A 2,000-Year-Old Image No One Can Explain

You're looking at something that has outlasted the people who painted it. I'm on my way to find a very unusual Barrier Canyon style pictograph panel that's upwards of 2,000 years old. There are some very unusual elements involved, including one mystery in particular that archaeologists could probably solve but haven't, and I don't know if they ever will. So it's somewhere on this rock face. I don't know Exactly where. But let's look around. I'm sure we'll spot it pretty soon. Oh, right there. Well there's some petroglyphs. What I'm trying to find is a pictograph. How fascinating. This human-like figure. There's something right away that I notice. I guess technically it's anthropomorph. We don't know if it's supposed to represent a human, but its location I find very curious. Let's take this whole panel in from a distance. Oh wow. Whoa. Right here. Do you see that? Do you notice the surface of the rock itself? What's unique about this panel? You could see that at some point the rock collapsed here on the left and they're using this crack here and the contrasting of colors to suggest something. I keep wanting to say to tell a story. If that's what these images are trying to do and here I'm immediately reminded of the indigenous people's stories when they talk about where their ancestors came from. There's so many stories of them emerging from the underworld and so when I see this mountain sheep this animal appearing to come from this crack from the depths I immediately think of an origin story and I'm noticing now They're all facing right. They all seem to be going towards that figure we saw in the beginning. So is this a procession panel? Are they all going to this figure right here? And again they're including the surface of the rock to suggest something, to tell a story I think. Are they passing into the next world? Is this bubbly, cracked rock surface an abstract representation of another place? I could stare at this panel all day, but I came here for another panel, so let's leave this one behind. I'm not sure exactly where it's at. I thought we would have already come across it by now. Alright, so I've searched all along this cliff face here, and I didn't find it, and I'm starting to think I might be in the wrong place. So I'm hoping that it's on the canyon wall across this wash. I thought this was going to be an easy find and here I am an hour and a half into it and I still haven't found it but I'm pretty sure, at least I hope, it's along this cliff band here. So I'm going to start on the left side of it and work my way to the right of it. I'm running out of daylight but let's hope it's up here. First let me say that this is Barrier Canyon style pictograph. It's thought to be 2000 years old. The most obvious feature to me is this figure with its mouth wide open. And inside that figure's mouth is one of the more unique features about this panel. It's where the mystery lies. Inside this figure's mouth is a snake. So there's something about this snake that makes it very unique. And it's not just the snake, it's just above the snake in the eyes. And it's on this snake to the left. It's this blue-green color, and that's the mystery that experts haven't yet solved. It's not that they don't know how to, it's that no one has ever attempted it. What I mean by that is no one has sampled this mineral, no one knows what it's made out of. It's likely a copper-based mineral like azurite or malachite or some other derivative, but since it's never been tested, we don't exactly know. But maybe what it's composed of isn't the interesting part, what's more interesting is how rare the blue-green color is in Barrier Canyon style pictographs. The blue-green color is rarely seen. You'll see red, you'll see black, you'll see white, but this blue-green color is rare. The other rare thing about this panel, because there are several, is this hand. You often see these figures limbless, but this one, this seems intentional. And the intention behind showing the arm is that it has to hold something up. And that action leads to something even more rare about this panel. In the 134 pictograph panels surveyed in this canyon, there's rarely any birds. And here it appears there's a bird-like figure being held out. So I asked the question, why do these figures usually have their arms and legs? Tucked behind, what I'm guessing, is a turkey feather robe. And what's the significance to this bird? So think about all the rare elements. You have a snake in this figure's mouth, which is very very very rare. And it's made with a very rare pigment. And then you have figures that are usually limbless, revealing one of its arms to hold up what is a very rare bird figure. So think about the creator of this panel. What compelled them to essentially pull out all the stops to incorporate all of these rare elements for some greater purpose? There's some other clues here. This at the top here looks like a rain cloud. I wonder if it's for the rain. Were they calling on the rain? We know how important rain was to these people. Was this some sort of ritual to ask the rain clouds to come? And the last element that I wanted to point out is this handprint. It's likely that the creator of this panel used their hand, used their fingers to paint all of this. So there's so much about this panel that's unknown, but it seems very feasible that we could say that the creator of this panel left their handprint. This is likely their handprint. And here these figures stand. Likely for the past 2,000 years watching over this canyon. And I can't help but wonder, what does it all mean? No, I don't have the answers to what these images mean, of course, but just being here and taking them in, I feel really lucky. I hope that they continue to look out over this canyon for thousands of years.