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55-579: Winnemucca Lake is home to several petroglyphs long believed to be very old. In 2013, researchers dated the carvings to between 14,800 and 10,500 years ago. Either date would make them the oldest known petroglyphs found in North America. The carvings lie within the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation . Note: There is another lake, having the same name of "Winnemucca Lake" in California, near

110-514: A petrograph (or pictograph ) is a rock painting. In common usage, the words are sometimes used interchangeably. Both types of image belong to the wider and more general category of rock art or parietal art . Petroforms , or patterns and shapes made by many large rocks and boulders over the ground, are also quite different. Inuksuit are not petroglyphs, but human-made rock forms found in Arctic regions. Petroglyphs have been found in all parts of

165-463: A seminomadic lifestyle, moving from place to place following animal migration patterns and seasonal foods. They lived in small, independent groups that consisted of a handful or so of different family units. Upon arrival of foreigners into western Nevada, the Northern Paiute became sedentary in order to protect themselves and handle negotiations with the new settlers. Because of their change from

220-554: A core in Pyramid Lake to establish a window of when the lake level was low enough to allow access to the rocks. Sedimentary cores were collected from nearby Pyramid Lake and subjected to analysis to determine rise and fall of the waterline over time. More precise methods of dating would have required taking scrapings from the grooves of the petroglyphs, which was not allowed by the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. However, Benson

275-412: A figure in the eyes of the public by making claims of being a princess and using this attention to advocate for her people. Shamanism is popular among most Native American tribes, including the Northern Paiute people. A shaman is a medicine man called a puhagim by Northern Paiute people. The Northern Paiute believe in a force called puha that gives life to the physical world. It is the power that moves

330-477: A fire and cared for it until the fire grew bigger and bigger. The water from the flood dried, and a man "happened." This man was called Nűműzóho, who was a cannibal. The Cannibals (as he and his kind were called) killed all the Native people, except for a woman who was able to escape. This woman kept herself alive by traveling from place to place in the region, meeting and staying with different characters. She then found

385-589: A fire. The season for story-telling in the American West was during the winter months. The elderly members of the tribe would animatedly and humorously tell the tale from their memory as told to them by previous elders and family members. They were told “as a way to pass on tribal visions of the animal people and the human people, their origins and values, their spiritual and natural environment, and their culture and daily lives.” The stories were often poems that were performed musically, called "song-poems." Members of

440-688: A landform or the surrounding terrain, such as rivers and other geographic features. Some petroglyph maps, depicting trails, as well as containing symbols communicating the time and distances travelled along those trails, exist; other petroglyph maps act as astronomical markers. As well as holding geographic and astronomical importance, other petroglyphs may also have been a by-product of various rituals: sites in India, for example, have seen some petroglyphs identified as musical instruments or " rock gongs ". Some petroglyphs likely formed types of symbolic communication, such as types of proto-writing . Later glyphs from

495-455: A man living in the mountains whom she married. They bore four children: two Paiute (one brother, one sister) and two Pit Rivers (one brother, one sister). The two sets of children fought frequently because they were from different tribes. Their father (some think he was a Wolf) threw them in different waters. This caused them to go their separate ways while continuing to fight and quarrel whenever they came in contact with each other again. And thus

550-406: A nomadic to a sedentary lifestyle , women were relied upon more heavily for both their full-time employment and at-home work. In some modern Northern Paiute tribes, men work in "seasonal jobs on the ranches, in the mines, and as caretakers in the nearby motels" and women work "in the laundry, the bakery, in homes and motels as domestics, and in the country hospital". They gathered Pinyon nuts in

605-826: A temporary rock shelter were noticed adjacent to a Murugan temple which is in ruins on top of the Kothaiyurumbu hill. During recent years a large number of rock carvings has been identified in different parts of Iran. The vast majority depict the ibex . Rock drawings were found in December 2016 near Golpayegan , Iran , which may be the oldest drawings discovered, with one cluster possibly 40,000 years old. Accurate estimations were unavailable due to US sanctions. The oldest pictographs in Iran are seen in Yafteh cave in Lorestan that date back 40,000 and

