CAVE DWELLINGS FEWKES. 619 



There can hardly be a doubt that the remote ancestor of the cliff 

 pueblo was an inhabitant of a natural cave, and that the construction 

 of an artificial cave and a pit dwelling was also early in time. As 

 man developed into a mason ^ he outgrew the narrow bounds of a 

 cavern and, erecting buildings in front of his artificial caves, rele- 

 gated the latter to storage or ceremonial purposes, just as in certain 

 places in Asia Minor caves are granaries and have houses in front of 

 them which are inhabited. 



Knowing as we do .that early man in Europe inhabited natural 

 caves, the question naturally arises why there is a total absence in 

 Europe of large villages like the great cliff houses of Arizona and 

 Colorado. This is partly due to the limited size of the caves, for 

 there are no European caverns suitable or ample enough to contain 

 large villages. The step from the cave dwelling to the construction 

 of stone buildings in the open was an early one and was probabl)'^ 

 brought about by overcrowding. After the population of the cave 

 had outgi'own its limits two remedies were possible for accommoda- 

 tion of the increase. Crowded out of caves by enlargement in num- 

 bers, man was forced either to build rooms in front of the caves he 

 had excavated or, cutting free from the cliffs, to construct an inde- 

 pendent house in the plain or on the mesa. 



It is not unlikely, also, that in some instances he first inhabited 

 pit dwellings or habitations underground. Such simple dwellings 

 as these were not unlike some ancient aboriginal habitations of Cali- 

 fornia or the earth lodges in the plains east of the plateau region. 

 If we regard the so-called cavate lodges and the pit dwellings as 

 primordial dwellings, much that is incomprehensible in cliff-dwelling 

 architecture can be readily explained. 



Although numerous examples of pit dwellings in the Southwest 

 may be mentioned, the Old Caves near Flagstaff, Ariz., are among the 

 best representatives. A visitor on approaching one of these habita- 

 tions first observes on top of an elevation broken down walls of one- 

 storied rooms forming a cluster, the gi'ound plan of which would not 

 be unlike a checker board.^ These walls, constructed of lava blocks, 

 gave to this cluster of rooms the appearance of a small one-storied 



the walls of cUffs and clifif houses, or cliff pueblos, houses or pueblos with walls built in 

 natural caves. There is of course no strict line of demarkation between these different 

 types and some settlements are composites of two or more kinds of dwellings. The pit 

 dwellings belong to a distinct type of southwestern ruins, represented in cliff dwellings 

 and pueblos by the substerranean sacred room or kiva. 



^ The training of primitive man into a mason was rapid wherever rocks about him 

 could be worked with rude implements. The excavations of caves led to stone buildings. 

 No better illustration of the dependence of architecture on the character of rock can be 

 found than by a comparison of the prehistoric monuments of Cuba and Yucatan. Easily 

 worked rocks of the latter country made possible the magnificent temples that have 

 been the wonder of archaeologists. 



2 Similar walls forming an inclosure into which open the doorways of cave dwellings 

 are figured in a cut of Madeba, by Libbey and Hoskins, the Jordan Valley and Petra, 

 vol. 1. 



