When were the petroglyphs and pictographs made?
Images have been carved and painted onto rocks for many thousands of years. In North America and Mexico, some rock images may be as much as 10,000 to 12,000 years old. Other rock images are probably less than a few hundred years old. To many Native people in North America, the petroglyphs are immeasurably old. They are considered an integral and inseparable part of the landscape created at the beginning of time. There is currently no widely accepted method of exact dating for petroglyphs and pictographs. Some attempts have been made to extract DNA from pictographs where organic materials were used to adhere the paints. In general, through relative dating based on pottery styles and Pueblo murals, there have been attempts to place images into general blocks of time. Relative Dating by Depiction We know when the time periods related to the widespread use of the atlatl (spear thrower) and the bow and arrow. If these images are depicted we know approximately when the image may have been ma
