{"id":20991,"date":"2026-05-06T10:21:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T17:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/?p=20991"},"modified":"2026-05-04T13:05:48","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T20:05:48","slug":"why-petroglyphs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/?p=20991","title":{"rendered":"Why Petroglyphs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The American Southwest is covered with petroglyph sites. Some of them are huge with thousands of images.. Some of them are just a few petroglyphs. What they all have in common is nobody is sure why they were made. I think they were part of a coming of age ritual. Like a modern Bar Mitzvah, First Communion or a Mormon mission. It gave the young something to accomplish and the adults a reason to praise them. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Think of it as an ancient Eagle Project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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It is a potential solution to the question: Why did the ancient ones make petroglyphs. If you have a better idea let me know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had this idea when we visited Petroglyph National Monument outside Albuquerque yesterday. These are carved on volcanic rock like at Deer Valley Petroglyph Center in North Phoenix. The more artistic ones at Newspaper Rock or Canyon De Chelly are carved into easier to work sandstone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Petroglyph NM is a “B” list place to visit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The American Southwest is covered with petroglyph sites. Some of them are huge with thousands of images.. Some of them are just a few petroglyphs. What they all have in common is nobody is sure why they were made. I think they were part of a coming of age ritual. Like a modern Bar Mitzvah, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20992,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[24,452,5],"tags":[310,299,433],"class_list":["post-20991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mt-whitney","category-hohokam","category-simon-says","tag-business-success","tag-new-mexico","tag-petroglyphs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/simonburrow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/IMG_5817.jpeg?fit=2347%2C1701&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p99jGb-5sz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20991"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20995,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20991\/revisions\/20995"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}