Some I wrote more than a year ago:

The depth of the petroglyphs lets them endure over years

Petroglyphs (literally rock carvings) remind those who see them that there were people in this part of the desert Southwest long before the Europeans, Russians, and Scandinavians set eyes on the Pacific and Atlantic shores. Even a novice like me can recognize some of the stories told through these images. Sun and moons mark time. Lizards and Great Horned Sheep repeatedly appear, showing how they populated the mountains around the Las Vegas Valley. Other images might be religious or community calendars, while still others are mysteries to the casual observer.

This one is low to the ground and might represent a person? Maybe a child?

This one is a mystery to me

My favorite from this day: a mama big horned sheep and two lambs.

They do tell stories, though. Story is and always has been an essential hallmark of humanity. I may not understand the particulars of these stories, but I do appreciate that people were here. Families lived and worked and ate and dreamed here then the same way they do now. Children ran and played. Women chatted about the antics of the children and the ways the men showed off. Perhaps the women shared recipes for treating sunburns or illnesses or injuries. Did the men look to the east to test the weather for the day? Did they exchange hunting stories and compare conquests? I see these traces of human stories and my imagination fills in the empty places. I see women huddled around cooking fires while children chase lambs up and down the rugged hills. Men stand away from the women and children, planning the next hunt or the next trip over the mountain to trade with their cousin Paiutes. One nods to another, indicating a need to repair one of the community lodges. Perhaps one makes a joke and they all laugh. The artist among them, inspired by the children chasing the lambs, carves an image of a mother sheep with her kids running from the children, not in fear, but in playfulness.

I can’t say for sure what their lives were like, but I do know that they were forever changed with the Westward trek of European (and eventually American) seekers of silver and gold. There is so much to be learned from the way in which the West was settled. Misunderstanding of culture and language is no excuse for uprooting and frankly stealing from entire populations. The human propensity to enslave what it conquers and to dehumanize those it does not understand is as old as the petroglyphs on these hills. There truly is nothing new under the sun.