I Climbed Ancient Carved Steps, and Uncovered a Complete Mystery

recently I ventured into a canyon in the American southwest searching for a specific rock art panel left by the Ancients what I assumed would be a routine day of exploring became far far more compelling when I discovered ancient steps carved into Solid Rock curious what was up there I made the climb [Music] what I found still baffles me today well hey there everybody thanks for tuning in it's Andrew from Desert Drifter of course all right here is the object of our mission today this big canyon man it's uh it's a little deeper than I expected couple pretty cool Towers over here I knew that somewhere in this area there was a break in the cliff band that would allow me access to the canyon finding it took some trial and error what is going on okay so if that thing ends there's no way this is just kind of a you don't want to fall zone it's easy but you don't want to fall thinking I'd found the route I began descending eventually though I got cliffed out out heading back up I looked for other options little real life trial and error okay turned into a little bit more of an adventure than I thought it would but this for sure I think third time is the charm here yeah it gets a little tight under there up under here check out these uh I think they're Ripple marks in the Sandstone here I think they're from when this was laid down by water you know however many years ago oh right let's see [Music] here it's not hard it's just uh awkward good thing for a durable backpack huh woo okay think we are pretty Cruiser from here on out all right we are down now in the canyon I headed towards the first spot I had wanted to check out there's the towers from another perspective I came in sort of over in that corner when I was dropping in I could see this Big Al Cove up here and so that was kind of where I headed for my first stop take a look over here I've wanted to see this site for a while it's pretty cool to to see it in person it's it's honestly more impressive than I thought it would be so there's two things that really stand out to me uh and make this thing really impressive the first is the size I guess the best thing I can do is just put my hand up close to it to give you a little bit of an idea now we never want to touch these things because um the oils from our hands you know cause this paint to degrade and break down over time so now stepping back I mean you can see you know my hand is just about the size of his foot so then you look all the way up I mean that figure is a good probably five to 6 ft tall you've got the the very obvious you know red paint but do you guys see all the yellow that's around him it's it's kind of like I don't know like an aura around him look at his hand up there there's six fingers coming off that so this seems like it's something from the night sky Comet an asteroid shooting star you know there's something different with this feet too that left one I don't I don't really know what's going on there this rock art would be classified as barrier Canyon style it's perhaps the most mysterious of all ancient Southwestern art this particular panel is a very unique example of it how old is it well you'll see estimates ranging from a th000 to 7,000 years old pretty big gap huh attempts to use radiocarbon techniques to date this style haven't been very successful hence estimat being all over the place I continued down the wall finding a lot more although much of it was very Faded by time [Music] so I climbed up a little bit higher just kind of working my way along this um this Cliff band and I was given those two towers across way kind of a closer study and I was like gosh one on the right it really looks like a face and uh I don't know how I missed it earlier but there's like a little eye up there you know like a little natural Arch so I'm down along this Al Cove now there's where I was looking for some shade and there are a ton more of these like barrier Canyon style figures these ones are very hard to make out again these ones a little bit more noticeable and then the very very clear possible to miss is this guy down here this is where things really get interesting I paused in the shade to get the Drone out and take a closer look at the towers across the way maybe I've been staring at too much rock art but I couldn't shake the thought that this one on the right has a very uncanny resemblance to big sheep petroglyphs you'll see in this region here's a few examples from previous trips sure it's not a perfect match but you've got the snout the neck the eye we'll revisit that in a bit I started flying the Drone back from an aerial view I could see there was quite a ledge above me I had a flashback to a site I found months ago it was another Al Cove it had a ledge and there was rockart on top of [Music] it it blew my mind because of the difficulty of access so for the heck of it I started flying along this [Music] Edge you can imagine my astonishment when once again I saw more ancient rock art on another dangerous ledge were my eyes Playing Tricks on Me Maybe it was natural coloration what else was up there and why was it there oh my gosh this is this is becoming a bit insane and so after seeing that and being like is that you know is that a figure up there I came around to take a closer look at this this like ramp that goes up take a look at this so given the lighting on this right now I don't think I would have noticed these to be honest unless I had you know been looking for it you see that like little dimple there and you follow it up there's two more there's a few more above it and a few more above it and there at the top you know they sort of Fade Out um and there's also you know I'm kind of just noticing it's like a different color Sandstone there are you know almost like on that inside you know I don't know if they're supposed to be more footh holds hand holds or what but they just seem too evenly spaced to be to be accidental can I climb that I have to take a look for e so here's my plan if that was just like exposed slab you know I wouldn't do it because although none of it is necessarily hard in terms of rock climbing I mean that upper