IS THERE A WOOLY RHINOCEROUS PETROGLYPH NEAR MOAB, UTAH?

Petroglyph, along the Colorado River, Moab,

Utah. Photograph Mr. Kelly, Grand Junction,

Colorado, pre-1925.

On June 21, 2014, I posted a column titled DINOSAURS IN ROCK ART – THE HAVASUPAI CANYON HADROSAUR. In this I expressed my disbelief in the claims of creationists that there are rock art examples of dinosaurs that prove that humans and dinosaurs coexisted and interacted. The example I discussed in that posting, the Havasupai Canyon so-called “hadrosaur” was first recorded by the Doheny expedition in October and November of 1924.

In October and November of 1924, the Doheny Expedition to Havasupai canyon was fielded by the Oakland Museum, Oakland, California. Its purpose was to record an example of rock art that supposedly proved that dinosaurs and humans had coexisted. This expedition was led by Samuel Hubbard, director of the expedition and an honorary curator of archaeology at the museum, and accompanied by Charles W. Gilmore, Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the United States National Museum. The report on this expedition was written by Hubbard and published January 26, 1925.

So-called "Moab Mastodon," Photograph Dell Crandall, 1999.

In this posting I wish to bring up a claim in a supplement to the expedition report that was attached to attempt to strengthen Hubbard’s claim of petroglyphs of extinct creatures. On page 27 of the report is the astonishing claim that the petroglyph found along the Colorado River near Moab, Utah, and often called the “Moab Mastodon” is really the picture of a wooly rhinoceros. Hubbard wrote:

“A PREHISTORIC GAME TRAIL

From the Grand Canyon in southern Utah comes another remarkable petroglyph. This was photographed and sent to me by Mr. George Kelly of Grand Junction, Colorado. The outline of the figure was so faint that he was obliged to chalk it in to secure a satisfactory photograph.

There is not the slightest question in my mind that this was intended to represent a rhinoceros.

All the ‘rhino’ character is present. The menacing horn; the prehensile upper lip; the short tail; the heavy body and short legs, all suggest a ‘rhino’ about to charge. This is the first time it has ever been known that prehistoric man in America was contemporary with the rhinoceros.

Wooly rhinocerous outline, European

cave art, public domain photo.

I have before me an outline of a wooly rhinoceros sketched by an artist-hunter on the limestone wall of the Cavern of Les Combarelles in France. The difference between the two is that the Cro-Magnon hunter shows the ears of his ‘rhino’ erect and pointed forward, while the American artist shows the ears turned over. I venture the prediction that there was that difference in the two animals.” (p. 27)

The photograph (at top) illustrating this claim shows the “Moab Mastodon” as it was prior to 1925. How much prior we cannot know because Hubbard does not reveal when he actually received the photo from Mr. Kelly of Grand Junction, Colorado. What I find very interesting is that this early photo allows us to compare with the same petroglyph as it is presently found. The first time I visited the “Moab Mastodon” I suspected that the figure had been seriously re-pecked as the patina across its torso seemed to me to show a suspicious variability. Indeed, comparing a new photo of that image with the pre-1925 photo suggests that the torso has indeed seen a major episode of touchup. This could possibly be a relic of the conditions under which it was originally photographed, so I cannot claim this to be any kind of definitive proof. The other major problem that I found with the “Moab Mastodon” was that it shows definite toes or claws. Checking those features in the 1925 photo they seem to be even more slender and defined. These are definitely not the feet of either an elephant or a rhinoceros.

In my November 25, 2009, posting titled ELEPHANTIDS IN NORTH AMERICA – THE MOAB MASTODON, I suggested that it might in fact be an image of a brown or grizzly bear with a large fish in its mouth. It seems to me that the feet with claws of the 1925 photo look even more like a bear’s clawed feet than its modern, retouched, incarnation. While it could represent many things, one thing I am sure of is that it is neither a mastodon, nor a wooly rhinoceros.

So, I am sorry mister Hubbard, I have to strenuously disagree with your conclusion that this petroglyph shows the Paleolithic Wooly Rhinoceros, I am grateful, however, for another (and much earlier) picture of this continuing enigma.

SOURCE:

Hubbard, Samuel

1925    The Doheny Scientific Expedition to the Hava Supai Canyon, Northern Arizona, October and November, 1924, Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA.

THE STONE WOMAN OF CRATER LAKE:

"The Lady of the Woods/Stone Lady of Crater

Lake", Crater Lake National Park, Oregon.

Photograph ca. 1999, by Steve Marks,

National Park Service.

