No one today knows what the pictographs represent. But archeologists working with the descendants of the ancestral Pueblo people say that every detail of each picture, including the color and the placement on the wall, has a precise significance that would have had clear meaning to the tribe itself, as well as to others who would have come across the cave in their travels.
Here are a few details from the wall – from my quite inadequate pocket camera. But they’ll give you an idea:
This group dominates the wall. As with this one, most of the faces on the wall have three, four or five “sticks” above their heads. Do they signify position in a hierarchy? Something else? We don’t know.
This is the boldest of the pictographs.
But this one is somehow the most mysterious, and keeps drawing your eye back to it.
Another version of it appears just below the more prominent pair here. (Note that one of the pair has seven “sticks” above his head – more than I saw anywhere else on the wall.)
Another threesome. Again, the coloring of the figures is significant, but we don’t know what it would have meant.
Parts of the wall are just a mass of faint images.
There are a few animals, but not very many.
Some of the figures appear to be dancing along the floor of the cave.
Faces from the Past
By Michael Mountain,
The Pictographs
No one today knows what the pictographs represent. But archeologists working with the descendants of the ancestral Pueblo people say that every detail of each picture, including the color and the placement on the wall, has a precise significance that would have had clear meaning to the tribe itself, as well as to others who would have come across the cave in their travels.
Here are a few details from the wall – from my quite inadequate pocket camera. But they’ll give you an idea:
This group dominates the wall. As with this one, most of the faces on the wall have three, four or five “sticks” above their heads. Do they signify position in a hierarchy? Something else? We don’t know.
This is the boldest of the pictographs.
But this one is somehow the most mysterious, and keeps drawing your eye back to it.
Another version of it appears just below the more prominent pair here. (Note that one of the pair has seven “sticks” above his head – more than I saw anywhere else on the wall.)
Another threesome. Again, the coloring of the figures is significant, but we don’t know what it would have meant.
Parts of the wall are just a mass of faint images.
There are a few animals, but not very many.
Some of the figures appear to be dancing along the floor of the cave.
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