Sunday, April 18, 2010

Petroglyphs 6000 miles and Several Thousand Years Apart

I've recently been scanning some slides I made at Lake Baikal, Siberia about 15 years ago and discovered some shots of petroglyphs on the western shore of the lake. They looked strangely familiar, so I dug out some photos of petroglyphs I had shot in Canyonlands National Park in Utah. The similarity is amazing. Two different cultures - the Anasazi dating back a few thousand years - and the unknown people from the Baikal region whose origins may go back several thousand years. Lake Baikal is more than 6000 miles from Utah.

I suppose it's possible that similar kinds of depictions could evolve in different cultures, but still this similarity is intriguing. It does seem to lend more credence to migration of people from Asia to North America.

The first two photos on the left are from Baikal. The bottom one of red sandstone is from Utah. Click to enlarge any of them

All photos © Boyd Norton





















2 comments:

  1. Yep - same vintage and background. I always tell people that my Ancestors all came from Oldupai, then they ask, where the hell is that!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Interesting stuff, Boyd, glad I happened to notice this blog.

    ReplyDelete