Early in the Basketmaker period, two groups of Basketmaker people lived in the Mesa Verde region.

The Eastern Basketmaker people were probably the descendants of Archaic people who had lived in and near the Mesa Verde region for a very long time.

Archaeologists think the Western Basketmaker people might have been the descendants of Archaic people who had migrated from southern Arizona.

This map shows where the Eastern and Western Basketmaker people lived early in the Basketmaker period.

Later in the Basketmaker period, the two groups moved into the middle part of the Mesa Verde region. This map shows how they came together.