"The Lady of the Woods/Stone Lady of Crater

Lake", Crater Lake National Park, Oregon.

Photograph ca. 1920, by Alex Sparrow,

National Park Service.

About a mile and a half from the lodge at Crater Lake National Park atop Mount Mazama, in Oregon, the nude figure of a woman is carved in relief in a large lave boulder. The story of the “Stone Woman of Crater Lake” was told on Jefferson Public Radio (Southern Oregon University) and has been published by Dennis M. Powers in a story he titled “Trail Leads to Mysterious Stone Woman of Crater Lake”.

Crater Lake, Oregon. Public domain.

 “Reports of a sculptured stone woman began filtering into Crater Lake National Park headquarters during the winter and spring of 1917. Workers located the figure on the lake’s rim, about a mile and a half from the lodge.  The nearly full relief of a nude figure was chiseled out of a lava boulder, its legs bent and one arm over its head as if shielding against danger. The news media reported the discovery with headlines such as “Mummy Woman found in woods” and “Ancient figure of woman discovered.”   

Crater Lake, Oregon. Public domain.

 The curator of archaeology at a California museum went so far as to speculate that it could be a petrified human body or a lava-filled cavity resulting from mud enveloping the body of a woman. The mystery was resolved four years later when Dr. Earl Russell Bush, official surgeon for the U.S. Engineers, revealed he was the sculptor. He said he had been stationed at the park in the summer of 1917 and had spent 14 days in October carving the figure. He had pledged his staff to secrecy.   A trail constructed in 1930 leads to the “Lady of the Woods,” where she sleeps surrounded by trees in view of those who can find her. “(Powers, episode 2393).

This “curator of archaeology at a California museum” was our old friend Samuel Hubbard, who found the dinosaur petroglyph and the man fighting the elephant petroglyph at the bottom of Havasupai Canyon, and identified the so-called “Moab Mastodon” as a wooly rhinoceros (to say nothing of his other amazing discoveries).

The full story of the creation of this carving had been printed in an article entitled “Stone Woman of Crater Lake No Longer Mystery” on October 24, 1923, in The Fresno Bee, and reprinted by the Crater Lake Institute in Crater Lake National Park News (www.craterlakeinstitute.com).

Vandalism photo, 2014, Crater Lake National Park.

Of course, were Doctor Bush to do something like this today it would be considered felony vandalism, but that was another time. Modern vandalism has hit Crater Lake National Park in the form of a blue-haired face painted on a boulder overlooking the lake at an elevation of about 9,000 feet. Federal agents have confirmed other painted images “in Yosemite, and four other national parks in California, Utah and Oregon. The images appear to come from a New York state woman traveling across the west and documenting her work on Instagram and Tumblr.” (http://www.cbsnews.com/) Because of its age the Stone Lady qualifies as rock art, but this painted face is just bad – definitely vandalism, certainly not art. Shame on whoever did this!

NOTE: I want to thank Mary Merryman, Curator of Museum Archive and Collections, and Steve Mark, Historian, of Crater Lake National Park, Oregon, for their help and cooperation in preparing this post. Our tax dollars are well spent.

REFERENCES:

http://www.cbsnews.com/

Jefferson Public Radio, Southern Oregon University.

National Park Service.

Stone Woman of Crater Lake No Longer Mystery, The Fresno Bee, Sacramento Bureau, Fresno California, October 24, 1923.

www.craterlakeinstitute.com.

2014 CERTIFIABLE ROCK ART PREVARICATION (C.R.A.P.) AWARD:

After deep research and careful consideration, the coveted 2014 C.R.A.P. award goes to www.examiner.com for seeing through the NASA cover-up and breaking the story of the discovery of rock art on Mars by our Martian rovers. The first example is the petroglyph of a human as recorded in a photograph taken by the Martian rover Curiosity.

Martian petroglyph of a human figure.
http://www.abovetopsecret.com

“A video posted to YouTube (as seen above) by UFOvni2012 shows the petroglyph and compares it to several of the Earth engravings and paintings, noting its stunning similarity to terrestrial carvings from ancient Egypt and other millennia-old civilizations. Highlighting the humanoid image and its bracketing lines (one below the stick-man, two above, and all parallel), the video suggests that the petroglyph may well be part of a stone column of some sort.” (www.examiner.com) The author of this story noted its stunning similarity to terrestrial carvings from ancient Egypt and other millennia-old civilizations. (www.examiner.com)

Martian petroglyph of an encircled Celtic Cross.

http://www.abovetopsecret.com

It is not just this one particular image either; “But Curiosity isn't alone in producing photos that capture remarkable images. Last week, NASA's Opportunity rover, an exploratory vehicle that has been on Mars now for a decade, photographed an image that looked every bit like an encircled Celtic or Irish cross.” (http://www.abovetopsecret.com)

Isn't that the darndest thing, that looks sort of like the sort of artifact I would expect if the end of Curiosity's rock drill had been forced into a layer of dust on that rock surface? Luckily I have the savants at www.abovetopsecret.com to straighten me out and help me interpret it correctly - thank you colleagues!

