It's about the year 700 AD. The world is a very active place, with people beginning exploration across vast oceans. The Vikings are raiding European coastlines and the Mediterranean, while the Chinese Tang Dynasty is at its peak. The world was at war, as cultures fought to conquer new lands and spread out. Meanwhile, someplace in what is now Arizona, the Sinagua people are living a somewhat peaceful life of farming and developing trade routes in what is now the Verde Valley. They built astonishing cliff homes in what is now called the Montezuma Castle and they built sprawling complexes…

If you were to see this ancient structure when it was first constructed, you might have considered it a "castle." It towers over the valley below from its cliffside position 90 feet from the base of the limestone cliff. But the name Montezuma wasn't what it was called. In fact, it wasn't until the 1800s that anyone called it Montezuma Castle, after Emperor Moctezuma II of the Aztec Empire.  Named by the Europeans because of their fascination of the Aztecs, the name Montezuma couldn't have been further from anything that the Sinagua people would have named it when they built…