User:Hdfilmnoir/Mesa Prieta Petrogylphs

Mesa Prieta Petroglyphs New Mexico More then 10,000 years ago hunters and gathers roamed the 12 mile long escarpment in the northern Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico. During the Archaic Period 1,000 to 7,500 years ago people began to carve images on the mesa’s black basalt boulders. They are abstract except for human and animal handprints and foot prints.

Around 1,200 A.D. a large number of agricultural Puebloan people came to the Rio Grande Valley from the Masa Verde area. They created tens of thousands of images here are some of them from our part I series.

The historic Period began on the Mesa in 1598 when the Spanish arrived at near by Ohkay Owingeh. Over the next three centuries, thousands of petroglyphs of crosses and even lions where etched into the rocks.