Amazing prehistoric rock art in Secret canyon

Hello everybody, Ben Woodruff here with the John Hutchings Museum of Natural History. This video we're going to go and we're going to see a place in southeastern Utah where there are some amazing rock art panels. Now rock art comes in two varieties. There's petroglyphs which are carved or pecked into the rock and there are pictographs which are painted onto the rock. Pictographs are more rare and they don't last as long because they're made of organics instead Normally these panels overlay. We're going to talk about that more in a bit but in this video we're going to go see a beautiful site in southeastern Utah that has rock art covering at least three different cultures and these cultures for the most part do not overlap which is very strange. Usually people build and build and build layers and layers over each other and then just this is a throughfare where we're leaving our mark and people just kind of do over the ages. So it's unusual in this site that these different panels are very separate even though they're right next to each other and it's some of the most beautiful rock art you can find in all of Utah. So we're going to go ahead and take a look at this. We're going to take a little trip and I hope you enjoy learning a little bit more and seeing these incredible rock art panels. Hello, Ben Woodruff here. I'm here at a site that I like to affectionately call Rancor Canyon. That's not its real name but that's what we like to call it around here. This is a beautiful spot in northern Utah. We're going to take a look at some of the most amazing petroglyphs and pictographs spanning multiple cultures and it's right here in northern Utah. Let's go take a look. This canyon where we're at right now, this is an amazing site because it has petroglyphs and pictographs from three different cultures assigned to three different, you know, peoples and this site directly behind me is the newest people. These are from historic times. It's normally attributed to the Ute people and the people here who did these, there's horses, which is a post-Columbian thing that we look for that we see. If there's horses present, you typically can kind of date the time period. So these are pictographs which are painted. Pictographs are rare and at this site we have petroglyphs and pictographs from three different people. But again, these are the most recent. But why people came through this entire area? This area, first of all, it's a thru-fare. It's a way to get from the Hiunta Mountains down southward into the Colorado Plateau and all the way down to the Grand Canyon, all the way down to the Colorado River. So this is a thru-fare. It's an easy way to go. It's a natural place for both animals and people. And one of the reasons why animals came through here is it's lush. There's not a year-round river here. There's a creek when it rains or snows and it melts and the runoff comes through. But the water stays here. Now this plant I'm holding here, this is Quercus agrifolia. This is a plant that likes a lot of water and this is actually in the lush areas of California. But we have it growing here in this canyon specifically. Even though it can handle the deserts, it needs a lot of water to retain and stay alive. So the sagebrush, also around here. Sagebrush is normally just a few inches tall to maybe a foot tall. But the sagebrush here is the size of small scrub oak trees. You can walk through and get lost in a forest of sagebrush. And again, it's because this water, the silt and the sediment that comes down from above traps down below and the roots from plants like this, then they help keep it in place so it doesn't wash out when you have that runoff. And what you end up having is a very lush environment for animals from as small as antelope, ground squirrels, and jackrabbits, cottontail rabbits, all the way up to full-size mule deer and elk will come through these canyons. And again, they have cover and they have food, but that also brings people. Because if you are a hunter and you need to be able to eat food, you go to where the food is. And the food is going to be in these river bottoms. So you have two main reasons why people came through this area. But what's very unique about this site is for the most part, the petroglyphs and the pictographs in this area, for the most part, do not overlap. There'll be a panel that's from one culture, a panel that's from another culture. It's very unusual and we don't normally see that. Normally everybody overlaps over the eons. People just build up, build up, build up and leave their mark, including modern graffiti, which is kind of sad because I think we should, you know, be very respectful of these types of rock art and leave them alone. But normally ancient peoples didn't leave them alone. You would go and, hey, there's a petroglyph. I'm going to, I'm a thousand years later, going to write over it. And somebody 500 years later writes over that. That's how it always was. And technically today, that's what graffiti still is. But again, we should preserve our past and leave it. And we should take pictures and do videos and not actually harm these. But again, this site is so unique. So we're starting off with these that again, these are attributed to the Ute tribe, but we're also going to look at people that are normally associated with the Fremont people. And also we're going to look at an amazing panel that's kind of the archaic period, all the way back to the Ice Age. We're going to look at those beautiful pictographs as well. This panel that we're at right now is a panel of people that in archaeology, we refer to as the Fremont people. Now we don't know exactly who the Fremont people were, but we know that at this site, these people came earlier than those pictographs that are, they're fairly recent, historical times when you had horses and everything. And these panels that we're going to see in just a second, that may date back all the way to the Ice Age. These people were in between. These were hunter gatherers. These were people that at the archaeological sites, we find that they did hunt, but they also grew corn or maize. And again, that corn was traded upward all the way from Mexico, from a plant that was domesticated called teosinte. So, you know, by 1200 years ago, then there was teosinte and there was maize and corn that making their way and being grown in this area. But this is not an archaeological site where people lived. This is where people came through. And the people that we call the Fremont people made these panels. And we only know that based off of the fact that we find very specific styles. These