In light of the ongoing cover-up of the truth of UFOs and Ancient Aliens by our government it is very surprising that they let this slip through into the media. It makes me wonder how they could have kept so many other important secrets for so long.

NOTE: RockArtBlog wants to apologize to all the other wonderful sites that picked up the stories of the rock art on Mars and ran with it. You all deserve to be included in this 2014 C.R.A.P. award; I am sorry I just could not compile a full list of resources on this subject, but you have all truly earned a full share of C.R.A.P.

SOURCES:

http://www.abovetopsecret.com

http://www.examiner.com/article/photo-ancient-petroglyph-of-human-found-on-mars-rock-by-curiosity-rover-video.

MERRY CHRISTMAS 2014

From RockArtBlog

Rain tree, from Hicklin Springs,

5BN7, Bent County, Colorado.

THE DOHENY SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITION TO THE HAVA SUPAI CANYON, NORTHERN ARIZONA, OCTOBER AND NOVEMBER, 1924, PART 2 - THE FIGHTING MAN AND ELEPHANT:

Hubbard's photograph of a man supposedly fighting

with an elephant in Havasupai Canyon.

On June 21, 2014, I posted a column titled DINOSAURS IN ROCK ART – THE HAVASUPAI CANYON HADROSAUR. In this I expressed my disbelief in the claims of creationists that there are rock art examples of dinosaurs that prove that humans and dinosaurs coexisted and interacted. The example I discussed in that posting, the Havasupai Canyon so-called “hadrosaur” was first recorded by the Doheny expedition in October and November of 1924. On December 13, 2014, I posted a column about that expedition entitled THE DOHENY SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITION TO THE HAVA SUPAI CANYON, NORTHERN ARIZONA, OCTOBER AND NOVEMBER, 1924. In this I gave more detail about the background for the publication of the astonishing claims of Samuel Hubbard.

This expedition was led by Samuel Hubbard, Honorary Curator of Archaeology at the Oakland Museum, Oakland, California, who also wrote the report that I quote below:

“The Doheny Scientific Expedition to the Hava Supai Canyon in Northern Arizona, was organized for the express purpose of bringing before the scientific world, certain discoveries relating to prehistoric man made by the writer in three previous visits to this isolated region.” (p. 3)

“This canyon was first visited by the writer in November, 1894, and in February and March, 1895. Most of the matters of prehistoric interest described in this pamphlet, were observed at that time but their true significance was not fully recognized. Endeavors were made at various times to interest scientists in this discovery, but without avail. - - - -

The fact that some prehistoric man made a pictograph of a dinosaur on the walls of this canyon upsets completely all of our theories regarding the antiquity of man. Facts are stubborn and immutable thins. If theories do not square with the facts than the theories must change, the facts remain.

Samuel Hubbard, Director of the expedition.

Oakland, California,

January 26^th, 1925.” (p. 5)

Not content with just finding a petroglyph of a standing dinosaur on this expedition, Hubbard also discovered a petroglyph supposedly showing a man and an elephant fighting.

Hubbard's outline drawing of his

"elephant" in Havasupai Canyon
showing the "crab claw" feet of a
bighorn sheep portrayal.

“THE ELEPHANT PICTURE

On the same wall with the dinosaur pictograph, and about 15 feet from it, we found a pictograph which was evidently intended for an elephant, attacking a large man. The elephant is striking the man on top of his head with its trunk. The wavy line represents water into which the man has retreated up to his knees. Both arms are upraised and the fingers are visible on one hand. The other hand holds something, the form of which is too vague to be determined. Because there are no tusks indicated our surmise is that it is a cow elephant.

The remains of elephants are very common all over North America and they are found from Alaska to Mexico. Three species are represented: the mammoth, the mastodon and the imperial elephant (elephas imperator) of California. -

We think it probable that the pictograph is intended to represent the California variety. It is apparent that if the man and the elephant are drawn to the same scale, the man is taller than the elephant. In other words the man is more than 14 feet high.

