These are reproductions of petroglyphs from somewhere in the American Southwest. I don’t know exactly where the originals are located, because the creators of the book in which I saw these illustrations wisely left out accurate descriptions of where the archaeological sites can be found.

I wonder what a typical reaction would be from people exposed to these rock surface carvings: I speculate there might be many assumptions about extra terrestrials? Something along the lines of “imagine if these were aliens that visited and then a caveman drew them!?!”

This lame narrative about alien visitors is one that occurs over and over even from the hands of otherwise brilliant and creative people and it reveals a disappointing lack of imagination and perception. Looking around at the world and observing the embarrassment of riches, biological and cultural, the animal and human engineering, the plethora of ingenuity, the superabundance of exquisiteness, the lavishness of wonder … I don’t understand why I would ever feel the need to suggest, by way of an explanation, “maybe there are aliens?!”

I find that a much more intriguing perspective is «what if there aren’t aliens?!»

If you can’t see that the world is — as it is — mind boggling fascinating, then you are blind and banal.

Maybe these petroglyphs were simply depictions of beetles and other bugs that the artists found fascinating. Some sort of entomological archive. Maybe a caveman or a cavewoman looked around at the breathtaking scenery surrounding them and thought to themselves — as we all ought to think — «sweet mother of god…what an absolutely wonderful world!»

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