BLACK MOUNTAIN COMPLEX PETROGLYPHS

War and Fighting

 

Humans are violent animals; war, fighting and violence are facts of life and there is no reason to believe that the ancient Native Americans were any different. The violence within a culture is as much a part of the culture as any other component. More advanced

civilizations place limits upon the violence they are willing to tolerate,

but make no mistake, this is not a utopian world and never has been.

Much to the dismay of the 'peaceful' anthropologists, when ancient authors documented major events, more often than not the subject being documented was some level of violence, up to and including war. These ancient authors recorded periods of both War and Peace.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                  WAR                                   PEACE

 

The symbol for war is two arrowheads touching point-to-point. The opposite of war is peace, represented by two arrowheads set base-to-base. The symbol for peace forms a diamond, unlike the fraudulent 'Peace' symbol of the 1960s, the points face away from each other and the bases may or may not touch. These two symbols are at the extreme ends of the violence spectrum. The following are symbolic representations of violence at various levels, beginning with a verbal altercation:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

            1                      2                       3                              4                            5

 

The symbols above represent ancient violence escalating from (1) verbal altercation, to (2) fighting, (3) all out war, (4) genocide, and finally (5) peace. These symbols are seen throughout the Complex and in various sites throughout the country. The potential for these symbols to mean the same thing everywhere is very high, but more commonly the symbols resemble one of the following:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                   A                         B                         C

In most petroglyphs depicting violence the difference between the two opposing forces is rarely documented by 'coloring', as in image 'A' above. The standard outline, image 'B', seems to be the more commonly employed symbol, while image 'C' (with the interior of the symbol pecked out) seems to be very rare.

 

This may be due to an economy of effort on the part of the author, or the same 'coloring' within both arrowheads may suggest that the violence is between two groups within a larger organization.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The pattern above demonstrates how ancient authors recorded alternating periods of War and Peace. The patterns below demonstrate the more common versions of the same message.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The common theme here, with exceptions, is that war and violence are global and timeless. The difficulty of translating ancient American Indian histories is not because the ancient Native Americans had no forms of writing, but because of an unwillingness to admit that humans are humans, with all their human frailties, including their propensity for war and an abiding lust for glory.