This prehistoric tragedy is significant of several things. Did the men of that day have a taste for elephant meat and prey on the elephant calves? The attack of an infuriated cow elephant whose baby has been slain can be easily understood.” (p. 15)

Crabclaw bighorn portrayal, Petrified Forest

National Park, Photograph Peter Faris.

Grand Canyon desert bighorn sheep,

National Park Service Photo.

The first problem that I see with the claim that this picture shows a human fighting with an elephant is that the supposed elephant appears to have long, relatively thin legs ending in the cloven hoofs of what Campbell Grant called “crab-claw bighorn sheep.” There is no possible way that the feet on this creature could belong to an elephant. Then we have to look at that problematical trunk of the elephant. It extends on past the head of the man farther to the left. If the man is 14 feet tall as Hubbard contends, then this elephant has a trunk that is around 20 feet long! I submit that Occam's Razor points to the improbability of a race of 14 foot tall men fighting toe-to-toe with elephants in prehistoric North America.

I am afraid that I have to ascribe the identity of the animal next to the human figure to the desert bighorn sheep species (albeit a very crude portrayal of such), which still lives in and around the Grand Canyon and are commonly seen there, a food species of considerable importance to the ancient inhabitants of the American southwest. It is clear that Samuel Hubbard led a very unscientific expedition.

SOURCE:

Hubbard, Samuel

1925    The Doheny Scientific Expedition to the Hava Supai Canyon, Northern Arizona, October and November, 1924, Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA.

THE DOHENY SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITION TO THE HAVA SUPAI CANYON, NORTHERN ARIZONA, OCTOBER AND NOVEMBER, 1924:

The Grand Canyon petroglyph in question.

On June 21, 2014, I posted a column titled DINOSAURS IN ROCK ART – THE HAVASUPAI CANYON HADROSAUR. In this I expressed my disbelief in the claims of creationists that there are rock art examples of dinosaurs that prove that humans and dinosaurs coexisted and interacted. The example I discussed in that posting, the Havasupai Canyon so-called “hadrosaur” was first recorded by the Doheny expedition in October and November of 1924 and here is an abbreviated version of that account from Samuel Hubbard's account of that expedition.

“The Doheny Scientific Expedition to the Hava Supai Canyon in Northern Arizona, was organized for the express purpose of bringing before the scientific world, certain discoveries relating to prehistoric man made by the writer in three previous visits to this isolated region.” (Hubbard 1925:3)

“This canyon was first visited by the writer in November, 1894, and in February and March, 1895. Most of the matters of prehistoric interest described in this pamphlet, were observed at that time but their true significance was not fully recognized. Endeavors were made at various times to interest scientists in this discovery, but without avail. - - - -

Havasupai Canyon hadrosaur,

Doheny expedition, p. 10.

Hubbard's conception of what the petroglyph

represents. Doheny expedition, p. 11.

The fact that some prehistoric man made a pictograph of a dinosaur on the walls of this canyon upsets completely all of our theories regarding the antiquity of man. Facts are stubborn and immutable thins. If theories do not square with the facts than the theories must change, the facts remain.

Samuel Hubbard, Director of the expedition.

Oakland, California,

January 26^th, 1925.” (Hubbard 1925:5)

                   

Hubbard's map. Doheny Expedition, p. 4.

“THE DINOSAUR PICTOGRAPH

The “Tobocobe Trail” after leaving the “Warehouse” at the Hill Top, makes its way for about six miles down Lee Canyon, a tributary canyon to the main canyon of the Supai. Just at the junction of these two canyons are the most important wall pictures so far discovered. –

The accompanying halftone, taken from a photograph made by Robert L. Carson of San Gabriel, California, gives a better idea of the figure than any description can possibly attempt to do. The fact that the animal is upright and balanced on its tail would seem to indicate that the prehistoric artist must have seen it alive.” (Hubbard 1925:7)

“That dinosaurs were in the vicinity, is proved by the tracks we discovered, which were identified by Mr. Gilmore as belonging to one of the carnivorous dinosaurs. These tracks were in the “Painted Desert” not over 100 miles from the picture.

The dimensions of the figure are as follows: Total height, 11.2 inches; greatest width, 7 inches; length of leg, 3.8 inches; length of body, 3.9 inches; width of body, 3 inches; length of neck to top of curve, 3.5 inches; length of tail (approximately) 9.1 inches, length of neck (approximately) 5.1 inches.

