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Exploring The Meaning Of Rock Art

Renee Bright/KUER

Nature writer Craig Childs says that the placement of rock art in the American Southwest isn’t random.

It matters where it is in a canyon, where the canyon rests on the plateau and where the rivers are. To find rock art, Childs writes, “Walk around clapping and when you hear a good echo, go look.”

This leads Childs to believe that the rock art of Indigenous peoples are more than drawings -- they’re ancient communication. Pictographs and petroglyphs turn the Colorado Plateau into “a book that can be read. […] They are a window into ancient dreaming.”

Craig Childs’s new book is Tracing Time: Seasons of Rock Art on the Colorado Plateau [Amazon|Bookshop]. @CraigChilds_

Air date: Friday 5/20/22 and Saturday 5/21/22 at 12 p.m. MT

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