Animal image in the Rock Petroglyph Park Gabriola Island BC Canada
There are more than seventy known petroglyphs on Gabriola and surrounding islands. Carved into large sheets of sandstone bedrock, or on isolated boulders, they occur in groups and at the tide line, others, well back from the shore, or on hillsides above. Some are deeply incised, others barely legible. Some are realistic, others are combinations of human and animal shapes. Still others are indecipherable, or give rise to arguments about their intent. Most lay hidden under layers of soil and moss until the 1970s, when they began to be uncovered by home-builders, loggers, and road construction. Several have come to light many more remain hidden. We do not know when they were , perhaps, as recently as 100 years ago, while others may date from the earliest occupation of the ,000 years ago or more. We do have some idea how they were carved (from observations made elsewhere on the coast in the 19th century). An outline of the carving was first "pecked" out on soft sandstone as a series of small holes, using a sharp pebble. After the outline was complete, the holes were joined into a groove by abrading the stone between them, possibly with the same sharp pebble. In 1996, the Gabriola Historical and Museum Society, with other groups both on and off Gabriola, became increasingly concerned about the condition of the islands' petroglyphs. The soft sandstone on which they are found is exposed to weathering, traffic, rubbings, and vandalism, and some had become much less legible as a result. Because they were scattered all over the islands, protection of the sites by shelters or staff was prohibitively expensive. Instead, the Society decided to make reproductions of the petroglyphs, copied from rubbings made at the time of their rediscovery, and to put these in a small park on the museum grounds, where it was hoped they would divert traffic from the sites of the originals.
Size: 5130px × 3407px
Location: Gabriola Island Strait of Georgia Pacific Rim BC Canada North America
Photo credit: © David Gowans / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: aboriginal, ancient, animal, art, beliefs, carvings, culture, exposed, gabriola, heritage, historical, human, images, indecipherable, indians, legible, legiblility, man, museum, nation, petroglyph, places, reproductions, rock, rubbings, sacred, sandstone, shapes, snuneymuxw, society, soft, tradition, traffic, vandalism, weathering
