Thenaturalmedic Adventures
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Thenaturalmedic Adventures
Symbols That Speak: A Journey Through Time at Parowan Gap
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Walking through the Parowan Gap Petroglyphs in southwestern Utah reveals ancient rock carvings that tell stories of migration, astronomical knowledge, and the spiritual beliefs of Native American peoples who inhabited this area centuries ago.
• Located near St. George and Cedar City, the gap is an ancient dried riverbed cutting through solid rock
• The Paiute people call the creators of these symbols the "Winoos" - their ancestors who were the first settlers
• One significant panel depicts migration from an "old world" to a "new world," showing hardships like famine, drought, water crossings, and extreme weather
• Petroglyphs show a leader who died upon reaching the new land, depicted with an arrow in his head and shown upside-down
• Archaeoastronomer Noel and archaeologist V. Garth Norman revealed these carvings track celestial movements with remarkable precision
• The site aligns with solstice events, with the sun appearing directly in the gap on the summer solstice
• Different techniques were used to create petroglyphs: pecking (striking with tools), incising (cutting), and abrading (rubbing)
• The site was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969
• Mormon pioneers led by Parley Pratt made contact with Ute leader Chief Wakara, who called this area "God's own house"
• These petroglyphs demonstrate how ancient peoples maintained intimate connections with the natural world
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Hello there, this is Craig the Natural Medic and I am outside of Parowan, utah, which is in southwestern Utah, close to St George and Cedar City and at the Parowan Gap Petroglyphs Pretty interesting sight. The Parowan Gap itself looks like this. It's actually a gap through the rocks of an old, ancient riverway that has long since dried up. Up here on top of the rocks are a number of petroglyphs. Hang around with me and let's take a closer look at these. So the Native Americans that were here whenever the Europeans arrived to this area were the Paiutes. They call the people that were here that left these symbols on the rocks, the Winoos, which are the first settlers of the native people, their ancestors. If you zoom in, you can see a better perspective of these many symbols on the rock. This is a sacred site to the Paiute and the Hopi, so visit with reverence and think about that. The interesting thing about this particular site is it tells a story of a great journey by the southern Paiutes. This symbol here on the rock shows a migration pattern. You're traveling from the old world to the new. Lots of interesting symbols here and the things you may have seen in other videos that I posted about petroglyphs that I have visited over the past several years. You have the familiar corn stalks. You have different astrological astronomy type symbols up there, along with some other things that might be familiar. If you're looking at this up ahead, I'll give you a brief summary. You're looking at a movement of the sun, the moon and the stars. That's what this line is tracing and it's also showing the Parowan Gap itself, the valley, the summer solstice, types of things.
Speaker 1:Let's take a closer look at the panel and the glyph itself. The glyphs himself, in summary, tells the story of the old world to the new transition. It was a long trail that many experienced famine, drought, water crossings, cold ice, sun and a great leader. When the leader was arriving in the new land, he was killed and the arrow was inside of his head indicates that he would die. The full petrograph depicts the leader and shown as only a head and body. No arms upside down indicate that he died. The leader itself shows right here down, showing that he died. He has a pex representing splashing water to show he was killed in the water. So very interesting how this turned out. If you want to pause the video now, you can take a look and see all the detail of this.
Speaker 1:Okay, this was studied by archaea astronomer noel and archaeologist V Garth Norman. They studied this in the early 2000s and determined what it actually meant, and this grouping of petroglyphs represents a lot of astronomical knowledge. Now the Hopi people look at it a little bit differently, but similarly to the Paiute. They describe their connections with the people of long ago which migrated through the Paroan Gap to Hopi, to Wanasavi, which is the spiritual center of the earth, of the earth, and they represent the covenant with Masah. The earth guardian, which I believe is represented by this symbol, is up here on the rock. If you zoom in, that particular symbol is up there. I don't see where at this point, but maybe you can point it out there. There is a similar type symbol right there. If I do see it, I'll add it to the video here. So this archaeological site, these petroglyphs here, were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969. They represent the work of the Fremont people and the southern Paiute cultures and represent the work of the Fremont people and the Southern Paiute cultures.
Speaker 1:Petroglyph sites are likely a working of many individuals over a long time period, not really done by any particular group or individual. They were just done over a period of time by different tribes that visited here. So if you look at this panel here, you can pause the video if you want to take a closer look. This is the first time I've seen the symbols interpreted on a panel that tells you what these things mean. The Paiute Indian tribe of Utah provided the interpretation of the petroglyphs.
