![]() Some theorize that ancient indigenous populations carved it to depict Carthaginians consulting an oracle that would tell them when to sail home. Cotton Mather found the rock in 1690, describing it in his book, The Wonderful Works of God Commemorated, as being "filled with strange characters." Since then, there have been many speculations as to the origins of the carvings. Dighton Rock first entered recorded history in 1680 when local reverend John Danforth made a drawing of a portion of its carvings-that drawing can be seen in The Royal Society's online picture library. The inscription of various geometric patterns, lines and human shapes faced the sea. The 40-ton boulder (now in a small museum in the state park) sat half-submerged in the Taunton River right at Assonet Neck, where it widens to Mount Hope Bay and the ocean, until 1963. The area was designated a state historic park in 2000, and visitors are welcome to take rock rubbings of replica petroglyphs at the interpretive center.ĭighton Rock State Park Berkley, Massachussettsĭighton Rock is shrouded in mystery. Most of the petroglyphs, discovered in the 1800s, depict spirals, faces and birds, though there’s one distinctive carving of a whale by the park's interpretive center. No one knows exactly why the petroglyphs are there or what they mean, but locals believe they were carved thousands of years ago by the indigenous Tlingit, who have a strong presence on Wrangell Island. One of the petroglyphs at Petroglyph Beach.Ībout 40 petroglyphs are on boulders scattered across Petroglyph Beach in Wrangell, Alaska-the highest concentration in the state’s southeast. Petroglyph Beach State Historic Park Wrangell, Alaska ![]() There’s an exact replica of the boulder at the Maritime Museum of San Diego, as part of the San Salvador exhibit. The indigenous Kumeyaay people who lived in present-day San Diego County for thousands of years recorded the event by carving an image of the ship into the rock. The ship was the first recorded European vessel to survey the coast of southern California. ![]() In 1542, Spanish explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo sailed the San Salvador to today’s California, discovering what would become San Diego. Somewhere in a location undisclosed by the people who discovered it, east of San Diego, a boulder carries possibly the oldest graphic representation of a recorded event in U.S. ![]() These eight sites have ancient petroglyphs in locations that might surprise you.Ī close-up of the San Salvador pictographs. The Ancestors graciously reach out to us across centuries through these petroglyphs to remind us that they do matter and that they are still connected to this world, to this landscape, and to us, for eternity.”Īnd while we may naturally think of petroglyphs and pictographs being out west, in reality, they are found in more than half of our country's states and territories-meaning you don’t have to travel far at all to get a glimpse of native history. " But when you hike along the trail and stand in front of a boulder with petroglyphs, you realize that this used to be their world and it was just as alive to them as ours is to us. “We look at these images and symbols from people who traveled through the Rio Grande Valley hundreds and even thousands of years ago, yet they seem so distant that it is easy to think that they don't matter," says Susanna Villanueva, a park ranger at Petroglyph National Monument. Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque boasts more than 25,000 images-mostly humans, animals and tribal symbols-carved into volcanic rocks by Native Americans and Spanish settlers 400 to 700 years ago, and another obvious site, Canyonlands National Park in southeastern Utah, is famously known for life-size human figures and depictions of men fighting, painted between 900 and 2,000 years ago. ![]() Finding petroglyphs (rock carvings) and pictographs (rock paintings) in the United States has never really been that hard. ![]()
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