The Grand Canyon is a spectacular raft to behold in and of itself , but did you know the surrounding national park is also home to a wealthiness of prehistoric careen art ? Do n’t be disappointed if you did n’t – the exact whereabouts of the vast majority of it remains a intimately guarded enigma .
Take Shamans ’ Gallery , a land site that most people would never have heard of were it not for word - of - mouth and later , the Internet . First tape in 1987 andnamedby American archaeologist Polly Schaafsma , it feature a large panel of tilt artwork paintings – call up pictographs – depict anthropomorphic characters , cervid , doll , and other abstract features .
Its panache has been described as Grand Canyon or Esplanade Polychrome , the latter after the distinctively red and tanbed of sandstonethat forms the canon and though it can be unmanageable to precisely date rock art , it ’s estimated to date back to theArchaic period , which lasted from around 8500 BCE to about 2000 - 1000 BCE .
Shamans ’ Gallery is also nowhere to be find on the National Park Service ( NPS ) website .
The only way we know about it is through Schaafsma ’s description and photographs of the verandah taken by those who ’ve managed to regain the site . In the latter of those cases , it ’s become something of an unofficial formula to not share the exact location , out of respect for preserving and protecting the art .
Officials choosing to keep the location of thus far well - preservedancient rock ‘n’ roll artso secret is n’t really a surprising choice reach thebehaviorthat some member of the worldwide public chitchat national parks display towards their environs .
On an sequence of the podcastEverybody ’s National Parks , NPS park ranger and archaeologist Russell Cash , who works at Zion National Park , describes how out of the over 150 panels of pictographs and petroglyphs in that region , the “ overwhelming majority ” are not approachable to and are kept secret from the populace in ordering to protect the art .
The one land site that is approachable , Cash describes as “ the lamentable affair that we have here in the ballpark ” because “ there is more graffiti and vandalism on that stone than any other place in the common . ”
Back in Grand Canyon National Park and the nearby Grand Canyon - Parashant National Monument , there are a couple of localisation where the populace is allowed to feed their eyes on early pictographs andpetroglyphs – namely on the Bright Angel Trail and at Nampaweap – but visitant are urge on to keep their space due to similar issues ofvandalism .
“ Please do n’t touch on petroglyph . When people touch petroglyphs , they leave a residual of body petroleum on the Earth’s surface of the rock . Over time , the oil get images to disappearance and history is lost , ” read theNPS . “ think of petroglyph by photographing or sketch them , not by making rubbings or tracing . ”
