When I’m hiking in areas with petroglyphs, one thing that I find curious is how few petroglyphs there are. Even though communities lived in those areas for thousands of years, there’s only a relative handful of petroglyphs carved into the rocks. That’s curious when compared to the huge quantity of graffiti carved into the same walls by modern visitors. But also I wonder how did the petroglyph writers practice their craft? Some of the drawings are pretty intricate. I can’t imagine that an ancient person just dove into wall carving and came up with these elaborate drawings on their first effort. I would have expected to see walls covered with lots of practice drawings and doodles as the ancient people learned the carving skill and worked out which drawings to make, which tools would work best, etc. Modern artists will typically have many old sketch pads where they work out various techniques to have the skill to create actual art pieces. Where are all the “sketch books” for petroglyph writers?
And some of them are amazingly simple. Maybe the artist(s) did the simple ones for practice, then moved on to more complex figures. Given that we know less than jack about the who, why and largely how the petroglyphs were carved, anything we say will be pure speculation.
They had gathering spots where they practiced on smaller rocks and stones, many of the smaller ones have been carried away by tourist over hundreds of years. Also many of the ones done out in open were washed out over time.
Carving stone would seem to be very time-consuming, particularly for nomadic people who have to go forth to find food almost daily.
Also it would have to be a site near food sources (like the river valley near Painted Rock) but less subject to weather that would deteriorate the carvings (dry? Less frost cycle?), for us to see them today.
Many of these petroglyphs aren’t exactly “carved,” that is to say, the rock itself isn’t signficantly gouged into. Over tens of thousands of years, the rocks develop what’s called “desert patina.” If I remember correctly it’s mostly the remains of lichens. To create petroglyphs, they would simply scrape away the patina. Because it’s SO easy to create a permanent marking, idiot tourists often scrawl their names right next to (or worse, on top of) the 10,000-year-old images… And there’s nothing we can do to undo the damage, we can’t just re-apply 50,000 years of fossilized lichen.
They probably also weren’t “drawing” directly with their carving tools. You’d first make the drawing using some sort of pigment on the rock, and then when you were satisfied with it, you cut away where you marked.
I seem to recall reading that some petroglyph sites involved carvings that were “refreshed” periodically during various rituals and rites, so in some cases it wasn’t a matter of writing new petroglyphs it was re-tracing ones already there.
Practice might have started on sand, dirt, or smaller stones (only the latter would leave evidence) before a person would be expected to re-trace existing images.
I do know the cave paintings at places like Lascaux have both very complex and refined images and some areas that seem much more like the practice you’re wondering about, along with handprints and such. These survived better than practice rocks because they were deep in a cave rather than out in the open, subjected to weathering and humans repurposing them for other things.
Desert varnish. Ranging from a reddish brown to almost black color, due to iron oxide. Age dating petroglyphs is difficult, I think archaeologists try to use context within other artifacts. “Newspaper Rock”, on the road into the Needles district of Canyonlands, shows numerous petroglyphs, one notable glyph with an Indian on horseback shooting a bow and arrow at a deer. This would have to been made well in historical times, after the introduction of horses during the Spanish exploration in the 1500s. Another famous petroglyph near Moab has been thought to be perhaps a record of an Elephant, not a Mastodon. The Barnum and Bailey’s Circus did visit and travel by train through the area in the 19th century.
While the petroglyphs are interesting, I kind of like the Pictographs moreso, the so-called shield or “barrier” style pigment style. What’s cool is either can be found throughout the region, in most unlikely spots. Always a treat to find one.
I think everyone in this thread is talking about petroglyphs in the US southwest, but there are petroglyphs elsewhere. The ones I’ve seen in Hawaii are definitely carved fairly deeply into the rock.
I suspect the real issue is that the vast majority of drawings by ancient peoples will have been destroyed and what we see now is very much just the “tip of the iceberg” that happens to have been preserved.
Probably, ancient artists did most of their drawings on wood or bark or rock that was exposed to weathering or using pigments that were not weatherproof etc. All of that has disappeared and left a relative handful of drawings that were sheltered and stable enough to remain in existence.
In caves, I guess that lack of artificial light (beyond a rush lamp using valuable animal fat) would limit your output. In fact it’s amazing how much was achieved in some locations.
As an artist, I would draft my sketches outdoors on a less durable medium ( clay, leaves, my other hand) and then dive in to the cave for the final ‘print’.
Interesting point made early on about the fragile but long-lasting lichen coating though.
Bear in mind that almost certainly cave paintings aren’t common today because that’s where most painting was done. It’s just where paintings survived.
Similarly there is no reason to think that people who lived at the time of so called cavemen much lived in caves. It’s just that caves are the only place signs of their existence remain.
As an artist myself, I’d say this is a pretty safe bet. It’s how I would do it.