VOICE ONE:

Bandelier National Monument is near the city of Los Alamos and not far from Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico. It is on the Pajarito Plateau. This was formed by two explosions of the Jemez volcano more than one million years ago.

Ash up to three hundred meters thick covered more than six hundred square kilometers around the volcano. Slowly the area became what visitors see today -- a dry land of high flat mesa tops and deep canyons formed through thousands of years by flowing rivers.

People moved into the American Southwest more than ten thousand years ago as the last ice age was ending. These early people hunted large animals for food. They did not build permanent structures to live in because they followed the movement of the animals.

Archeologists have found evidence of these early people in the Bandelier area. The hunters left spear points shaped out of stone that they used as weapons.

VOICE TWO:

The climate of the Southwest became drier and warmer. By seven thousand years ago, many large animals no longer existed. Instead, people hunted smaller animals and gathered wild plants for food.

About two thousand five hundred years ago the first houses appeared on the flat tops of mesas in what is now northern New Mexico. They were pit houses, dug partly underground.

Soon after that more permanent houses were built above ground. These early homes were made of a mixture of wet dirt, wood and rocks. Small family groups lived in these homes. They grew crops of corn, beans and squash.