Evening star., 1938-08-20
OF STARS,
MEN AND ATOMS
Notebook of Science Progress
in Field, Laboratory
and Study.
By THOMAS R. HENRY.


Carved and painted on the smooth
faces of cliffs and bolders over most Of
the United States, but particularly in the
Great Basin and the Southwest, are
crude pictures and animals and geo.
metric designs which are unquestionably
of Indian origin and of considerable
antiquity.
The Bureau of American Ethnology
OF the Smithsonian Institution receives
many inquiries concerning the meaning
of these, but seldom Is able to give any
valid answer. Many theories are ad-
/vanced to explain particular 'petro-
glyphs." Many, totally unfamiliar with
Indian ways of life, believe that they are
cryptograms containing directions for
finding buried treasure. These often are
badly disappointed when told that the
value whatsoever to treasure"
Some believe that these petroglyphs
constitute lost written language in
which the lore of the ancients was re-
corded and that eventually somebody
may find "key" to this language. This
is just as far fetched as the first ex-
PLANTATION. No North American tribe
came any nearer to writing than the
drawing Of crude, realistic pictures of
specific events "a practice which
reached its highest development among
the plains Indians.
Still others believe that they can see
In the pictures the forms of European
letters and attribute them either to pre-
Columbian white men, such as the
Northmen, or to ancient invaders from
the ''lost Atlantis.% Such assumptions
are purely gratuitous. Actually, Smith
sonian ethnologists say, the subject of
Indian rock writing" has not been suffi-
ciently studied and only few generali-
cations can be made about it. One of
the chief studies has been made by DR..
Julian H. Steward of the Smithsonian
staff. A good many of the petroglyphs,
he believes, represent just idle scrib-
bling, others are representations of re-
ligious objects, still others may have
been intended to describe events, and
some may have been drawn to give di-
rectionS.
In favor of the "iAe scribbling" ex-
planation, DR.. Steward says, is the fact
that since the coming of the white man
Indians have made hundreds of petro-
glyphs of men, horses, railroad trains,
houses, boats and other objects of civili-
zation. He says: I'm view Of the great
trouble which white men frequently
take to deface rocks and trees with
names and initials, especially where
other persons have done SO before them,
it would be foolish to suppose that the
motives of the prehistoric Indians were
not sometimes equally trivial. 1t is
safe guess that large number of petro-
glyphs were produced by persons anus
ing themselves during dull hours.
Many pre-Columbian petroglyphs,
however must have been made for some
definite and important reason, else the
designs in each area would not conform
in such large degree to prevailing style
and would not have been worth the i'm
mense labor sometimes required to make
them. The testimony of modern Indians
concerning them is extraordinarily dis
appointing. They know of them as land
marks and sometimes believe that they
have had supernatural origin. But
even where there is good evidence that
the glyphs were made by the tribes now
inhabiting the area, the practice seems
to have been abandoned at the advent
of the white men and most knowledge
concerning 1t promptly lost. The ex-
planation OF this is undoubtedly that
they were generally of interest only to
the persons who made them and the
knowledge died with these persons"
Many were made for religious purposes,
DR.. Steward holds. The primitive In
dians believed in many supernatural
forces whose favor must be won. A god
may be more successfully supplicated
II his likeness Is present. People the
world over make wooden and clay images
OF their gods. Many Of the rock pictures
presumably were of this nature
Some of the rock figures are undoubt-
edly very old, DR.. Steward says. Now
and then it is claimed that some one of
them represent a now extinct species of
bird or animal. Sometimes it is even
declared that pictures of dinosaurs are
found-an utter impossibility because
the last of the monsters disappeared
almost hundred million years before
the first men appeared on earth. That
some of them might be intended to rep
resent the mammoth, or an extinct va
riety of bison or camel, is by no means
impossible, although quite improbable.
Thus far none of these claims has been
satisfactorily substantiated.
1t is easy enough with little imagina-
ton, DR.. Steward says, to detect Nrms
of European letters in petroglyphs. It
would be remarkable if there were not
such condolences. Isolated ones, of
course, have no significance and nothing
else of this sort has been found. Some
Of the rock paintings are clearly fraud-
ulent, designed to draw the attention of
the public to some particular place. On
the whole, however, he believes that the
subject is worthy of comprehensive
study and urges persons running across
such rock drawings to photograph them,
if possible What is without meaning
now may fit into comprehensive pat
tern later.