Links to other Paint Rock sites. Click here to go to our Paint Rock home page. Click here to go to Paint Rock's own home page. Click Here visit Concho Valley Archeological Society. Click Here to Read an Article on Paint Rock. Click Here to Read About "Rock Art of the Texas Indians". Click Here to Read yet another old story about Paint Rock. A Thousand Years of Indian Pictographs at Paint Rock. Solar and Stellar Observatories Still Work Centuries Later. I first saw the pictographs in December of 2002 when I brought my cedar flute to play at the solstice observance. My flute playing was a big hit and I kept getting invited back and now have sort of become a fixture on solstice and equinox days. Being such a frequent visitor, I had many opportunities to see the paintings with my binoculars, since no one is allowed up on the sides of the palisades or cliffs where the paintings are. They are easily seen from the ground level even though they are 20 or more feet above you up the steep walls of the river canyon. Some of the images seemed somehow hauntingly familiar or reminded me of something but I didn't know what. On the solstice or equinox, we gather at the appropriate marker and wait for the ray of light and I play my flute for a while leading up to the event, a triumphant song during the event and a nice long closing song. They're not songs you've heard before, they're things I make up, but the crowd loves them and I get lots of compliments and even a few requests for a CD. Who knows? one of these days I may record some of my flute music and play it through the website. There are hundreds of paintings spread out over about a thousand feet - it's a great way to spend a day that you won't forget anytime soon. The Winter/Spring Sky Chart One painting in particular caught my eye and it featured a cute little triangular-shaped who guy seemed almost out of place with the other figures and was a darker color. It was beautifully painted and as an amateur astronomer, I noticed an interesting resemblance of the little guy to Orion that you see in the winter sky, but the other stuff looked like gibberish, but as it turned out, it is a picture of the night sky in winter and spring as seen by the Indians here. The Winter Solstice Marker There is another pictograph that is used as the winter solstice marker at Paint Rock. On the winter solstice, a ray of light caused by a crack in the rock overhead pierces the pictograph at the very center at exactly noon, local time. Pictographs describe 1054 and 1572 Supernovae Pictograph of 1054 Supernova in Taurus. Pictograph panel tells of supernova in Cassiopeia in 1572. These two adjacent paintings help confirm the 1572 Cassiopeia supernova explanation. There is another pictograph at Paint Rock that has gotten my attention. It is a rather complex set of images that contain a W-shape in several places , all within a few feet of the main panel. I knew that W shape was very familiar and I then noticed that every time the W was in a picture, so was a star-like image , always in the same place. This set me to thinking that it looked like Cassiopeia and I thought I remembered there had been a supernova there and I went home and looked it up on the internet and sure enough, there had been that observed as early as November 6, 1572 , observed by Tycho Brahe, the Danish astronomer and others and it was close to the spot shown in the paintings. A simple explanation is that the pictograph also shows stylized representations of other star groups in the area and a calendar showing it occurred in November - which it did, like a bud unfolding into a flower. This supernova was bright enough to be seen in daylight for a couple of weeks and became as bright as Venus. This would have shaken up the local folks when something that spectacular pops up out of nowhere. This would have been a very alarming experience for them and worth such a prominent place among the rocks. After a few weeks it began to dim and slowly changed from bright white through yellow, orange and red and disappeared from sight after 16 months. Today it emits little or no visible light but is a strong source of X-rays. It's gaseous remnants are expanding very fast at about 9 times faster than the 1054 Supernova's gas cloud and is round rather than elongated (see Photo). After it disappeared from sight, nobody knew where it was until it's location was rediscovered in 1960 and recently photographed with what amounts to an X-ray camera. A more comprehensive explanation is that the pictograph has two halves, one on either side of a natural crack in the rock on which they are painted. On the far left side of the crack is a flower, the W that represents Cassiopeia and a picture of a turtle in a double circle and a sun around the rim of the double circle. The developing supernove must have resembled a flower opening up in blooming and thus it was painted as such - a great silent flower of incredible brightness in the sky. Anthropologists say the turtle in the rings is a symbol for the 13-month lunar year as observed by the Indians with the turtle's nose always pointing the first moon in the new year (the first moon after winter solstice) and if that is so, then the sun being shown in the 12th month would indicate that the event being portrayed occured in November of our calendar, which it did. The left side of the panel; therefore, appears to show when in the year the event happened. On the right side of the crack are