At the beginning stages of their settlement, they built and lived in pit houses clustered into small villages. As their technologies evolved, they learned to make pottery and acquired the bow and arrow, a more efficient weapon for hunting than the atlatl, a spear thrower. Being a perfect area for growth, their population multiplied. About A.D. 750 they began building houses above ground, with upright walls made of poles and mud. They built the houses one against another, in clusters and in long, curving rows, often with a pit house or two in front. From here on, these people became known as Ancestral Puebloans, the root being a Spanish word meaning “village dwellers.” There were two branches of the Ancestral Pueblo Tradition, Mesa Verde and
