The Mystery of Ancient America's Canyon People   ViewZone will attempt to give you all the details. We welcome your comments, analysis and speculations.   Our last stop visits an archaeological "dig" and some exploration of our own. It also leaves us with some impressions. Tilley admits that the data from his dig will likely only reveal evidence of Native American occupation, as this was their choice of locations and style of dwellings. He speculated that any earlier cultures would probably have left signs in the cave under the boulder, which would have been the initial shelter for this camp. To date, he has found a few pieces of flint and some evidence of a hearth and, of course, the stone walls. But all of this sheds no light on the people who made the Thamudic symbols in the same area -- or does it? To escape being put to work in the trenches, we explored the area immediately above the encampment, on the top of the canyon. Surely the people that lived in the stone dwelling must have wandered up here. The view is great and the rushing breeze is relief from the burning heat. It occurs to us that these same people would have left evidence of their time on this ridge also. Looking at the rocks we find some petroglyphs right where we were standing. We can see a face with two eyes and a kind of halo made from sun-ray shapes. Not far from it we find another petroglyph, this one looking rather familiar.   In the Hopi Sun Park we had been told that the spiral was the way Native Americans marked time or cycles. In this petroglyph we think we can see validation for this. The spiral marks one complete cycle. On the outside of this time marker there are several circles, possibly representing the sun or the moon, in various degrees of eclipsing the time symbol. It seems to us that these are Native American in origin. So how does all this relate to the initial claim of foreign visitors? Our expedition stimulated some unexpected ideas. We do see the similarities of certain symbols in the Picket Wire canyon as being similar in date and shape to a known alphabet called Thamudic, which existed in what is now Saudi Arabia and possibly parts of Turkey circa 500 BC to 500 AD. We see these particular shapes used in specific orders, like letters in a word, but we also more frequently see them arranged in groups with elements repeating many times. The "trees" with branches of "Y" shapes, or the branches that ended in large circles are examples of these same supposed Thamudic letters being used in compound "words." Why would the same letter be repeated so many times? We'd think it more likely the case that these shapes are symbols, that is shapes which represent entire concepts such as "a living thing, a thing that curves to the left, on the top of a high place, at the bottom of..." This would not only have been consistent with human development prior to conceiving an alphabet, but it would have been especially important to use symbols in a land where many different sounding languages were encountered. In our travels to the three mesas that make up the small Hopi Reservation, we were told that each mesa had a different Hopi dialect that was not understood by the others. This was within an area of a hundred miles! It is certainly conceivable that the ancient Native Americans conceived a means to use universally understood symbols -- not a phonetic alphabet -- to mark such important things in stone for viewing by other cultures and times. But what do YOU think? Maybe something in this story has suggested an area of interest or exploration... We'd really like to hear from you.E-mail to expedition@viewzone.com. If you are interested in more information and science on the Colorado Rocks, there is an excellent book, unbiased and also speculative, that is available from the author, Bill McGlone. To obtain one of these books, please contact Bill at 1214 San Juan, La Junta, Colorado. The books are $24.95, check or money order. Don't forget to include your mailing address. We end with some pictures of other petroglyphs from around the globe. You will see some similarities and you will make your own conclusions. Certainly this area of America needs to be researched by some experts. It holds too rich a yield in the answers to our true origins and of the early inhabitants of North America.