Thenaturalmedic Adventures
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Thenaturalmedic Adventures
Rock Stars: The Handprints, Macaws, and Mysteries of Rio Grande Style Art
Note: Audio Only, See YouTube for Video Version
Craig the Natural Medic explores the Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque, New Mexico, discovering ancient rock carvings etched into volcanic basalt across three distinct canyon areas.
• Piedras Marcadas Canyon features hundreds of petroglyphs on a 1.5-mile trail showing animals, humanoid figures, and handprints
• Ancestral Pueblo people created the Rio Grande style petroglyphs between 1000 BC and 1700 AD
• Boca Negra Canyon, considered the "birthplace" of the monument, has the famous Macaw petroglyph showing evidence of ancient trade networks
• Rinconada Canyon offers a 2.2-mile trail with the highest concentration of petroglyphs and displays the area's unique geological history
• The volcanic basalt formed approximately 200,000 years ago when volcanoes erupted and created the West Mesa
• The monument preserves an estimated 23,000 petroglyphs that hold spiritual and cultural significance for modern Pueblo peoples
• Visitors should bring water, wear appropriate clothing, and be mindful that park areas close at 5:00 PM
If you liked this video, make sure to give it a thumbs up and think about subscribing to the channel for more great content.
Hi there, craig the Natural Medic. I am in Albuquerque, new Mexico, at Petroglyphs National Monument. Let's check it out. This is the visitor's center, probably a good place to start your journey. Just a reminder it is an urban park, so make sure to secure your belongings. Don't put them in plain sight. Make sure that they are locked up and secured in your vehicle. Make sure that they are locked up and secured in your vehicle. They haven't had very many break-ins here, but they have had some. I talked to one of the volunteers who's giving trail information. The volunteer said that in 2002 there was some break-ins, but with that in mind, I think it's overall a safe place to visit. So why don't you come along with me and let's check it out? So, first off, this visitor center used to be a house of what they called the measuring woman. She was a local anthropologist that measured body sizes and was trying to figure out physiological changes in humans.
Speaker 1:I'm going to head up to Piedras Maderas, which is the north side of the park, nice viewing area, so let's go check it out. I'm gonna start off here, at the Piedras Marcadas Canyon. It's a one and a half mile trail. There are no facilities. There is no water. You do need to report any vandalism that you see. Make sure you take plenty of water, wear appropriate clothing. There's supposed to be hundreds of petroglyphs on this trail, so let's go check them out. It's definitely a beautiful day out here. It's in the 60s, upper 50s somewhere around there. No wind today. It was very windy yesterday. Still high fire danger. That's where you start, right there, the parking lot to the other side of those bushes. There you can continue to the left to get to petroglyph, which is 1.5 miles, easy to moderate, or you can connect it with the loop, which makes it three miles. I'm probably gonna do that today. There are no facilities, so make sure that you bring your water, make sure that you bring all the things that you need. You're not far from help if you need help, but hopefully you won't need that. Be prepared and you won't have to worry about that.
Speaker 1:Alright, let's see some petroglyphs. There is a sign here. It's just talking about spirits of the rocks are alive by the marks that are placed on them. So we have a stop one here got some basalt which was created 200,000 years ago and the petroglyphs were created by clicking on that. So there are some glyphs up here on these rocks. Since we're close to the Rio Grande, they call this Rio Grande style and typical figures that show up are animals, humanoids, etc. Authenticity is determined because these were chipped out of this dark basaltic rock and, as you can see here, they are fading. See some more faded ones on top of this rock. These are the ancestors of the modern Puebloan people. Looks like a humanoid figure there to the right side here and then over there some kind of a mask, maybe a deity or something Pretty cool. There's supposed to be hundreds of glyphs on here. I won't be able to give you all of them, but there's a good concentration of them right here. There's several on this rock here and there's several on most of the rock faces up above.
Speaker 1:Pause the video for a closer look. These ones are very close to the trail here. Got a hand print not sure what that metal one is and some kind of animal looks almost like a turtle to me round shell legs, long tail. Some more cool ones all up and down the rocks here Pretty neat-o. Not sure what those are. There's a bird. The rest of them I'm not really sure, as you don't really know.
Speaker 1:There's some guys up there. There's no way. I want to get pictures of all these guys. These look like suns with a little point, maybe they're like arms or something, and a little hat or a halo on top. There's some animal figures on there. There's some more over here that I missed while I go.
