Scribbling on the walls

You may recall that last month I spent a week or so trundling around Utah’s national parks, and if you followed along over at dalelyles.com you may recall that the actual first park we stopped in was the Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada, on our way from Vegas to Utah.

It is Nevada’s oldest and largest state park, and of its many features one became a fascination of mine the whole trip: Petroglyphs.

Petroglyphs — and their cousins the pictographs — are a mystery. We know which tribal groups did them and where — but not who within the group. We know how they were made — but mostly do not have any examples of tools. Above all, we have no idea why they were made.

We know they are not just graffiti: To incise these drawings and patterns into the stone took a lot of time. Not only did you have to chip through the oxidized layer of rock called “desert varnish,” you then had to grind down your incised lines so that those areas were smooth. (Pictographs are painted onto rocks, as in the famous cave drawings.)

Also, petroglyphs tend to be in remote settings, often high on a cliff where you would not normally expect a preliterate people to spend a lot of time. We know, for example, that these were not camping spots or oases or feeding spots for game.

The big question of Why? has not been answered. The people who made them, made them so long ago that nothing of their lore has survived. We can only guess. (The explanation I’ve seen that makes the most sense to me is that they are ritualistic tools to help shamans get into the Other Space, i.e., trip toys.)

But as Lichtenbergians, we don’t have to have a knowable reason. We know why the people who made them, made them: They’re human. However and whenever that switch got flipped in our brains, humans have Made The Thing That Is Not ever since, and my hypothesis is that the justification for whatever that Thing was, came from the Thing; the Thing didn’t come from the justification.

In other words, whatever ritual or lore was attached to these marvelous shapes and patterns originally sprang from the shapes. I’m sure that it didn’t take long for the process to be reversed, for the art to become utilitarian, but I’m equally sure that the art came first.

Our lesson? Sometimes you just have to scribble on the walls — just make the shapes — Make The Thing That Is Not — and figure out why after you’ve made it real.