stylized representations of other star groups in the area to show where in the sky the event ocurred. The leftmost symbol, looking like a dead tree with two big branches appears to represent portraying two of our constellations as one; they are Persius and Auriga. There are two diamond-like shapes in the painting and there are two diamond-like shapes that care formed by stars in the area(see illustration). The W representing Cassiopeia is next and the supernova is shown as a large cross, which is how it looked after it began to settle down after the initial explosion. The rightmost object appears to be a stylized turkey which is formed using pretty much the same stars as our astronomer used to form Cygnus the swan, however these Indians knew only turkeys but not swans. By the difference is appearance of the supernova , I surmise that there was about a month difference in when they were painted, the left one immediately at the time of the discovery of it in the sky. These star charts show the locations of the 1572 supernova in the sky and the possible identification and locations of the other images in the pictograph. A Petroglyph of the 1572 supernova found at Las Lunas, NM. Paint Rock has the first known aboriginal images of the 1572 supernova in North America or anywhere else, but now I believe I have found a petroglyph at Tome Hill, near Los Lunas, south of Albuquerque, with Cassiopeia being portrayed as a rattlesnake (see picture). Now that archeoastronomers have some idea of what to look for, perhaps others will be found. It should be a little easier to find things once you know what to look for. The Paint Rock pictograph and the Tome Hill petroglyph each show the supernova in slightly different places than Tycho's illustration, which is the closest to the actual location, indicating to me that the supernova was so bright that it obscured nearby stars and the artists were estimating it's position relative to Cassiopeia. This petroglyph at Las Lunas, NM, May also portray the 1572 Supernova if the rattlesnake was how the locals saw Cassiopeia, and I think it was. Notice how much brighter the warrier's shield is than the rattlesnake. The person who pecked this out was trying to tell us something. The Supernova was too bright not to have been recorded by many cultures but we have to try to look through the images to the underlying symbology. The star is shown in somewhat different places by all the artworks, perhaps because the star was so bright that its light faded out the nearby stars so they probably couldn't see its exact location until a few weeks after the pictographs/petrographs were done. Other yet undiscovered sites will probably similar discrepancies for the same reason. NASA false color X-Ray photo of the remnant of the supernova on Sept. 12, 2002. The nova faded out completely leaving no visible trace after a few months, but today it is a very strong X-Ray source but does not emit light in the visible part of the spectrum and is known to our Eurocentric world as Tycho's supernova. This pictograph and petroglyph are important in that they tell about a known event at a known time and was corroborated by Europeans (Tycho Brahe) at the time. The event was the supernova of November, 1572 that occurred near Cassiopeia. This is important because it gives anthropologists and archeologists a known landmark. The same thing applies to the pictograph, correctly interpreted by Dr. William Yeates, a retired physicist who has written books about Paint Rock and a couple of other pictograph sites in Texas, showing the 1054 supernova in Taurus. These two pictographs give us a date range for the site. We know it is at least as old as 1054 and was still active at recent as 1572. The Jumanos were eventually supplanted by the Commanches and was probably abandoned around 1800 or so, based on when we begin to see Euro-American graffiti on the rocks. By the end of 1870s all the surviving Indians (Commanches) in the area were rounded up and sent up into Oklahoma, ending around 12,000 years of local history and beginning a whole new chapter. The Hueco Tanks pictograph site near El Paso has images that go back several thousand years and so we might find some that are very old as well. Indian cultures all had unique styles of arrowheads, spear points and other projectile points and so maybe different cultures had different styles of painting pictographs and we may one day learn the ages of more of the images as we learn more about the people who made them. There are many other pictographs there depicting many things, some known, some unknown. Since it is art we are free to let our minds roam and see if we can find an explanation that makes sense and fits the images in the pictographs. It is an exhilerating feeling to figure out something that has befuddled people for so long. Since I am an avid amateur astronomer, I can see some things in some pictographs that people with less of an astronomical backgroud would have to have pointed out to them. I gladly do so since it helps us to understand what the artist was trying to convey. There is another painting I am helping to decipher and it shows a healthy vigorous corn plant and below it, a bright sun and a wilted corn plant. I have attributed this panel to refer to the Green corn moon and the dry corn moon, the moons of June and July, respectively. These were great celebrations among corn growing indians who planted the three sisters of Indian