This post is made possibly by a discovery made by MK Davis. After visiting Chaco Canyon and photographing it extensively, he noted something odd about the "human" drawings on the petroglyphs. there was something familiar about these shapes and it wasn't human.
The photo on the left shows a pine bark beetle and the petroglyph on the right shows what is generally accepted as an anthropomorph or "god" as often accepted in Native petroglyphs such as this one at Newspaper Rock in Utah - below -
Many western tribes went missing over time and it was questionable how this happened. Tribes such as the Sinagua in Northern Arizona to Anasazi in Colorado/New Mexico went missing and left behind empty settlements sometimes taken over by other upcoming tribes much later and often just left to the tides of time to be worn down bit by bit.
The question is, did these tribes see their civilization go by the wayside over generations from the ravages of horrendous pine beetles deforesting their areas? Could a simple act of dead pines and lightning strikes cause immediate evacuation or did they have enough time to begin their civilization elsewhere, moving out over time?
I greatly appreciate researchers in the field like MK Davis who go out and photograph, document, and keep their minds open about symbols we are told the meaning of by "experts" versus commonsense observers with vast swaths of knowledge.
It seems quite obvious that anyone drawing these insects would be drawing what they see on the trees and ground. That perspective for drawing the subject would be made from above. Suddenly a human figure that appears to have two legs and two arms and a very odd set of antennae and is standing upright, is really on four legs on the side of a tree and looking normal for its kind.
This is a subject I'd like to delve into more.
Read here for more on pine beetle pandemics and their effects.
