Petroglyphs National Monument

As we continued our travels westbound, we came to Albuquerque, New Mexico.

One of our day trips led us to Petroglyph National Monument.

After watching a 20 minute video about the area history at the visitor center, we went for a walk through some of the petroglyph areas.  We saw a lot of petroglyphs but really didn't even scratch the surface.

The Monument is very large and covers many miles.  It contains over 24,000 petroglyphs.

The Park Service has done a nice job of constructing paved pathways through the rugged terrain to make access easier for foot travel.

Here is a sample of a petroglyph.  It is a symbol or image carved or chipped onto a rock face.



Archeologists estimate that some of these images may be 2,000 - 3,000 years old!

The area was rolling lava hills that were very rugged.



There were lots of birds and rabbits and cactus that you wouldn't want to bump into.









Over the years, we have watched many TV shows about ancient civilizations all over the world and we were surprised that these petroglyphs had many symbols that are similar to symbols we have seen on programs from other continents.

The orientation video that we watched explained that the natives that left these symbols did not have a written language and only left the petroglyphs so we don't know what they were describing or trying to say.



When you look at these images, you can almost see "Ancient Aliens" and space ships.  Almost all of the images that looked like people seemed to have some kind of antenna coming out of the tops of their heads.






We really enjoyed hiking around the desert here but we were quite surprised at how the high altitude of over 5,100' affected our ability to breathe with only moderate exertion.

Our explorations are continuing and we will post more soon,

Tom & Suzie