Speaker 1:Pretty cool, some really cool ones on that boulder up there. It's about halfway up. Up looks like a bunch of handprints, maybe a bow and arrow. It's a bunch of handprints. That's what I can mostly make out. The way they date these things is. They could use comparative images that were found on pottery that has been figured out in the same era. They think around 1300 is when new designs were coming around. You've got more and more glyphs over here, all different kinds. It's like a person laying down A cylindrical deal, maybe like a brand or a circle with a stick I don't know what that is. Graffiti here and there. I haven't seen too much today so far, which is good. Some other things up there, wow, very cool.
Speaker 1:Petroglyphs do represent represent a valuable record of cultural expression, human occupation. Here in the Rio Grande Valley you have many, many different groups that find these to be sacred or special. Some of them have common knowledge. We can tell what some of them are, but some of them we don't know and we'll probably never know. We have a lot of different ones right here at this stop and sometimes they call these panels because they're groupings of images never know. We have a lot of different ones right here at this stop and sometimes they call these panels because they're groupings of images that are together Just a number of interesting ones. For sure I've got to hand it to the native people. They really know how to put their finger on things. Pretty cool handprint deals here. This is pretty much the end of the Petroglyph Trail.
Speaker 1:Gonna go up around the top of the mesa and hike back to the main parking area On top of the ridgeline. Here there is lots of encroaching houses. I don't know if you can see behind me, but there's houses right on the boundary of this park. But man, what a gorgeous view. There's the valley below where I was walking and seeing all the glyphs. So that was Piedras Mercados Canyon and, as I said, there's no water, there's no restroom, so bring your own, be prepared. To go to the restroom before you get there. Took about two hours for me to do the entire thing. That was including the Mesa top loop. You can just stay at the bottom and loop back whenever you get to the end of the petroglyph trail. If you like this video, make sure to give it a thumbs up. Think about subscribing to the channel for more great content.
Speaker 1:Working my way south, on the east side of the monument here in Boca Negra, canyon which means black mouth is considered the birthplace of petroglyph National Monument. In private citizens it became Indian Petroglyph State Park, which later became the focal point for today's national monument. So National Park Service, city of Albuquerque and the state are mandated to protect and preserve future generations. I was pleased the other trail was not dirty. There was not any trash that I saw. So hopefully everybody visiting will do their part.
Speaker 1:Pretty cool little spiral right here. Let's go up this trail. There's two gentlemen that just went up and followed this trail. Let's see where that goes. Cool astrological symbols on this guy. There's some more animals and other things on the other side we have more here. What I read was that Boca Negra, which is the Black Mouth, is very accessible to many people. Look at this guy. I'm not sure if that's his ween down there or what that is. I'm not sure what's going on there, but it's definitely bigger than the other guys. There's the parking lot. You can see my vehicle down there, maybe Right below my feet here.
Speaker 1:This was a grinding surface. The native people to make these glyphs were using a primitive hammer and chisel made out of sandstone, so it was somewhat resistant but they used it to grind and sharpen tools. Also to grind seeds, to dry flower petals and the pigments and to do medicines. Had to grind these plants into medicines. Pretty neat when I'm standing at one mile above sea level here on the trail, and the east are the Sandia Mountains. I'll show you in a second which. The crest of them is just over 10,000 feet, like just under 11,000 feet at 10,678 feet. Let's take a look at those then. In front of that we see all the green. Ahead is the Rio Grande Valley, which has human habitation dating back 3,000 years. The first inhabitants were the ancestral Pueblo people who made these markings on the rock, the petroglyphs. The Spanish colonists came in in the 1500s and started settling around here, and then the American pioneers.
Speaker 1:Albuquerque itself is a pretty old city. 300th birthday was in 2006. You can see it spreading out before us. There's an old town way over there. The more mountains that way. The Benzano's pretty cool.
Speaker 1:Something else to think about these petroglyphs on this little alcove here representative the Rio Grande style glyphs. There's some up here, some more over here on the other side of this rock. Just a reminder they have these cables here for a reason. They did provide some nice accessibility by making a semi-paved trail with some stairways, handrails and stuff, but they don't want you to touch these things, so preserve these for future generations. Here's some more. That's a pretty cool one right there on top of that rock. Interesting, while you're in Bocan I did go to the top of that guy with lots of lifts on that cliff face that I call the Mesa top trail, walked over here kind of along the edge and then there's bathrooms right here. Use those. There's some information and a water thing there. This part of the park is a little bit different because it's run by the Open Space Department of the city of Albuquerque and this little guy is very special here. You can pause the video if you want to read this In summary we've heard this before.
