Can you find the spiral petroglyph carved into a river rock in this sphere image? Look around. It's right there.

One of the things I love about petroglyphs is that nobody can determine who made them, why they were done or even when. The designs could be 100, 1000 or 10,000 years old. Most authorities agree they were made by prehistoric people - but they have been found all around our planet and certainly there was never one single prehistoric people whose culture included the secret of carving designs into solid rock. 

Some of the rock etchings show ancient sailing vessels - and that certainly offers a clue as to when they were made. But most of the etchings are abstract designs, like the spiral in this sphere image. The ancient artists liked spirals and they are found just about everywhere that petroglyphs have been found.

People who study this ancient artwork (Petroglyphologists?) have worked out some of the methods used and creating the designs wasn't easy - I mean petroglyphs don't seem, to me, like the spray painted graffiti done by lunatics or love-addled scratchings like "John loves Daisy" that infest our modern world. Petroglyphs were a serious effort taking time and care. No matter what kind of tool they used - and they didn't have metal tools - the rocks they selected to decorate (or at least the designs that survived) are normally very hard rocks. It took the artist a long time to do it. Days, maybe, or maybe weeks. 

Which brings me to the second aspect of petroglyphs I find fascinating. They are like little treasures, hidden in wilderness, quietly sitting there in the sun along a river or on a mountain side overlooking a valley. When you stumble upon one it is always a joy, "Hey, over here! I found a petroglyph!"

Judging from the locations where I have found them, I think the artists liked to do these when they were isolated and alone in nature - kind of like some ancient form of meditation.

I get a real thrill when I discover one - even more so when I smile at it in the lazy satisfaction of post-discovery and think how that spiral petroglyph there on that rock alongside the Riviere Dumbea in New Caledonia has striking similarities to petroglyphs found in the European Neolithic period, and on rocks in Mexico, Hawaii, Spain, Great Britain, Australia, Papua New Guinea.... How can that be????

Spirals, circles, crosses, stars, were popular designs with the ancient artists and often they are so similar  I can't imagine the art was not passed on from one artist to the next. But that's pretty unlikely. After all, how could neolithic humans from Europe pass on an artistic technique to an ancient artist in the Pacific Islands? Yet there it is, proof positive that long ago some human wanted to, and was able to, fashion a spiral on a rock when tools were, themselves, stones.

So, riddle me this - why a spiral?

I think I'll go look for some more.