![]() ![]() ![]() The symbols bespeckle a swath of more than 2,000 square miles along the Utah, Arizona and Nevada borders, referred to as the Arizona Strip. Once you know what to look for, they’re hard to miss. It’s roughly the size of a traffic sign, etched into the solid rock of a clifftop within a few feet of the edge. Occasionally, there will be more than one dot or more than one circle, but there is no mistaking the glyph. Sometimes the dot is inside the circle, sometimes outside the circle. The line usually extends a distance beyond the edge of the circle, sometimes dropping off the edge of the rock. ![]() The symbol consists of circle cut in half by a single straight line. The symbols are usually 48 inches long by 24 inches wide, with grooves nearly an inch deep. While other petroglyphs and pictographs are usually sequestered under a vertical overhang where they’ll be protected from the weather, these symbols typically lie along cliff edges, carved directly into the horizontal rock surface. These petroglyphs, or “water glyphs,” as they’re commonly called, are unique in both size and location. The treasure at the end of the trail, however, isn’t gold. They discovered what appears to be a directional system of petroglyphs in Utah, Arizona, and Nevada. A small group of amateur archaeologists from Fredonia, Arizona recently lived a version of that dream. It’s one of those whims that easily seizes the imagination. In light of that fact, I’ve always believed that the figures and pictures painstakingly chipped into rock were either highly functional or highly ceremonial certainly more than the idle graffiti of bored, shiftless teenagers.Īs a kid I dreamed of following cryptic symbols through the desert and discovering a forgotten trove of Spanish or Aztec treasure. The Southwest’s ancient inhabitants worked hard to scrape their living out of the barren soil. Countless people sweated, bled, and died on these lands, and many of them left their marks. Carvings litter the desert like windblown newspaper clippings. The deserts of the American Southwest abound with ancient literature. ![]()
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