The Rock-Art Sanctuary of the Jalisco Highlands John Pint - Mexico News Daily
go to original June 26, 2017

More than 850 petroglyphs have been discovered along the shores of La Presa de la Luz, a small, dammed up lake located some 100 kilometers east of the city of Guadalajara.

Archaeologists Rodrigo Esparza and Francisco Rodríguez have reason to believe that the site may have been used as an astronomical observatory over 1,000 years ago.

The two archaeologists have described their findings in scholarly articles and recently in an elegant 154-page hardcover book in Spanish entitled El Santuario Rupestre de los Altos de Jalisco (The Rock-Art Sanctuary of the Jalisco Highlands).

With the help of nearly 200 color photos and diagrams, they reveal — in laymen’s terms — some of the secrets of this extraordinary site, while simultaneously raising new questions about it.

The discovery of the petroglyphs took place in 2006, the book tells us, when Don Lupe, foreman of a ranch next to the dam, was clearing an area of the shore to make a corral. The tractor scraped away a rather thin layer of topsoil covering the flat, underlying rock and Don Lupe noticed some curious marks on the newly exposed surface.

He got a shovel and carefully removed the dirt, revealing not just one ancient engraving, but a whole collection of them, covering an area of some 25 square meters. This spot is now known as “El Planchón Principal,” or The Big Slab, and contains some 40 individual designs.

Dominating the rock art on The Big Slab are two pecked crosses, each set in the center of a pair of concentric circles. As their name indicates, all the lines in a pecked cross consist of dots (also called cups) drilled or pecked into the rock. These crosses have been found in other parts of western and central Mexico and are principally related to the Teotihuacan culture.

Read the rest at Mexico News Daily

Photo: ITESO

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