Valley of Fire Petroglyphs - Why Were Petroglyphs Made iN Southern Nevada And The Valley Of Fire?

What Are They Anyway?
It is difficult to say what petroglyphs 'are'. That depends upon whether an emic or etic view is taken. An emic perspective would propose to look at these images as the people who created them would view them. The etic perspective looks at cultural remains such as petroglyphs from outside of the culture of the individual that made them.

An example of an etic perspective might be to call petroglyphs 'rock art'. The person who made the petroglyph, may not have been trying to create art. The term art is usually applied to the expression and communication of an unusual or individualistic form. That is not likely with these images because often they do not seem to be made for their beauty and they are consistently of a limited range of images. There could be art in that but it could be something else.

In the middle ages stained glass 'art' was used to communicate Biblical stories and scenes. It is art in the sense that we can appreciate the craftsmanship and skill of the creators of these things and that pleasing (generally) to the eye. This is what we could think of as art being used by religion to communicate its message in best format available to it. The images and stories are made to appear beautiful and attractive and thus draw a favorable response from the intended audience.

Sometimes religious art objects are imbued or thought to have 'special' significance, that they are holy and closer to the deity in some way which gives the owner or user of that object better access to their deity. We see examples of that at some Christian shrines, or at 'sacred' places where there are objective representations of Christ, Mary or various saints. Some of these places or objects are said to even have healing properties.

In much the same way certain places and representations of objects are considered beneficial in other cultures. If it is possible to to an emic view of Indian cultures that live in this region and view the world as filled with a deity for each life form, mountain, river or pretty much anything in nature that can be referred to rather than a universe that is headed by a single supreme deity.

In that world a tree has or is a deity. As everything in nature would have a spirit or deity of some kind, some deities or spirits of course would be more powerful than others. If we hunted mountain sheep and depended on them as a source of vital food contacting or appeasing the spirit or deity of the mountain sheep might be considered a necessary prerequisite for availing oneself of this resource.

In other words if we want to successfully hunt sheep we would ask the sheep spirit or deity first and thus continue hunting sheep successfully. This is what would be called the 'hunting magic' explanation for the images at places like Atl Atl Rock.

There are other theories and as time permits I will write about them.

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