About a year ago a photograph of the “dinosaur” was shown to a scientist of national repute, who was then specializing in dinosaurs. He said, “It is not a dinosaur, it is impossible, because we know that dinosaurs were extinct 12 million years before man appeared on earth.” (Hubbard 1925: 9)

 Edmontosaurus (an early hadrosaur), by 

Mineo Shiraishi. museumvictoria.com

Diplodocus, wikipedia.org

In my previous posting of June 21, 2014, titled DINOSAURS IN ROCK ART – THE HAVASUPAI CANYON HADROSAUR, I pointed out that, while this petroglyph fit what was thought about dinosaurs at the time we now know that the figure is completely inaccurate according to today’s scientific knowledge. Far from being the limp nebbish shown, standing on his hind legs with his tail dragging on the ground behind it, modern paleontologists see the hadrosaur as running bipedaly with his tail straight out behind, and relatively rigid. So, while the image might have made sense as a dinosaur in 1925, it no longer does. The same goes for the tail of the diplodocus that Hubbard equates the petroglyph with. It stuck out straight and relatively rigid, and while it would have been able to swing from side to side it probably rarely dragged on the ground at all. The designation of this petroglyph as a picture of a dinosaur must be rejected on the basis of our current scientific knowledge. So sorry creationists, it just isn’t true.

SOURCE:

Hubbard, Samuel

1925    The Doheny Scientific Expedition to the Hava Supai Canyon, Northern Arizona, October and November, 1924, Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA.

Wikipedia

SPEECH SCROLLS IN ROCK ART?

Chaco Canyon, trail to Penasco Blanco, San Juan county,

New Mexico. Photograph Peter Faris, May 1994. 

A familiar convention in Mesoamerican art is the speech scroll, a curved line or shape in front of the mouth used to indicate that the possessor is speaking. We do know that the rock art creating peoples of Mesoamerica, including Aztec, Maya, and Zapotec, all had symbols to represent speech or sound. These we generically lump together under the title “speech scrolls”. Examples exist in stone sculpture, on painted pottery, and in the few remaining books that survived the Spanish destruction, the codexes. We also know that these peoples had influence on the cultures and rock art of the American southwest. With this in mind I have kept an eye out for the general shape of a Mesoamerican speech scroll in rock art.

Aztec god Xochipilli, p.4, Archaeoacoustics

 Graeme and Lawson, 2006.

Aztec Codex Boturini, Fig. 11, p. 39, The Road To

Aztlan, Fields and Zamudio-Taylor, 2001. 

The Mesoamerican speech scroll was a curved line or scroll found issuing from the mouth, or in the general area of the mouth. My assumption is that a speech scroll connected to the mouth would represent a sound being made (speaking) where a speech scroll that is not connected to the mouth would represent a sound that had been made (previous speaking), but this might just be over thinking the problem. They could, in fact, just be two variations of exactly the same thing, a generic vocalization.

The petroglyphs at the top of this posting are to be found in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, and bear an uncanny resemblance to many examples of the Mesoamerican speech scroll. Do they actually represent speech? I do not know, and we probably cannot know.  Indeed, without a figure in the picture to represent a speaker I must assume that it is unlikely that this was actually intended as a speech scroll. We do, however, know that there were contacts between the people of Chaco Canyon and Mesoamerican civilizations so there is the possibility that some of the imagery also made it to New Mexico. In any case it is fun to speculate.

Figure with speech scroll, carved
Mayan stela, from pu5h.info.

Mayan pottery cups with Camazotz, the bat god.

I have included some examples of Mesoamerican speech scrolls above for comparison, and below I have also included a European example of the same thing.

Figure with banderole (speech scroll),

Bernhard Strigel, 1506, Wikipedia.

As a side note, this phenomenon is also represented in our European art history as is explained in this comment from Wikipedia. “A speech scroll, also called a banderole or phylactery in art history, is an illustrative device denoting speech, song, or, in rarer cases, other types of sound. Developed independently on two continents, the device was in use by European painters during the Medieval and Renaissance periods as well as by artists within Mesoamerican cultures from as early as 650 BC until after the 16th century Spanish conquest. While European speech scrolls were drawn as if they were an actual unfurled scroll, Mesoamerican speech scrolls are merely scroll-shaped, looking much like a question mark.” (Wikipedia)

SOURCES:

Fields, Virginia M., and Victor Zamudio-Taylor,

2001    Aztlan: Destination and Point of Departure, pages 38 – 77, The Road To Aztlan: Art From A Mythic Homeland, edited by Fields, Virginia M., and Victor Zamudio-Taylor,

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles.

Scarre, Chris and Graeme Lawson, editors

2006    Archaeoacoustics, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge.

Wikipedia