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660-497: Is at an elevation of 1,150 m (3,770 ft), which is below the water level of adjacent Pyramid Lake. Winnemucca Lake may have been dry when John Frémont came through in 1843–44. Frémont's 1844 map indicates that he traveled to the west of Winnemucca Lake and does not map the Winnemucca Lake valley. The Elko Free Press reports that there was a flood in 1862 that filled the lake to 80 feet (24 m), but Russell states that

715-762: Is harder to explain the common styles. This could be mere coincidence, an indication that certain groups of people migrated widely from some initial common area, or indication of a common origin. In 1853, George Tate presented a paper to the Berwick Naturalists' Club, at which a John Collingwood Bruce agreed that the carvings had "... a common origin, and indicate a symbolic meaning, representing some popular thought." In his cataloguing of Scottish rock art, Ronald Morris summarized 104 different theories on their interpretation. Other theories suggest that petroglyphs were carved by spiritual leaders, such as shamans , in an altered state of consciousness , perhaps induced by

770-692: The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, several individual colonies gained federal recognition as independent tribes . Humans have inhabited the area between the West and Northwest of the United States for over 11,000 years. One version of how the Northern Paiute people came to be is that a bird, the Sagehen (also known as the Centrocercus ), was the only bird that survived a massive flood. The Sagehen made

825-631: The Nordic Bronze Age in Scandinavia seem to refer to some form of territorial boundary between tribes , in addition to holding possible religious meanings. Petroglyph styles have been recognised as having local or regional "dialects" from similar or neighboring peoples. Siberian inscriptions loosely resemble an early form of runes , although no direct relationship has been established. Petroglyphs from different continents show similarities. While people would be inspired by their direct surroundings, it

880-560: The Pyramid Lake War of 1860, Owens Valley Indian War 1861–1864, Snake War 1864–1868; and the Bannock War of 1878. These incidents generally began with a disagreement between settlers and the Paiute (singly or in a group) regarding property, retaliation by one group against the other, and finally counter-retaliation by the opposite party, frequently culminating in the armed involvement of

935-450: The Reno area, Washoe people. Later, the government created larger reservations at Pyramid Lake and Duck Valley , Nevada . By that time the pattern of small de facto reservations near cities or farm districts, often with mixed Northern Paiute and Shoshone populations, had been established. Starting in the early 20th century, the federal government began granting land to these colonies. Under

990-614: The U.S. Army . Fatalities were much higher among the Paiute due to newly introduced Eurasian infectious diseases , such as smallpox , which were endemic among the Europeans. The Natives had no acquired immunity . Sarah Winnemucca 's book Life Among the Piutes (1883) gives a first-hand account of this period. The US government first established the Malheur Reservation for the Northern Paiute in eastern Oregon. It intended to concentrate

1045-646: The slough connecting it to Pyramid Lake ) was built, Winnemucca Lake dried out and has remained seasonally dry since the late 1930s. In 1936, Franklin D. Roosevelt invoked the Migratory Bird Conservation Act to create the Winnemucca Migratory Bird Refuge as a "refuge and breeding ground for migratory birds and other wildlife." In 1940, the name was changed to the Winnemucca National Wildlife Refuge. In 1962,

1100-436: The 20th century, gender roles began to shift. Men worked in seasonal jobs and the women mainly worked in laundry and medicine. The shift happened because the men that worked seasonal jobs would not have work at the end of a given season, while women had consistent work. This made women a major provider in the family. Another shift came in the shape of politics. While some women disrupted tribe meetings, Sarah Winnemucca became

1155-652: The Americas is known as the "Horny Little Man." It is petroglyph depicting a stick figure with an oversized phallus and carved in Lapa do Santo , a cave in central-eastern Brazil and dates from 12,000 to 9,000 years ago. Northern Paiute The Northern Paiute people are a Numic people that has traditionally lived in the Great Basin region of the United States in what is now eastern California , western Nevada , and southeast Oregon . The Northern Paiute pre-contact lifestyle

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1210-578: The Cannibal who kills almost all of the Indians but not the woman; Coyote is "the one who fixed things," mentioned briefly in many of the origin stories; a man and a woman who meet and bear four children; the four children who are paired off into different tribes and quarrel with the other pair. The creativity in which the stories were told is part of the reason for such an array of versions. These epic stories were first told long ago to large groups gathered around