Speaker 1:These are made by the people of the ancestors of the modern Pueblo people, so this is a famous one the macaw. They removed that desert varnish on the basalt with handheld stone tools Because they have darkened over time. They used to be a lot brighter. They are authentic. Because of that, even though you're very close, don't touch these. They will wear out over time. It's more touching. You can touch it too much. People you can touch it too much. Just keep that in mind and apply as necessary. Anyway, though this is a macaw, macaw actually were traded People here in central north central New Mexico. There are pictures of them At Crow Canyon. There were some pictures of macaws and native groups traded among themselves and sometimes would bring macaws up from Central America. So they were native to the tropical parts of you know, in that little area between North and South America, costa Rica and places like that, and so they traded for these guys.
Speaker 1:So this is still on the McCall Trail, the McCall Rock. It's just right here, or actually just up where those stairwells are. This is a yucca pod. Yucca was very important to native people. They used it to make food, of course, they used it for brushes, they used it for for fiber, they used it for all kinds of things. So of course they're going to give tribute to it by putting it on the rock here.
Speaker 1:This other part is called the cliff base trail. There's lots of cool ones here. It's almost like a sunflower. If you look at it closely. There's a little face and a flower petal or flower at the top and then there's the little petals underneath, almost like it's a, like it's smiling, I don't know. Kind of interesting. Then you have these other guys here got native figures very interesting, and up there you have these other guys here Got native figures Very interesting and up there you have a snake on that rock there, some anthropomorphic figures here. Other things Got some other figures on the other side of this rock. Why did they choose here? Nobody really knows, but they think that Native American people held volcanic places which these are all volcanic origin. Rocks and volcanoes did erupt here. Those were held as sacred places. And the rocks, if you'll notice, face kind of southeast. There's a little guy in there. Might have been because of the sun, might have been because the snow was clear at that time, not really sure.
Speaker 1:They used radiocarbon dating and 23,000 petroglyphs it is thought were created here on the monument. They were created between 1000 BC and AD 1700. Notice all these bubbles. I'm not touching any petroglyphs. You got all these bubbles and you have. In this case you have sand in there. Sometimes you have other things that form in there. They call those vesicles. When the lava or the magma is bubbling up, it has these little bubbles from carbon dioxide, gas or water vapor or whatever is in there. Some more glyphs here.
Speaker 1:This gentleman looks like he has a fishbone in his mouth. I don't think he does. Unfortunately, we have graffiti that shows up from these rock art sites sometimes. So tell me one of those people. You can be fined heavily and go to jail if you damage rock art. So don't do it. Save it for future generations.
Speaker 1:I hope you enjoyed that brief trip in Boca Negra, the Black Mouth. If you liked it, give it a thumbs up and think about subscribing to the channel. But if you have any questions or comments, leave them below. Hey, now I'm on my third and final piece of exploration at Petroglyph national monument. This is riconada canyon. It's a 2.2 mile trip on this one. It does take a little bit longer than the other two. Maybe should have done it first, but that's okay. It's not hot. It is rather sunshiny and clear, but it's not hot and it's not too bad today. But you do want to bring plenty of water. There are vault toilets at the entrance, but it is a moderately difficult trail to go up. The reason you hear me breathing is because I'm going uphill and anyway hope that you'll follow me down the trail and see what we can find.
Speaker 1:This is the third of the major petroglyph viewing areas here at Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque. Let's check it out. So one thing to think about as to why these things are here in the first place is the volcanoes, the geology of what made this site come to be. The volcanoes are primarily located behind me. They erupted about 200 000 years ago and made this lava flow, which is now what we call the west mesa. Here in albuquerque.
Speaker 1:Let's flip around the lens. Take a look. We have this big hill or mesa that goes all the way around, formed of this dark, gray or black basalt, forms the entire canyon here, but why didn't it form in the ways you think, which would be filling up the whole valley? The thought about it is that you have the thing called inverted topography. Inverted topography means there was some kind of obstruction in the way, some kind of hill, mountain, etc. That the lava, when it erupted from the volcanoes, flowed around. So it kind of did an opposite of what you would think. There is an image right there. It's very faint, but it's a humanoid type figure right there. Think about how that fits into the cultural landscape.
