United States or Maldives ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In the art of making pictographs, for instance, they excelled all other tribes, except perhaps the Kiowas, a plains tribe of Colorado and western Kansas. On the hides of buffalo, deer, and antelope which formed their tents, the Dakotas painted calendars, which had a picture for each year, or rather for each winter, while those of the Kiowas had a summer symbol and a winter symbol.
They were here, exactly as one now sees them, when I first camped here with some friendly Havasupais, nearly twenty years ago, and I was then informed that some of the designs represent great hunts, in which their ancestors had been successful. Of the genuineness of the pictographs no one need have the slightest question.
Erratic block from Scania, covered with carvings. Or must we attribute them merely to passing caprice? Their number and importance we think forbid the latter idea. We find such blocks in Switzerland, in England, France, Italy, Portugal, and on the frozen shores of the Baltic. They are no less numerous in India, and they figure in the curious pictographs of the two Americas.
In many instances it is quite evident that the same rock or cliff has been used by the two different races to put their markings upon, the later, or inferior, race often making their pictographs over or across the hieroglyphic writings of the first race.
There are a number of cliff dwellings in this vicinity, which take from half a day to a day to visit. The best preserved of these are in the gulches of the Coconino Forest, on the rocks of which are also some interesting pictographs. There are remains of dwellings on Moran's Point, and at various places along the rim of the Canyon.
Then, when you think you have seen everything, you learn of some hieroglyphic inscriptions on a nearby rock, with lettering which no scientist has yet deciphered, but with pictographs resembling the ancient Phoenician signs from which our own alphabet is supposed to be derived.
The Verde pictographs can not be distinguished, so far as designs are concerned, from many found elsewhere in Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona. An instructive pictograph, different from any which I have elsewhere seen, was discovered on the upturned side of a bowlder not far from Hance's ranch, near the road from Camp Verde to the cavate dwellings.
On the perpendicular wall which forms the rear of inclosure B, many feet above the top of the standing front walls, there are several pictographs of Apache origin. The height of these above the level of the former roof would appear to indicate the existence of a third story, for the hands which drew them must have been at least 15 feet above the present top of the standing wall.
All that is known of this ancient people is what the ruins show, as they left no written record or even tradition of their life, unless it be some inscriptions consisting of various hieroglyphics and pictographs that are found painted upon the rocks, which undoubtedly have a meaning, but for lack of interpretation remain a sealed book.
"Probably Kurzon, which we now seek, was buried deep for nearly five hundred years before Columbus landed at San Salvadore. The specimens of writing and architecture heretofore disclosed indicate that. But, as a matter of fact, it is very hard to decipher the Mayan pictographs.
Word Of The Day