MESA ROCK DRAWINGS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 291, 8 December 1934, Page 6 (Supplement)

MESA ROCK DRAWINGS.

PBTEOGLTPHS OF ARIZONA. "ORIGIN OF LIFE CAVE." Tho art of prehistoric Americans; chiselled on the cliff-sides of the mesa in the Petrified Forest National Monument in Arizona, has recently been made accessible to touriste. P.W.A. workers have cut trails through a rough anddifficult terrain whose cliffs ar-d crevices have hitherto been attempted only by expert hikers and mountain climbers. Thousands of years before Columbus discovered America the Indians who inhabited this portion of the continent chipped their drawings and symbols with sharp stone instruments on the canyon rocks around their homee. Their prehistoric creations —known as petro<rlyphs—are helping scientists to reconstruct the life of ancient America.

The new trails, by means of steps cut out of stone, descend the cliff through a natural.crevice. At the bottom one of the paths winds huge overhanging rocks and a mass of boulders, among which stands "Newspaper Rock," n mammoth; boulder about thirty feet high, and covered on all sides with petrosflyphs of human figures, animals and symbols which evidently designate clans. r Another path crosses numerous waterways over fitone culverts and leads to the "Origin of Life Cave." .