Speaker 1:Another thing to think about is what about this sand here? This sand is definitely a different color. So where did it come from? Well, the Rio Puerco, which is a tributary of the Rio Grande, washed in a huge amount of sediment over time and it settled in the valley, here in the canyon, and then here it is. That's why it's a different color. You have religious symbols of the Spanish people that settled here in the 1500s. They used the mesa here the mesa top, the mesa bottom as grazing land for their sheep. They brought in sheep for textile uses and for food. There's primitive walls. I don't know if we'll see any on this trip, but there's some here.
Speaker 1:Then, over here, these inscriptions are considered historic graffiti, which the Park Service defines as it has to be 50 years old, and contribute to the history of the site. If you see, here there's two different names Mr Thorpe and Mr Bidet. They were employees of the railroad that came to Albuquerque in 1919 and got stuck out here in the canyon. While they were out here hunting and decided to carve their names in here and their date. So it took them a full day to do that.
Speaker 1:So, if you think about it, anybody that did these inscriptions had to put their mind to it, because it wasn't easy to make these inscriptions on the rocks. It required determination. The rocks require determination, skill and persistence. So if we zoom in over here, we see a great example of using the rock structure to make a 3D image. If you look right over there, it's going to be maybe hard to see. I did zoom in. Look at the center of the frame. There there's a mask set on the edge of the boulder where there's a crack and you're seeing the rock. It looks almost like it has a face right there. It's pretty crazy. The native people that made these petroglyphs were definitely inventive and used what they had around them to make their work a little bit easier.
Speaker 1:This is the very back of the canyon, highest concentration of petroglyphs. So if you look, you have all kinds of glyphs up here. It's like a mountain lion or something. On top of this rock over here, several figures with shields and other things. It's hard to see in the direct sunlight. I'm not really sure exactly what I'm looking at, but no matter. Largest concentration of petroglyphs. Of course the sun is shining right in our face. So that's all the way in the back of the canyon. Now we're going to walk out. Let's see if we see anything else.
Speaker 1:Some final thoughts to think about as we get to the end of the trail. Here is this environment that we're in was made possible by the Rio Grande Rift Valley, and you can see that, and you can see that in the mountains ahead of us, the Sandias, straight ahead, the Manzanos, connected also to the south over there. And what happened was 30 million years ago you had geologic forces that started stretching this rift valley. There's only a few of these on earth, and one of them is here in the middle of New Mexico. How crazy is that? You'll see it better as soon as I crest this little rise right here.
Speaker 1:What happened? Was it allowed? Over time, as that crust was thinned out, it allowed volcanoes to erupt, created magma, magma and lava kind of are. They're basically the same thing. They came out of the earth and made what is now the west mesa, and that was the medium in which the native people, and later Spaniards and Americans, carved their mark on the landscape here in what is now Petroglyph National Monument and just to talk briefly about the environment. And just to talk briefly about the environment, to the south of us, towards Las Cruces, is the desert, and to the north of us we're more in the Colorado Plateau and if you go up towards Santa Fe you get back into the Rocky Mountains. We're in kind of a transition zone. Here in Albuquerque. You have a mixture of all these different environments and if you look out here there's a wide variety of plants that utilize this area and a wide variety of animals. I didn't see too many animals today. I saw quite a few lizards and heard some birds. Everybody else was probably pretty much asleep. They'll probably come out at night.
Speaker 1:This park is primarily a day-use park and because of that, since I get back to my vehicle, I've got to vacate the parking lot at 5 o'clock Because they will lock it up in tow vehicles and or fine you. So make sure that you are doing this trail, the Ricanada Canyon, get back by 5 o'clock so you can exit the premises. I hope you've enjoyed our visit to Petroglyph National Monument Part of the last time I'm going to be here. There are some more areas to explore here, but for today I've pretty much ran out of time. Most of the areas here are going to close up for the day. Fitzgerald Center closes at 4.30, so it's probably already closed. We're getting close to being closed. A lot of the trails and day-use areas close up at a similar time. If you have enjoyed this, make sure to give it a thumbs up. Make sure to think about subscribing to the channel and if you have any questions, comments, let me know. If you've been here before, hope to see you out on the trail Until next time. Bye.