part's maybe I don't know it's hard to say maybe 5'7 5'8 um so it's it's not that it's like really hard Elite climbing um but it's like you mess it up you're done for so um you know it's high consequence very high consequence up there I mean you're probably 75 ft off the bottom so you know you fall it's a good night but the reason I'm not bailing is you've got this huge crack that runs along it so my thought is once it gets kind of sketch up in that region what I think I'm at least going to attempt is to stick a leg in this crack and then using what climbers would call like off withth technique off withth climbing see if I can shimmy myself up on top to that ledge and if I can't you know I'll bail um you just got to make good decisions up there you know but if the ancient ones could do it I got to admit I want to try so I'm going to try to prop the camera up down here um because obviously I'm going to need all my hands [Music] so I got into the the crack a little below me taking a little break you know you can kind of find these natural resting places so here's a closeup like all of them look like they've been packed in taking a little break it's hard work so you can see it's pretty wide so honestly if it was a little less wide it would be quite easy just wide enough it makes it pretty hard work also a better climber would make this a lot easier too so you see it's it's kind of like there's these hand holds chiseled here's kind of the last little toe hold that I see it definitely Mellows in steepness about maybe 8 ft above me for well I'm a little bit stubborn it was definitely not pretty but we are up here there's there's my stuff my backpack somewhere down there um so let me show you guys the ledge so up here now I mean I don't know it's a good 5T wide or so let's see where that figure oh is this it right here so everything is is really hard to see up here cuz it's so faint the figure is like right over here probably looking at it through the drone's going to be a better perspective but I mean looking at it up close tricky to film um but there he is that is clearly a figure so those steps are clearly man-made I mean there's there's zero doubt about that um I mean looking across the canyon I mean of course these are the things that really Tower above I spent some time on the ledge looking very closely at everything up there I stopped at this large Boulder it it was possible to get past it but nothing seemed to be Beyond it the ledge also got significantly smaller from there and eventually tapered out all together let me go ahead and downclimb this it's actually not going to be uh as bad as you might think because I can kind of use just like canyoning um like friction down climbing technique so here's what I mean you know I'm just jamming my foot in there so now that I'm on the ground let's talk about this what's going on here let's start by summarizing what we do know this Al Cove as well as the nearby walls have a lot of rock art stylistically most of it is probably from the late archaic time period so conservatively 1500 to 2 200 years ago maybe older there are steps clearly made from stone tools pecked into Solid Rock gaining access to this ledge seems important although faded there is at least one clearly made barrier Canyon style figure on the ledge across from all of this are two Stone Towers one of which has an uncanny resemblance to a big horn sheep an animal revered by Native Americans for Millennia so what do I make of all this here are my thoughts the most mundane explanation would be that the steps were made by some enterprising young Warrior you could imagine young men of the tribe climbing it to impress the ladies watching below but I don't buy it and here's why the general belief is that art was very significant to these cultures it held a revered status and only certain people could create it for certain reasons you didn't just give a kid some pigment and tell him to go keep himself busy for the afternoon the sheer quantity and type of Art in this specific area leads me to think there's a deeper meaning to it all I do think these towers across the canyon have something to do with it exactly what I don't know I'll say it again that one on the right is so unique I mean it looks like an animal was this Tower some kind of a stone God that promised success on the hunt did the ledge serve as an altar a place to leave offerings but I think about the very unique figure below who seems to have an astronomical object nearby is this a clue perhaps the towers create some kind of alignment with the night sky or the Sun at a particular time of [Music] year an astronomical calendar can't be ruled out but would take significantly more study what about the figure on the ledge I couldn't help but notice he is perfectly framed in this vertical streak almost like he is being transported up or down from the heavens is this figure a clue I wondered if he aligned with the large figure down below so I checked with the Drone close but no is there more art up there than just this guy honestly it was really hard to tell there were so many very faint or faded areas that were just inconclusive [Music] here's a couple examples they're interesting but they don't have the clean lines this one does or the obvious head and triangular shoulders I'm guessing they're natural with the Drone I also noticed this very faint triangular image I was surprised I had missed it but then realized it was in the vicinity of where I was transitioning from the crack to the face so I was preoccupied is it the remains of another pictograph again I think it's too hard to say what do you see on the wall obviously we can't rule out the fact that there could have been more art up there and it's just disappeared with time I sat at the bottom for a long time considering these things it made me wonder what will people be asking about us in a couple thousand years the more you find the the more you realize you don't know the Journey of Discovery continues without answers I started hiking back

Channel: Desert Drifter

Views: 329,988

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Id: -m-i2w3jkuY

Length: 22min 49sec (1369 seconds)

Published: Fri May 31 2024