Petroglyph Park

[LovelyLadyLux]

Coming back from the market I stopped at Petroglyph park. Not a large park at all by our Provincial standards but none the less the Province has turned this area of ancient (or ALIEN as some believe) rock carvings into a protected area.





After a short uphill walk into the park you come to a central area where castings of the petroglyphs have been made and you are allowed to make etching of them, touch them etc.

These are the castings of the real petroglyphs:







They're not elaborate and quite simplistic but give they're also centuries if not thousands of years old and made with primitive tools they are early mans first artistic attempts.

There is a bit of a cult (for lack of another word) that these petroglyphs were made by space aliens but ?? I guess the case could be made that interstellar space travelers with all sorts of cyber high tech equipment landed and then took rock chisels to scratch out the outlines of creatures they saw.

Was a bit taken aback and the disrepair the park was in. I walked up to the real petroglyphs and they were essentially covered over with moss and pine needles about 1" thick. Seems that nobody has come to clean and clear them off for viewing which has prompted somebody or somebodies to climb the fence and brush back some of the debris. Wasn't about to do that so had to content me with photos of the castings.

Space alien? OR Primitive man?

[Horus]

Those petroglyphs remind me of something I have seen before maybe they remind me in some way of similar looking Norse designs.
I'm with you on the alien thing, why on earth (or space) would any advanced civilisation visit us and then just carve a few rocks in some remote area instead of erecting some sophisticated monolith in an indestructable material for all to see?

[Mad Dilys]

They remind me of early South American art

[LovelyLadyLux]

Some of these petroglyphs are caved in sandstone while others are carved into rock hard rock. Hard enough that you definitely need something really strong to carve into them and the lines on these are flowing - not just straight lines which a newbie IMO would carve. Lots of these lines have curves which are harder to make particularly in a rock hard canvas so to speak. That leads me to think whomever carved these has some practice at it and the tools must have had a level of sophistication so as to make the intricate patterns (not terribly intricate and wide unlike some carvings that have very fine lines).

They're interesting too in that most of the First Nations here moved seasonally from area to area. Usually from open beaches to river banks yet these particular petroglyphs are found UP a rocky hill high high up from the water. Definitely NOT a campsite as it would not easily access the saltwater which is where most First Nations settlements were as that is where most of the food was.