1265-698: The Carson pass (coordinates: 38°40'10.80"N, 119°59'36.59"W). Winnemucca Lake is a sub-basin within the Lahontan Basin in northwestern Nevada . It lies east of Pyramid Lake and is on the dividing line between Washoe and Pershing counties. The lake bed lies between the Lake Range on the west and the Nightingale Mountains and Selenite Range to the east. Winnemucca Lake is about 45 km (28 mi) long and about 7 km (4.3 mi) wide. The lake bed

1320-685: The Nevada/California area in which they currently reside. They also may have overthrown and destroyed other Indian tribes in order to inhabit their current lands. For example, the Paiute were almost "continually at war" with the Klamath south and west of them. "The Achomawi, south of the Klamath, also were enemies of the Northern Paiute, (so much so that) the earliest wars related in Achomawi oral tradition were (with) Northern Paiute". Sustained contact between

1375-443: The Northern Paiute and European Americans began in the early 1840s, although the first contact may have occurred as early as the 1820s. Although the Paiute had adopted the use of horses from other Great Plains tribes, their culture was otherwise then largely unaffected by European influences. As Euro-American settlement of the area progressed, competition for scarce resources increased. Several violent confrontations took place, including

1430-440: The Northern Paiute community. The Northern Paiute believe that doctors/shaman retrieve the souls of those who have committed wrongdoings and re-establish them in to Native American society. They are the intermediaries between the evil acts of the sick and the goodness of the healthy tribe. For this reason, Northern Paiute do not perceive white doctors as capable of fully healing those in need because although they may be able to cure

1485-546: The Northern Paiute there, but its strategy did not work. Because of the distance of the reservation from the traditional areas of most of the bands, and because of its poor environmental conditions, many Northern Paiute refused to go there. Those that did, soon left. They clung to their traditional lifestyle as long as possible. When environmental degradation of their lands made that impossible, they sought jobs on white farms, ranches or in cities. They established small Indian colonies , where they were joined by many Shoshone and, in

1540-451: The Paiute were created and their homes established in Nevada, California, and Oregon. Another version of the creation story tells of a man and a woman who heard a voice from within a bottle. They dumped the contents of the bottle out, and four beings dropped out: two boys and two girls. The 4 people were divided by good and evil. The two good people (Paiute) were to be protected and cared for by

1595-652: The Witwatersrand studies present-day links between religion and rock art among the San people of the Kalahari Desert . Though the San people's artworks are predominantly paintings, the beliefs behind them can perhaps be used as a basis for understanding other types of rock art, including petroglyphs. To quote from the RARI website: Using knowledge of San beliefs, researchers have shown that

1650-681: The art played a fundamental part in the religious lives of its painters. The art captured things from the San's world behind the rock-face: the other world inhabited by spirit creatures, to which dancers could travel in animal form, and where people of ecstasy could draw power and bring it back for healing, rain-making and capturing the game. Tunisia Eight sites in Hong Kong : Kethaiyurumpu, Tamil Nadu. Situated 28 km north west of Dindigal, Tamil Nadu nearby Idaiyakottai and six km south west of Oddanchartam has revealed several petroglyphs mostly represent abstract symbols on two rocks, which looks like

1705-437: The boulders. Petroglyph A petroglyph is an image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading , as a form of rock art . Outside North America , scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions of the technique to refer to such images. Petroglyphs, estimated to be 20,000 years old are classified as protected monuments and have been added to

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1760-548: The designs had been carved into a branch form of tufa , a type of limestone. The research showed that the limestone was deposited between 16,200 and 14,800 years ago, but no specific date for the carvings was suggested. In 2013, a team of researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder (including Benson) collected carbonate crust and shallow-water algal formations from the site. They then used radiocarbon dating strontium isotope analysis and total inorganic carbon data from

1815-422: The elements, plants, and animals that are a part of that physical realm. Humans are seen to be very much a part of that world, not superior or inferior, simply another component. The Northern Paiute people believe that "matter and places are pregnant in form, meaning, and relations to natural and human phenomena." This belief gave credibility and placed necessity in shamans, as it does today. In order to draw upon

1870-743: The estimated age of the Spirit Cave mummy found nearby. Either date range would make the petroglyphs the oldest found in North America to date. The older date would roughly correspond to the estimated time of the first human migrations into North America and to remains found in Paisley Cave , Oregon . Previously, the oldest carvings in North America were thought to be those estimated to be 7,300 years old found at Long Lake , in Oregon. The rocks include both simple petroglyphs such as straight lines and swirls and more complex petroglyphs that resemble trees, flowers, or

