Death Valley 2022/23

[Beardilocks]

Your photos and report bring life to Death Valley. The last image: The theory of those red colored slashes/marks is, distance, direction, calendar, seasonal, counting, or other? Fascinating.

Those hunting blinds are fun to come across and imagine how difficult it was to hunt big game back then. Maybe the sheep were not as fearful of humans as they are now? Maybe the gold miners with guns scared them off more?

Next time out in DEVA I'll be much more observant.

That’s a really good question about the line patterns.  It’s one of the few elements you see almost everywhere, petroglyph or pictograph.  Some of the petroglyphs I’ve seen seem to be counting.  As in, you can see some marks are older/more patinaed than the later ones.  Often that is also represented by by a rectangular grid of dots or circles instead of lines.  It’s harder to say with pigment like this what’s older or not.  

I’ve read conjecture that some of these types of markings indicate direction and distance to water sources.  But I haven’t seen anything particularly achedemic on it.  I believe one of the places I saw mention of that type of system was in the less than reputable accounts of DV in “Loafing Along Death Valley Trails”.  Which doesn’t make it less feasible as an explanation.  Especially when you see so many parts of ancient life in one relatively small area.