders? They are generally known as the Anasazi (Navajo for “ancient ones”), and their civilization was centered around the region where the states of Arizona, New Mexico,

Colorado, and Utah now join. Some scholars identify the Anasazi as the ancestors of the Hopi and other indigenous Pueblo groups of the southwest United States, and modern Pueblo Indians prefer to call them “ancestral Puebloans.” The precise origins of the Cliff Palace dwellers are unknown: certainly there were permanent settlers in the region before a.d. 500, farming and using caves or adobe structures for shelter and digging covered storage pits. By about 700 villages were being built: those in caves consisted of half-buried pit houses, while those on open ground had straight or crescent-shaped row houses with rooms both above and below ground. For the next three centuries the same house types—though somewhat larger—persisted, and stone masonry began to replace earlier pole-and-mud construction. The pit houses are the predecessors of the kivas, underground chambers common in the next phase of building.

Known as the Classic Pueblo period (a.d. 1050–1300), this was the era of the Cliff Palace and other villages built in similar sheltered depressions, as well as large freestanding apartment-like structures along the walls of canyons or mesas. Most consisted of two to four stories, differing little in construction from the earlier masonry and adobe houses, and often stepped back so that lower roofs formed a sort of patio reached from the floor above. All were built in places difficult to reach, some accessible only via almost vertical cliff faces, hundreds of feet above the canyon floor. The population of the region became more concentrated, perhaps acting upon the conviction that there is safety in numbers.

The Cliff Palace clearly was located with defense rather than esthetic appeal primarily in mind. The only access to it was by hand- and footholds—large enough for only fingertips and toes—carved in the rock. Afraid of something or someone (there is now no indication of what or whom), the Anasazi built fortresses unique among indigenous Americans. Their main building material was sandstone, laid in a mortar made from mud reinforced with tiny stone chips; the masonry was covered with a thin coat of plaster. Deliberately small doorways, set a foot or two above the floor, were probably intended to keep out winter drafts; they could be covered with rectangular sandstone slabs about 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) thick.

The Cliff Palace was first excavated and stabilized by Jesse Walter Fewkes of the Smithsonian Institution, in 1909, more than twenty years after it was first seen by European Americans. Archeological work did not resume until about eighty years later, when evidence was discovered of a hierarchical society: a wall divides the Cliff Palace into two parts. It has also been suggested that the site was not continuously occupied except by a small caretaker population of perhaps 100 people. Then, its twenty-three large kivas would have accommodated larger numbers who gathered there only on special occasions, perhaps for the distribution of surplus food. The kiva, traditionally described as a ceremonial room, was a sunken, usually circular chamber entered through an opening from the “plaza” above. It had a ventilated hearth, and ledges and recesses surrounded the central space. The Anasazi may have used the Cliff Palace as living quarters during the winter lull in the agricultural year. The investigation of the site continues

Mesa Verde was abandoned quite suddenly, around a.d. 1300. The Anasazi left so much behind that it has been suggested that their departure was hasty.

But that is speculation, and other sources suggest that they depleted the resources of the region, leading, through a tragic path of famine and internal wars, to the demise of their culture. Others cite the migration of Navajos and Apaches from the north, and yet others a fifteen-year drought at the end of the thirteenth century. For whatever reason, the Anasazi departed, leaving behind them the amazing and mysterious ruins of an architecture that is one of North America’s greatest archeological treasures.

Menier chocolate mill, Nolsiel, France

The Menier chocolate mill at Noisiel, Marne-la-Valleé, was at the heart of a factory complex of industrial structures associated with Menier’s chocolate-manufacturing business. The multistory mill, built between 1872 and 1874, demonstrated an innovative design approach that frankly exposed its structure and materials, using the latter for decorative effect. It is widely regarded as the first building in continental Europe to have been constructed with an iron frame and non-load-bearing masonry walls and has been described as “one of the iconic buildings of the Industrial Revolution.”

In 1816 the pharmacist Jean-Antoine-Brutus Menier opened premises in Paris to sell his medicinal powders to chemists and hardware shops. Later he expanded his business to include chocolate-coated medicines and chocolate confectionery. Having outgrown his Paris base, in 1825 he transferred to Noisiel on the River Marne, where he purchased a mill to grind powders. Following his death in 1853, his son Emile-Justin took over the business, transferred its pharmaceutical arm to St. Denis and diversified into rubber production in a factory on the outskirts of Paris. The Noisiel plant was given over entirely to chocolate production.

Between 1860 and 1867 Emile Menier commissioned the architect Jules Saulnier (1817–1881) to redevelop the plant, constructing new buildings and improving the existing premises to better support the chocolate-making process. The factory would earn the nickname “the cathedral” because of its architecture. In 1869 Saulnier, working with the engineers Logre and Girard, prepared designs for replacing the timber-framed water mill that spanned the river, in order to house three new turbine wheels; he first chose stone as the principal material. Interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, construction did not commence until 1872. By then Saulnier had revised the design and the outcome has been described as his masterpiece. The structural frame of the six-story chocolate mill was of puddled iron, diagonally braced to achieve a distinctive effect across the upper three levels of the facade Saulnier likened the resulting pattern to the girders of a lattice bridge. The non-load-bearing, 7-inch (18-centimeter) yellow brick infill walls were decorated with diaper work and ceramic tile inlays with flower and cocoa-bean motifs, mainly in reds, dark yellow, and black. The frame was supported by a skeleton iron structure resting on the substantial stone piers that had carried the earlier timber-framed building, and floors were constructed of shallow brick arches between I beams, which were in turn carried by the main frame. The water-driven turbines were located between the piers. The interior was disposed to house the cocoa-bean milling process, and to free the third level of columns, its floor was suspended from the roof trusses. The spacing of columns and windows varied slightly, and deliberately, contributing to the artful composition of the facade.

Under Emile Menier’s entrepreneurial leadership the business continued to expand. In the 1880s it established a factory in London and acquired cocoa plantations in Nicaragua, as well as a sugar refinery and a merchant fleet. It even established a railroad company to move materials and products. More buildings were constructed at Noisiel, utilizing the most advanced constructional methods and materials. A self-contained village was founded in which most of the factory’s 2,000 employees lived in detached two-family houses or, if single, in hostels. The

complex was set in extensive landscaped grounds. At the turn of the century the Menier chocolate business was the world’s largest, and it reached its hey-day before World War I. Decline was probably inevitable.

Between 1971 and 1978 the British confectionery company Rowntree-Mackintosh progressively purchased the Menier company, including its Noisiel factory, where chocolate continued to be made until 1993. The multinational Nestlé, which has owned Rowntree-Mackintosh and its subsidiaries since 1988, has taken over the Menier factory as Nestlé-France’s headquarters, conserving the original buildings at a reported cost of Fr 800 million (U.S.$107 million). The chocolate mill has been made the focal building in the redevelopment by architects Robert and Reichen, and is used for a boardroom, reception rooms, and directors’ offices. The French government has registered it as a Monument Historique