I’m standing on the ruins of an ancient civilization. In northeast Arizona. Artifacts found at more than 1000 sites in the surrounding area demonstrate that people lived here for more than 13,000 years. Archeologists call it a “persistent place,” a location where repeated human activity continues through time. But today no one lives here. It is a desolate grassland. The village stood next to the Puerco River that at the time served as a travel corridor to many people living all along the river. Surrounding the village would have been fields of corn, beans, and squash. The people scratched petroglyphs on the rocks,…