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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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello there, this is Craig the Natural Medic and I am
outside of Parowan, utah, whichis in southwestern Utah, close
to St George and Cedar City andat the Parowan Gap Petroglyphs
Pretty interesting sight.
The Parowan Gap itself lookslike this.
It's actually a gap through therocks of an old, ancient

(00:21):
riverway that has long sincedried up.
Up here on top of the rocks area number of petroglyphs.
Hang around with me and let'stake a closer look at these.
So the Native Americans thatwere here whenever the Europeans
arrived to this area were thePaiutes.
They call the people that werehere that left these symbols on
the rocks, the Winoos, which arethe first settlers of the

(00:46):
native people, their ancestors.
If you zoom in, you can see abetter perspective of these many
symbols on the rock.
This is a sacred site to thePaiute and the Hopi, so visit
with reverence and think aboutthat.
The interesting thing aboutthis particular site is it tells

(01:08):
a story of a great journey bythe southern Paiutes.
This symbol here on the rockshows a migration pattern.
You're traveling from the oldworld to the new.
Lots of interesting symbolshere and the things you may have
seen in other videos that Iposted about petroglyphs that I

(01:31):
have visited over the pastseveral years.
You have the familiar cornstalks.
You have different astrologicalastronomy type symbols up there
, along with some other thingsthat might be familiar.
If you're looking at this upahead, I'll give you a brief
summary.
You're looking at a movement ofthe sun, the moon and the stars

(01:54):
.
That's what this line istracing and it's also showing
the Parowan Gap itself, thevalley, the summer solstice,
types of things.
Let's take a closer look at thepanel and the glyph itself.
The glyphs himself, in summary,tells the story of the old

(02:15):
world to the new transition.
It was a long trail that manyexperienced famine, drought,
water crossings, cold ice, sunand a great leader.
When the leader was arriving inthe new land, he was killed and
the arrow was inside of hishead indicates that he would die
.
The full petrograph depicts theleader and shown as only a head

(02:35):
and body.
No arms upside down indicatethat he died.
The leader itself shows righthere down, showing that he died.
He has a pex representingsplashing water to show he was
killed in the water.
So very interesting how thisturned out.
If you want to pause the videonow, you can take a look and see

(02:57):
all the detail of this.
Okay, this was studied byarchaea astronomer noel and
archaeologist V Garth Norman.
They studied this in the early2000s and determined what it
actually meant, and thisgrouping of petroglyphs

(03:17):
represents a lot of astronomicalknowledge.
Now the Hopi people look at ita little bit differently, but
similarly to the Paiute.
They describe their connectionswith the people of long ago
which migrated through theParoan Gap to Hopi, to Wanasavi,

(03:38):
which is the spiritual centerof the earth, of the earth, and
they represent the covenant withMasah.
The earth guardian, which Ibelieve is represented by this
symbol, is up here on the rock.
If you zoom in, that particularsymbol is up there.

(03:58):
I don't see where at this point, but maybe you can point it out
there.
There is a similar type symbolright there.
If I do see it, I'll add it tothe video here.
So this archaeological site,these petroglyphs here, were
placed on the National Registerof Historic Places in 1969.

(04:19):
They represent the work of theFremont people and the southern
Paiute cultures and representthe work of the Fremont people
and the Southern Paiute cultures.
Petroglyph sites are likely aworking of many individuals over
a long time period, not reallydone by any particular group or
individual.
They were just done over aperiod of time by different
tribes that visited here.
So if you look at this panelhere, you can pause the video if

(04:44):
you want to take a closer look.
This is the first time I'veseen the symbols interpreted on
a panel that tells you whatthese things mean.
The Paiute Indian tribe of Utahprovided the interpretation of
the petroglyphs.
Let's take a look up on the rock.
If you look at the nearest oneson this rock face right here

(05:06):
you're looking at this kind ofwide almost looks like a fan
that's showing the snow fallingAbove, that is showing water and
there's water also coming downand you have also two eyes.
That's kind of hard to see fromhere, but above the looks like

(05:27):
a parallelogram with some littlefingers on top of it.
Right above where the snowfallpetroglyph is, there's eyes up
there which are showing thatit's a guardian or a watcher.
The other side, over here we'relooking at prospering he to

(05:49):
prosper when the roof wasbrought low.
I don't know what that means,but a lot of this was probably a
broad representation of some ofthe thoughts and things of the
people that were here, maybe notparticularly meaning any
particular person, but maybe thetribe as a whole.
So there's some more up here onthis little rock face where

(06:11):
this little crack is.
There's additional ones abovethis near rock right there and
then there's some local graffitithat was put there At some
point.
We don't really know.
You might be wondering howthese are made and it actually
talks about that.
You can also pause the video tosee this closer.
But basically petroglyphs aredifferent than pictographs.

