The Inside Passage -- Petroglyphs

The Inside Passage -- Petroglyphs

    A few posts back I mentioned that I was walking along a beach known for its exposed and almost camouflaged petroglyphs, and began talking with a man who mentioned that there were similar petroglyphs in Puerto Rico (as it turns out, he was also a passenger from the ship and we had a brief but interesting discussion about other civilations and their designs, particularly those in the area of Tulum from Mayan history).  At the time (and to be honest, still), I knew little about Puerto Rico but there is indeed quite a history of the Taino people and their carved symbols throughout the country (the Fodor's guidebook recommends one particular spot, a rock at La Piedra Escrita, that has over 52 petroglyphs carved onto it).  As I would later discover, many of these petroglyph symbols are located throughout the world, from Sweden (Sweden???) to Korea, Ireland to the Bering Sea.  And it all began on a beach in Alaska.

One side of Petroglyph Beach in Wrangell, Alaska

    The island of Wrangell was renamed by Russian explorers from the original Tlingit native name of Khatkhanna.  A small town, easily explored with one bar, several shops and only recently, six miles of paved roads.  My wife and I ventured for a kayak tour, an introduction really to the back-breaking art of kayaking (this said as a newcomer to the sport) out to a small island then once around and back.  Five miles we were told, but our dual-seat kayak made our dual-paddling against the wind one way then against the current the other, a less than memorable trip that saw us happy to be returning to shore (the water was actually quite warm and shallow so we only saw gill net fisherman and a few eagles being harassed by a murder of crows, murder being the biologists' given name for a bunch of crows).  But perhaps the most interesting part of the kayak journey were the student and teacher pair guiding the trip...stop at Petroglyph Beach, they told us.  A short walk from the ship...worth seeing.  He was retired but a former teacher of history on the island...how bad could it be (in this small town, there was little to push "tourist" things since it wasn't really a destination stop for cruise ships).  And off we went, not expecting much, really.  But as with much of Alaska, we were to be surprised...

One of the display signs before entering the beach

    The beach itself is rather rocky, as if a decades or centuries of tidal wash has planted all sorts of craggy boulders and large chunks of driftwood.  But a rather elaborate deck and educational display has been set up, asking quite interesting questions on their boards and pulling you into the search for petroglyphs, all waiting just a few dozen feet below.  What do these symbols mean, where did they come from, were there more buried in the sand (one was discovered as the decking was being built), were there more further up the coast buried under ice, did they have any connection to other cultures?  Did the early native Tlingit population carve these or were they from an earlier time?

One of the carvings on Petroglyph Beach

   Then you step onto the beach, a smattering of rocks of all shapes and sizes and then...a petroglyph!  Then another?  People walking alongside you tell you of others, and you try to tell them of some that you had spotted, but they disappear almost as quickly as you spot them.  As you can see by my own photos, I tried to figure out (in my non-scientific way) was there a directional meaning, the symbol on a rock facing a certain way (in the Hawaiian culture, chants used such symbols says Nature Conservancy scientist, Sam Ohu Gon: ...one chant says that when the wiliwili tree is in bloom, the sharks are biting.  Biologically, that means, in the season when the dry-forest tree blossoms profusely, the sharks are mating and extra-aggressive.  That kind of information is all through Hawaiian chants. 

   The more one walked along the beach, the more one discovered.  And apparently the residents (and tourists) were quite happy to leave well enough alone, no pilfering, no graffiti, only the search or so it seemed to us.  The display early on had recreated several of the petroglyphs for rubbing, all in an effort to preserve what was left of these symbols, some of those on the beach being more worn away than others.  But you could find them everywhere it seemed...and what did they mean?  

    Nearby, young girls were selling chunks of rock with embedded garnets, taken legally (for it is only by permit) from the nearby Garnet Ledge as a fundraiser for their local church (and the children told us that only the children were allowed to sell them, a salesforce in the making)...were these symbols directing other clans to these rough stones?  In listening to a lecture from Professor James McWhorter on linguistics, he mentioned that language began roughly 150,000 years ago (as a compromise, many scholars accept 80,000 years as a figure but tend to prefer the earlier number), whereas writing began just 6,000 years ago.  His lecture follows the evolution of guttural sounds to actual words and how certain consonants became weaker ("h" and "n" in particular) or stronger.  Did much the same happen with the petroglyph symbols, evolving into sign language then perhaps written language?  And what lay further north as the temperature cooled and ice began to build?  Would there be discoveries to confirm a land bridge crossing of ancestors leaving directional signals to future travelers, the icy path of the Bering Sea slowly giving way to a watery blockade, a time frame as old or older than the symbols left behind?  And more importantly, what caused so many peoples from all over the ancient world to decide to leave their mark in stone (in this case, said the display, some were left below the high tide mark so would only be visible as the water receded)...and what was lost? 

    We may never know, for even as the display signs suggest, even scientists are only speculating at what these carvings are telling us.  There is no Rosetta Stone for these symbols (yet), and trying to tie them all together is something that has been going on for years.  But even if a pattern emerges, it will likely remain speculation, a part of our human history etched in stone by ancient tribes and clans and civilizations, a massive puzzle left for our comings and goings, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.  Someone, somewhere, stumbled upon this beach and made the decision to share it, to tell others about it, and others decided to also share it.  And luckily for us, it was one more example of the discoveries waiting for us along the Inside Passage, a brief history of time nestled quietly on a beach.

This is what you see, some carvings quite visible and others waiting to be uncovered.  What lay further ahead?