Petroglyphs, Panamint Range. Death Valley National Park, California. March 29, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Petroglyphs of bighorn sheep in the Panamint Range of Death Valley National Park.
If you keep your eyes open, think about your surroundings, and know where to look, eventually you will come across the signs of much earlier residents of Death Valley. From my basic knowledge, I understand that there is evidence that a series of native American cultures resided in and around the Valley for at least the past 11,000 years, a period over which the climate changed from one that was originally much wetter to the hotter, drier climate that we know today. Because many of these people apparently had to migrate locally to find food sources at different times of the year it seems that evidence of their presence can be found in a wide variety of locations.
I recall the first time I found an artifact of one of these cultures. It was on my first visit to Death Valley back in the 1990s. At one point I wandered away from a place where I was camped and walked out across a section of a very large gravel wash, where I found a comfortable rock to sit on and enjoy the view. As I sat there I happened to look down and notice an unusual rock. I picked it up and realized that someone had formed it into a shape that could be used for carving or cutting, and I later read that it was a sort of knife. As I held it, surprised by finding any human signs in such a place, I began to wonder about the life of the person who made it and used it – a life I could barely imagine. A few minutes later I returned the object to where I had found it and walked back to camp.
For me, an encounter with rock art such as these petroglyphs provokes a lot of deep thoughts about time and culture and the lives of people who seem about as far removed from my experience as I can imagine. I try to imagine myself in their lives, but know that I fail.
Of course, I won’t say more about where such things are located than what is on this page. If you know where this example is located, let’s keep it a secret, OK?
G Dan Mitchell Photography | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Email
Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
Thanks for dropping by, Ben. I did a bit of reading about this as I worked up this photo. I was reminded that there have been several successive native cultures in the Death Valley area and, according to one source, traces of the earliest go to 9000 BC – which, of course, suggests that someone was there even earlier.
As to boggling the mind, I can only agree with you!
Dan
Thanks for posting this Dan, I love this stuff. You are right on the time frame with most native Americans gone from the region around 10,000 years ago. This also includes all of the south west which at their height averaged around 40,000 people. It boggles my mine when driving through the area that there were so many people in a radically different climate. Thanks for sharing…