Speaker 1:Let's take a look up on the rock. If you look at the nearest ones on this rock face right here you're looking at this kind of wide almost looks like a fan that's showing the snow falling Above, that is showing water and there's water also coming down and you have also two eyes. That's kind of hard to see from here, but above the looks like a parallelogram with some little fingers on top of it. Right above where the snowfall petroglyph is, there's eyes up there which are showing that it's a guardian or a watcher. The other side, over here we're looking at prospering he to prosper when the roof was brought low. I don't know what that means, but a lot of this was probably a broad representation of some of the thoughts and things of the people that were here, maybe not particularly meaning any particular person, but maybe the tribe as a whole. So there's some more up here on this little rock face where this little crack is. There's additional ones above this near rock right there and then there's some local graffiti that was put there At some point.
Speaker 1:We don't really know. You might be wondering how these are made and it actually talks about that. You can also pause the video to see this closer. But basically petroglyphs are different than pictographs. Pictographs are made with some type of a paint like berries or animal, animal substance, sand, rock, whatever they can make into a paint type substance.
Speaker 1:Petroglyphs are pecked into the rock using tools. The tools they would have available to them would have been antlers, bones, rocks, things like that. They would not have had steel or any metal really until they had contact with the Europeans. But basically there's three different ways they did it Pecking, which was basically just making those little marks, so a direct strike or indirect strikes. Incising and scratching, which is a sharp-pointed tool. Or braiding, which is just rubbing it back and forth. And the panel. As we've seen throughout this video here, the panel represents a grouping of symbols that mean a particular message or relationship to other panels nearby. Yeah, looking at this right here, the first Europeans, which were mostly Mormons, coming to this area of Utah, led by Parley Pratt. He was one of the commissioned leaders for scouting new settlement sites commissioned leaders for scouting new settlement sites and he made contact with the Ute leader, chief Wakara, who referred to this area as God's own house. Just two years later, they established Parowan as one of the first settlements in southern Utah.
Speaker 1:One of the things to think about is what is a relic or historic inscription and what is vandalism? Right over here on this rock, you have some historic inscriptions. Looks like a tombstone right there, which is pretty interesting. Zoom in a little bit. You have HSH in 1882, hyatt 1887. It's 1839, maybe, or I'm not really sure if that's 1939, not really certain. But nowadays you don't want to touch any of these, whether this is the historic writings here or the petroglyphs themselves. You don't want to damage those oils on our skin. It's illegal, so don't do that.
Speaker 1:Interesting thing here is talking about wildlife images. I don't specifically see other than some birds like bird tracks right up here. If you zoom into this one please zoom into this one you can definitely see some bird tracks going up on the right side there. I did see some sheep earlier when father escalante was traveling through here as part of the Escalante expedition which came from Santa Fe and tried to go to California unsuccessfully. He did discover a lot of things. He saw lots of bighorn sheep, compared them to domestic sheep and after a long decline in those they actually are coming back now. So pretty neat.
Speaker 1:As I've said before in other videos, they use this to kind of keep a record of what they saw in their environment in their life. So if you look over here we have what's called a mimeograph, the piute sun, god, whichatz or Tobatz that might be his mouth right there where that little cave is, and then his face goes up here. The thought was that he ate the sun in the wintertime and the sun appears here in this gap on the first day of summer. Isn't that wild to think about. Their thought process was so aligned with how nature changed and moved around them that they patterned their movements and a lot of their life by that. If you look here you can almost see a face right there. There's the mouth, nose, eyes, that kind of stuff up at the top Pretty wild.
Speaker 1:This panel here talks about the geology of the site. In short, there was an uplift here as a river or stream was eroding, creating this gap. This talks about the people that made the petroglyphs and this talks just in general orientation to the site and reminds you again not to disturb or damage the glyphs. So what do you think about this place? Did they purposely build this? Just because it was the right place at the right time? That's pretty fascinating to think about. We think about our modern society and how we are very closely tied to our machines and computers and how that helps us, but we've gotten away from the natural way of doing things, the native people. We can learn a lot from them, hopefully from this video you did. If you have a comment, a question, make sure to leave it below. Below, give it a thumbs up if you like this video so I get out to more people. We'll see you next time on the trail. Bye, bye.
