People have been drawing in America for a long, long time.
What we have here is a section of Newspaper Rock near Canyonlands National Park in Utah, south of Moab. Although web sources about this site repeat that accurate dating and interpretation and are not possible, it's old, very interesting and one of the largest collections of petroglyphs.
The word petroglyph comes from the Greek (petros = "stone" + glyphein = "to carve") via French (pétroglyphe) and describes a drawing made by chipping or engraving stone.
The Drawing America blog banner is made from a section of Newspaper Rock. It's a way of setting the depth of our drawing exploration and rooting ourselves in American soil, or rock in this case!
That being said, if you've ever read Jung or studied archetypes or symbols, you'll know that the more deeply we dig, the more likely we are to discover that an ancient symbol in Utah might be a lot like an ancient symbol in the Australian outback. See photographs in the wiki article on petroglyphs.
Takatoka makes some good remarks about interpreting symbols out of cultural, out of time, in Symbols of Indigenous People.
surfsupusa shot some of his Newspaper Rock video in such a way that we can actually see how the glyphs are carved —
As the Drawing America Blog evolves, we'll explore more petroglyphs, pictographs, Native and early American drawings.
What do you see in these symbols? Have you visited Newspaper Rock? Why do you think looking at ancient drawings might be helpful for us today?