(06:32):
Pictographs are made with sometype of a paint like berries or
animal, animal substance, sand,rock, whatever they can make
into a paint type substance.
Petroglyphs are pecked into therock using tools.
The tools they would haveavailable to them would have
been antlers, bones, rocks,things like that.

(06:54):
They would not have had steelor any metal really until they
had contact with the Europeans.
But basically there's threedifferent ways they did it
Pecking, which was basicallyjust making those little marks,
so a direct strike or indirectstrikes.
Incising and scratching, whichis a sharp-pointed tool.

(07:16):
Or braiding, which is justrubbing it back and forth.
And the panel.
As we've seen throughout thisvideo here, the panel represents
a grouping of symbols that meana particular message or
relationship to other panelsnearby.
Yeah, looking at this righthere, the first Europeans, which

(07:37):
were mostly Mormons, coming tothis area of Utah, led by Parley
Pratt.
He was one of the commissionedleaders for scouting new
settlement sites commissionedleaders for scouting new
settlement sites and he madecontact with the Ute leader,
chief Wakara, who referred tothis area as God's own house.

(08:03):
Just two years later, theyestablished Parowan as one of
the first settlements insouthern Utah.
One of the things to think aboutis what is a relic or historic
inscription and what isvandalism?
Right over here on this rock,you have some historic
inscriptions.
Looks like a tombstone rightthere, which is pretty

(08:24):
interesting.
Zoom in a little bit.
You have HSH in 1882, hyatt1887.
It's 1839, maybe, or I'm notreally sure if that's 1939, not
really certain.
But nowadays you don't want totouch any of these, whether this

(08:44):
is the historic writings hereor the petroglyphs themselves.
You don't want to damage thoseoils on our skin.
It's illegal, so don't do that.
Interesting thing here istalking about wildlife images.
I don't specifically see otherthan some birds like bird tracks
right up here.

(09:05):
If you zoom into this oneplease zoom into this one you
can definitely see some birdtracks going up on the right
side there.
I did see some sheep earlierwhen father escalante was
traveling through here as partof the Escalante expedition
which came from Santa Fe andtried to go to California

(09:27):
unsuccessfully.
He did discover a lot of things.
He saw lots of bighorn sheep,compared them to domestic sheep
and after a long decline inthose they actually are coming
back now.
So pretty neat.
As I've said before in othervideos, they use this to kind of
keep a record of what they sawin their environment in their

(09:48):
life.
So if you look over here wehave what's called a mimeograph,
the piute sun, god, whichatz orTobatz that might be his mouth
right there where that littlecave is, and then his face goes
up here.
The thought was that he ate thesun in the wintertime and the

(10:08):
sun appears here in this gap onthe first day of summer.
Isn't that wild to think about.
Their thought process was soaligned with how nature changed
and moved around them that theypatterned their movements and a
lot of their life by that.
If you look here you can almostsee a face right there.

(10:31):
There's the mouth, nose, eyes,that kind of stuff up at the top
Pretty wild.
This panel here talks about thegeology of the site.
In short, there was an uplifthere as a river or stream was
eroding, creating this gap.
This talks about the peoplethat made the petroglyphs and

(10:53):
this talks just in generalorientation to the site and
reminds you again not to disturbor damage the glyphs.
So what do you think about thisplace?
Did they purposely build this?
Just because it was the rightplace at the right time?
That's pretty fascinating tothink about.

(11:16):
We think about our modernsociety and how we are very
closely tied to our machines andcomputers and how that helps us
, but we've gotten away from thenatural 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, aquestion, make sure to leave it

(11:37):
below.
Below, give it a thumbs up ifyou like this video so I get out
to more people.
We'll see you next time on thetrail.
Bye, bye.