Part 4: Reading the symbols on the wall

Once I remembered that little book I bought on a whim in the airport on my way home from Albuquerque, New Mexico, it was a matter of finding the story hidden in it. It's a little 32-page pamphlet called the "Easy Field Guide to Rock Art Symbols" and it's esentially a touristy trifle which seems to be more entertainment than science.

It showed all these crude symbols and what modern anthropology thinks they might have meant. It has a map of the four-corners region and says it was most likely the extinct Anasazi who carved or etched into rock with the acidic juice of cactus these petroglyphs. "What were they trying to say? Why did they say it?" the book asks in it's introduction. The last sentence of the introduction which leads into the first translation goes, "Among numerous theories, some are...", a disclaimer if I ever heard one.