The GCAS's informal name for the site of our December field trip was inspired by the three separate petroglyphs of three different fish in three different places. Every reader of this here blog is invited to ponder the images and give us their opinions of what species of fish each image may represent. Over there on the right is Fish Number One - a stand-alone petroglyph about 22 inches across by 10 inches high, more or less. (No one measured.)
Fish Number Two on the left here, is part of a large panel. She measures about 12 inches long by about 4 inches high. Look at the position of the fins - dorsal, pectoral, pelvic, etc. Any fisherpeople out there who would hazard a guess as to what kind of fish this girl is and where she may have swum?
The last fish is the biggest fish. Fish Number Three is a stand-alone petroglyph of about 5 feet long by 18-20 inches high. Couldn't get a photograph of the full image because I wasn't going to hoist my arthritic self up into that split boulder it was pecked into, but Joseph Gendron was game. It's a fairly simple outline of a type of fish that looks familiar to me -- and looks to have been etched into the rock as a natural-size fish. Thoughts, anyone?
Some GCAS members suggest that these three fish images represent freshwater fish that locals may have pulled out of the Rio Grande or other nearby freshwater source some ten or so centuries ago. Other GCAS members - your faithful webmaster included - believe that because of the positions of the fins, two out of the three images represent marine fish. What say you?
/s/ webmaster
Comments