crops, corn, beans and squash. There are many, many more pictographs worth taking the time to look at, take pictures of and ponder over, all of them worth the trip, time and money. It's a great way go back a thousand years in time and to get away from the rat race for a while. We will be adding some new pictures soon showing the solstice and equinox indicators on the actual days so you can see them still working centuries after they were painted. We're just getting started with this page. In the meantime - - : Click here to see more pictures of the pictographs and get more information about Paint Rock March 25, 2003 It's spring again and the wildflowers are everywhere on the ranch in dense clumps and in dazzling arrays of colors. Even Mother Nature celebrates my annual spring haircut. Because I work outside, I let my hair and beard grow long for warmth during the fall and winter and get sheared short in the spring since that's cooler. I play my Choctaw cedar flute at Lake Brownwood as a prelude to the Easter sunrise service every year and the mountain-man look kinda adds to the aura of the flute music drifting through the woods in the gray predawn. The incredibly rich and soothing flute music makes the long wait of the early arrivals go easier and I have received many compliments. I also played the Choctaw cedar flute at the Winter Solstice of 2002 and Vernal Equinox of 2003 celebrations at the pictographs site at Paint Rock, Texas. Paint Rock is a place which many native peoples over the centuries have treated as a holy place and painted many symbols on the cliff walls above the banks of the Concho River. Observations have confirmed some of these rock paintings to accurately predict the solstices and equinoxes and some that appear to be astronomical/astrological sky charts as well. Chiefs, Shamans and spiritual practicioners of several tribes still come here to this special place to perform their rituals, usually alone because it's not done for show, though sometimes one will chant his chant and make his offerings oblivious to the presence of others. Over the centuries, Paint Rock has been home to many different cultures and so no restrictions are placed on native religious ceremonies nor is any form of disrespect permitted. Fred and Kay Campbell have done everything they could to preserve and protect this place and these rock paintings. They lead personally guided tours at $5 for adults and $3 for children but they encourage the observance of the solstices and equinixes; however, so there's no admission or other charges at all for the solstice and equinox celebrations. Call them at 1 - (325) 732-4376 and make a reservation for a tour and plan to spend some quality time in a special peaceful place on the banks of the cool Concho river. You'll learn some things about the Indians who lived here long ago that will surprise you. Feel free to bring a picnic basket and leave nothing but footprints in the dust and take nothing but memories and photographs. You'll come away with a peaceful feeling that might even change your life. I hope this does not sound like a commercial; it's not. Paint Rock is not for entertainment like a powwow, but is a special place where one can commune with nature and meditate in a place that lets you feel an uncommonly strong connectedness with Mother Earth and all her other children. It feels as if some part of the spirits of those who were here before are still here. It is an invitation to open the eyes and ears of your soul to hear the stories of those whose innumerable campfires dot the night sky and whose names can never be said again. One comes away with a feeling of spiritual fulfillment and personal contentment. There are some places that just seem to have some kind of spiritual electromagnetic attraction. This place is one and so is "the Garden of the Gods" rock formations in Colorado. April 3, 2004 I played my Choctaw cedar flute again this year at the Paint Rock Pictograph site during the winter solstice and again during the vernal equinox and discovered the meanings of some of the pictographs. Some of them were ritualistic, such as the paintings that honored the Green Corn Moon and the Ripe Corn Moon, two of the biggest celebrations of the year among corn growing indians. Some of them were of astronomical significance, such as those depicting the supernovae of 1054 and 1572 and one that was a beautiful map of the winter/spring sky. Another was already known to be a reliable marker for the winter solstice. It's a real "Aha" moment when you finally figure out a pictograph. What was a mystery for a few centuries is suddenly clear. What irony that the deity gives us the longest days only when the sun is at its hottest as if daring us to use the time working outside. When I was young and strong and wanted to rule the world, I could have easily worked out in it all day. But now that I am older and just want to get away from the world, I can no longer tolerate being out in the Texas sun all day, so I cower inside during the heat of the day and work outside in the mornings and evenings. During siesta time in the information age, we surf rather than nap, most days. Bob Phillips' Texas Country Reporter did a story on me and the garlic for their long running TV program - click here to see the 6:28 video on youtube: Bob Anderson Garlicmeister, a self-inflicted title for amusement only. Photo courtesy of Bill Yeates. 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