By that reasoning BT, you can believe that everything you've experienced since birth is a dream or a hologram.
When we were walking through the houses we had to negotiate the doors from room to room that were barely over 4 ft. high. Some had a 4-6 inch threshold which made them even smaller. I’m not that tall, just under 6 ft. and it was a challenge to walk through some of them. I asked a ranger about it and they said the builders were shorter than us but not that short. I guess it was a tradition of some sort.
We have seen petroglyphs that clearly represent known objects. My wife and I have seen one in a canyon that shows a man riding a horse. There were no horses in North America till the Europeans arrived. He has boots on with turned up toes and a large flat brimmed hat. Cowboy? Bighorn sheep abound all over. No mistaking what is being depicted.
When it comes to representing the abstract though, that is where the archaeologist is usually stumped and must rely on the oral explanations of the descendants. But images of natural events and objects are very reliable.
There is a pictograph in Chaco Canyon, no we didn’t go see it but I probably will the next time we’re there, of
the supernova of 1054 (what we now call the Crab Nebula). Considering the time frame of the event and the fact that the Chaco Culture was in full swing, scientists calculated the moon phases for the date and it was in fact a crescent moon.
Here is an
article of the Chaco site.
On
this website you can see the pictograph with a screenshot of an astronomical program set to show the moon on the date in 1054. Notice the time and date indicated on the program display. Below that, an astronomy photograph of the Crab Nebula as seen today. See how the simulation matches the pictograph. Clearly the rock art depiction is accurate.
The ancestral Puebloans traveled everywhere by foot. They walked or ran. No artifacts of wheels or boats of any kind have ever been found. They lived in a desert. What other explanation is there for a petroglyph of a ship where no ships of any type ever existed until Europeans appeared. Is a puzzlement!
Vikings in New Mexico? That would have to be by someone from near the Gulf of Mexico. I’ve seen the reports of the rune stone in Virginia, likely a hoax, and the evidence they may have pushed inland a ways on the Great Lakes, but that’s the 1st I’ve heard of the New Mexico markings. We do know they made it to Nova Scotia and maybe Newfoundland but I’m not sure they went farther than that. Except for the rune stone in Virginia.
Duane
