Saturday, April 1, 2017

Three Rivers Petroglyph Site

When you think petroglyphs, you generally think of some shadowy cave tucked away in a desert canyon with ancient paintings covering the walls. The reality for this location is that it's a short one mile hike along the ridges of a series of hills (or small mountains-- not sure on that classification) and the glyphs are open to the elements of the Chihuahan Desert and litter (ancient graffiti?) the faces of rocks along the trail. There are more than 21,000 glyphs at this site and were created by the Mogollon (best way to remember the pronunciation is 'muggle-yawn') people between 900 AD and 1400 AD. No one is really sure how these glyphs translate. My favorite glyph, that showed up frequently along our route, was the cross within a circle and surrounded by dots. The literature suggested that the dots could represent 'corn or a population count'... because those are interchangeable.