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ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1936 



crossed lines, and rectilinear "gridiron" figures and others which 

 look like elaborate house plans (fig. 5; pi. 7). They also include 

 many inexpertly drawn naturalistic figures, such as human beings, 

 mountain sheep, deer, snakes, lizards, birds and bird tracks, and 

 representations of human hands and human or bear tracks. 



Considerable speculation about the meaning of these figures has 

 never produced more than sheer guesses. The commonest supposi- 

 tion is that the complex geometric designs are maps. Even though 

 it cannot be positively stated that maps were never made, this is not 





FiQUED 5. — Petroglyph near Meadow Lake, northeastern Calif., illustrating the old Great 

 Basin style of curvilinear designs. 



the general explanation of these petro'glyphs. Not only have all 

 those studied by the author failed to correspond in the slightest 

 degree with the surrounding country, but it is difficult to see why 

 primitive tribes should have wished to make maps. The modern 

 Shoshonean tribes inhabiting this area not only knew nothing of 

 maps, but had no need for them. Each hunting band habitually 

 moved in territory which it knew intimately and would certainly not 

 have wished to aid strangers to find their way around. 



It has also been guessed that some of these are pictographic his- 

 tories and that others were for hunting magic. Such guesses are 

 beyond the possibility of proof, pro or con. 



A popular local theory to account for certain petroglyphs repre- 

 senting human footprints (see pi. 7) is that they were made by early 



