Wandering Lizard

Jamestown, St. Augustine, and Santa Fe are justly proud of the historic importance and very considerable longevity of their communities, but they are not, as is sometimes claimed, the oldest towns in the United States. Some of the sites listed here date back to the time when Islam was first invading the Iberian Peninsula. As such they predate the existence of the Spanish nation state and were constructed centuries before Cabeza de Vaca, Coronado, and Kino entered the American Southwest.

Until recently the ancients who lived in many of these communities were generally called "Anasazi." One still hears the term, but increasingly it is being replaced by "Ancient Puebloans." Most of these sites have been unoccupied for centuries and they are often classified as having been abandoned. The change from Anasazi to Ancient Puebloans is related to the issue of "abandonment." The Puebloan peoples of the modern Southwest argue that they are the direct descendants of the people who built and lived in these communities and that they were never abandoned. They understandably feel that they are an important part of their cultural heritage and are increasingly insistent that the sites be regarded as culturally sensitive. In a community such as Acoma it is relatively easy to see continuous occupation that antidates all Hispanic and Anglo-European settlements in the United States. In most of these communities, however, the "proof" that they were not abandoned resides in oral history rather than legal documents.