Extending along 17 miles of volcanic basalt escarpment in central New Mexico are some 24,000 petroglyphs. Most date back to 1300–1600, a time when the Ancestral Puebloans, the ancestors of today’s Pueblo peoples, were building adobe villages along the Rio Grande River. The petroglyphs depict stylized human figures, animals, stars, spirals, geometric shapes, and a bewildering number of abstract figures. Although not always decipherable, undoubtedly reflect the aspects of Ancestral Puebloan social, religious, and cultural life and heritage. The images and the land that contains them are deemed to have a…