1925-822: The globe except Antarctica , with highest concentrations in parts of Africa, Scandinavia and Siberia, many examples of petroglyphs found globally are dated to approximately the Neolithic and late Upper Paleolithic boundary (roughly 10,000 to 12,000 years ago). Around 7,000 to 9,000 years ago, following the introduction of a number of precursors of writing systems , the existence and creation of petroglyphs began to suffer and tail off, with different forms of art, such as pictographs and ideograms , taking their place. However, petroglyphs continued to be created and remained somewhat common, with various cultures continuing to use them for differing lengths of time, including cultures who continued to create them until contact with Western culture

1980-558: The level was low in 1862. In 1865, Winnemucca Lake (then known as Mud Lake ) was the site of the Battle of Mud Lake where 29 soldiers from the 1st Nevada Volunteer Cavalry Battalion led by Captain Almond B. Wells (and two civilian guides) killed 29 Smoke Creek Indians. At least two of those killed were women, possibly more. Sarah Winnemucca wrote "I had one baby brother killed there. My sister jumped on father's best horse and ran away. As she ran

2035-592: The mountains in the fall as a critical winter food source. Women also gathered grass seeds and roots as important parts of their diet. The name of each band was derived from a characteristic food source. For example, the people at Pyramid Lake were known as the Cui Ui Ticutta (meaning " Cui-ui eaters", or trout eaters). The people of the Lovelock area were known as the Koop Ticutta , meaning "ground-squirrel eaters" and

2090-467: The oldest petroglyph discovered belongs to Timareh dating back to 40,800 years ago. Iran provides demonstrations of script formation from pictogram, ideogram, linear (2300 BC) or proto Elamite, geometric old Elamite script, Pahlevi script, Arabic script (906 years ago), Kufi script, and Farsi script back to at least 250 years ago. More than 50000 petroglyphs have been discovered, extended over all Iran's states. The oldest reliably dated rock art in

2145-486: The outer shell, the inner shell will decay and be lost, leaving the person dead in reality. A shaman, however, would take an ill person (physically or spiritually ill) and use the power from the universe to heal him. In many cases, a shaman will utilize various mediums, such as a rattle, smoke, and songs, to incite the power of the universe. Estimates for the pre-contact populations of most native groups in California have varied substantially. Alfred L. Kroeber thought that

2200-752: The people of the Carson Sink were known as the Toi Ticutta meaning " tule eaters". The Kucadikadi of Mono County, California are the " brine fly eaters". Relations among the Northern Paiute and their Shoshone neighbors were generally peaceful. There is no sharp distinction between the Northern Paiute and Western Shoshone or Sosone . Relations with the Waasseoo or Washoe people, who were culturally and linguistically very different, were not so peaceful. These differences in lifestyle and language could be because Northern Paiute may have moved from southern regions to

2255-464: The petroglyphs may represent meteorological symbols such as clouds and lightning. Benson's team suggests the Winnemucca Lake petroglyphs share several distinctive features in common with the Long Lake petroglyphs that are not found in more recent petroglyphs. How the petroglyphs were created is not known. One possibility is that hard volcanic rock was used to chip away at the softer carbonate formations on

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2310-604: The powers of nature and the universe, shamans would frequently visit sacred sites. These sites can be found throughout the Great Basin and the American West. They include "mountains, caves, waterways, and unique geological formations." One such site is called the Parowan Gap and is sacred to the Paiute (see image). These sacred sites are where shamans performed many of their duties, including curing, rainmaking , warfare, fighting, or sorcery ." Shamans were and are an integral part of

2365-490: The refuge designation was removed, making this area the first refuge designation lost because of lack of water. The western end of Winnemucca Lake is home to several boulders carved with petroglyphs that lie within the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation . The site, officially designated 26Wa3329, was first described by Connick and Connick in 1992. The team, Frances and Robert E. Connick , classified it as unusual, and possibly very early. In 1994, geochemist Larry Benson determined