geometric body shapes with, you know, headdresses and earrings are very common. And also, you always see a proliferation of bighorn sheep on petroglyphs like this. And the reason why, we're not entirely sure. It used to be assumed, well, bighorn sheep were something they hunted. So, it was very important, maybe sympathetic magic. Perhaps if we do depictions of these bighorn sheep, maybe it will, through those powers, invite bighorns there. But here's the interesting thing about that. At Fremont sites where villages have been excavated, very rarely are any bighorn sheep bones found. They find deer, they find elk, they find antelope, they find rabbits, but they very rarely find bighorns. So, the suggestion has been made that the bighorn was a very symbolic, very spiritually important animal, a totentic creature to these Fremont people. You don't normally see bighorns with earlier or later petroglyphs or pictographs, but with the Fremonts, we usually see petroglyphs pecked into the stone instead of pictographs, which are painted. You do occasionally find Fremont pictographs, but usually they're petroglyphs, they're pecked in, and the style is very consistent all throughout the American West. We do know that these people traded back and forth with the ancestral Puebloan people. We know that they traded back and forth. They traded ideas. Some people have suggested they're the same people, and that just the more southern ones are ancestral Puebloan. We don't know. We know they were connected. We know they traded back and forth. They traded ideas. But, again, with the Fremont, we always see that they used bighorn sheep very prominently in their art and in their depiction. We know that, for whatever reason, bighorns were very important because they left that to be seen by us today. So, this panel is entirely Fremont, which is odd at this site because, again, we have three different petroglyphic panels in this direct area, and they're all from incredibly different times. And the odd thing about that is, normally, when people have an area like this where they pass through, they'll layer up. They'll add layers over time. You know, you write something down, and you see it today with modern graffiti, which you should not do, but you see it today. People say, well, I'm going to leave my mark. That's what people have been doing here for thousands of years. But, oddly, you don't see that here. Nobody else came and wrote over these petroglyphs. Only the Fremont people seem to have done so. That makes it quite a unique panel for this area. The panel we're looking at now is the oldest panel at this site, and there are some estimates to suggest that this could date back all the way to the Ice Age. Now, this corridor that we're going through juts up against the Uinta Mountains, and we know for a fact, from artifacts that have gone back and forth since ancient times, that there were stone that was used in Wyoming. We call it banded tiger chert, and this banded tiger chert was very valuable. It was very useful for hunting, and it was used since the Ice Age. But, as different tribes became more elaborate in their trade routes, that was traded from Wyoming through the Uinta Mountains north of us here, and on southward down all the way down to Mexico. We found banded tiger chert that has been properly, chemically assessed to be from Wyoming that made it all the way to offering pits that the Aztec Empire had in Central Mexico. So, this area that we are in, this was a corridor, a trade corridor that connected eventually all the way from Wyoming all the way down to Mexico, and from ancient times onward, people always left their mark here. Now, these panels, these pictographs that we see up here, they're a style that's very unique and very old. A lot of times when we try to understand some of this rock art, there's patterns that we see. There's certain tribes and certain cultures would have certain images that we would see very often. For example, the people we call the Fremont people very frequently had bighorn sheep. We always see that at Fremont sites, and there are Fremont petroglyphs just, of course, around the corner here, but these are much older. They're painted, and likely how they were painted on was with hide glue. So, red ochre was taken, and it was mixed with hide glue, which is granulized and boiled rawhide, and it makes a glue and a paint at the same time that, as you can see, will last through the eons. So, this is a beautiful site, very unique, and very odd. This is one of my favorite pictograph sites in the Intermountain West and in the Southwest of the United States because they're so unique. They almost look alien, some of them, and I absolutely love this site. There's no place quite like this in America. When we're looking at any of these ancient rock art sites, one of the very important things is we remember to show a lot of respect. Now, sadly, a lot of people do leave their mark, which is not good. So, the nice thing is that this site, there's actually a hidden camera, and the camera itself is set up kind of like a game cam with also cameras pointing out of the parking lot. It's covered up, and it's beautifully painted to look like a rock. So, if you come in here and deface these rocks, then you're on camera, and they're going to track you down and track your license plate down and get you. It's sad that we have to go these kind of measures. Again, anciently, when it comes to rock art, people would leave their mark, and people would come 50 years later, 100 years later, 1,000 years later, and leave their mark over, and people have been doing that for eons, but we're in a digital age. We're in an era where we want to preserve our past and preserve this history. It's really important that we don't actually touch or damage or deface any of these rock art panels in any way, no matter where they are. I'm fortunate. I'm glad that this place does have hidden cameras because that has helped kind of curtail some of the problems that we have, but again, it should just be human nature. Leave them alone. Just enjoy them. Look at them, and don't disturb them. Well, I hope you enjoyed this video. I hope you enjoyed going on a little bit of a trip. If you haven't already, if you could hit subscribe to our channel, we very much appreciate it as we're trying to get this channel up and going, and let us know in the comments if you would like more videos like this where you go on kind of a little journey with us and get to see some of the amazing things, both in the natural and cultural world out there, but as always, I hope you keep learning, keep growing, and keep exploring this beautiful world.