2420-723: The soldiers ran after her but thanks be to the Good Father in the Spirit land my dear sister got away. This almost killed my poor papa." The maximum level of the lake was 26 meters (85 ft) in the 1880s Winnemucca Lake was a shallow tule -filled lake and an important stop for migrating waterfowl . After the Derby Dam was built on the Truckee River in 1903 (the first project of the Reclamation Act ), and State Route 447 (which blocked

2475-501: The tentative list of UNESCO 's World Heritage Sites . Petroglyphs are found worldwide, and are often associated with prehistoric peoples. The word comes from the Greek prefix petro- , from πέτρα petra meaning " stone ", and γλύφω glýphō meaning "carve", and was originally coined in French as pétroglyphe . In scholarly texts, a petroglyph is a rock engraving, whereas

2530-467: The tribe chanted and acted out the stories to the beat of a drum with people dancing. The Northern Paiute origin story, among many other important and formative legends, was passed on orally from tribal elders to younger tribe members and from grandmothers and grandfathers to grandchildren. Many of their stories and much of their history is passed on orally even today. Gender roles among the Northern Paiute did not stand out in society. Men and women divided

2585-403: The use of natural hallucinogens . Many of the geometric patterns (known as form constants ) which recur in petroglyphs and cave paintings have been shown by David Lewis-Williams to be hardwired into the human brain. They frequently occur in visual disturbances and hallucinations brought on by drugs, migraine , and other stimuli. The Rock Art Research Institute (RARI) of the University of

2640-485: The veins of a leaf. There also is an intricate diamond pattern on one rock. The smallest are approximately 8 inches (20 cm) in width, while the largest are 3 feet (0.91 m). Grooves are approximately .4 to .8 inches (1.0 to 2.0 cm) deep. The carvings are deeper and larger than those typically found in the Southwestern United States. The meaning of the carvings is unknown. The Connick team suggested

2695-406: The waterline began to fall about 15,000 years ago, reaching a low approximately 13,300 years ago. At about 13,200 years ago it rose again, and had intermittent low periods thereafter (from 11,300 to 10,500 according to one method, or from 11,500 to 11,100 according to another). The broad consistencies among the various dating methods allowed the research team to conclude the petroglyph rocks were above

2750-551: The waterline, and thus available for carving, from 14,800 and 13,200 years ago and between 11,300 and 10,500 years ago. Additionally, the younger date range is consistent with the date of textiles previously found within the Winnemucca sub-basin (dated as old as 10,700 years ago) and the date of various human artifacts previously found within the Lahontan Basin (dated from 11,000 to 10,400 years ago). The younger dates also align with

2805-502: The woman while the two bad people were subject to the man. The two sets of pairs (good and bad) left the man and woman. Each pair created fire: the two good people made a fire with minimal smoke, the two bad people made a fire with thick smoke. This made them enemies, even before foreigners plotted them against each other later on. War and strife have existed ever since. While several other variations of these stories are told, they all share some similar events and characters. Namely Nűműzóho

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2860-424: The work between each other the most traditional way: women made household tools, gathered fruit and seeds, cooked, cleaned, cared for the children, and made the clothing, while men hunted and protected their families. Men also taught their sons how to hunt and fish as a means to pass on a survival skill. Both sexes took part in storytelling, artwork and medicine, and traditional medicine. As the Northern Paiute entered

2915-495: Was allowed to use non-invasive techniques to examine the petroglyphs that allowed him to work to the side of the carvings. The research was published in the Journal of Archaeological Science . Dating of the lowest (newest) carbonate crust yielded a date of 10,200 to 9,800 years ago. The algal formation dating suggested the waterline was sufficiently low from 12,600 to 11,400 years ago. The sedimentary core analysis of Pyramid Lake showed

2970-485: Was made in the 19th and 20th centuries. Many hypotheses exist as to the purpose of petroglyphs, depending on their location, age, and subject matter. Some petroglyph images most likely held a deep cultural and religious significance for the societies that created them. Many petroglyphs are thought to represent a type of symbolic or ritualistic language or communication style that remains not fully understood. Others, such as geocontourglyphs , more clearly depict or represent

3025-427: Was well adapted to the harsh desert environment in which they lived. Each tribe or band occupied a specific territory, generally centered on a lake or wetland that supplied fish and waterfowl. Communal hunt drives, which often involved neighboring bands, would take rabbits and pronghorn from surrounding areas. Individuals and families appear to have moved freely among the bands. Northern Paiute originally lived

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