produced a book in 1750 in Russian (Opisanie Sibirskogo carstva) in which he refuted the supposition that these ancient rock drawings could be taken as a special form of writing. In this work, which was later also published in German, he published sketches of some figures.

Further Work in the New World

Discoveries of rock art continued to be made in the Americas. In 1711, Father Eusebio Kino described and mapped “the painted rocks”—actually engravings—near Gila Bend, Arizona. In Quebec, the Nisula site on Lac de la Cassette was mentioned on Father Pierre-Michel Laure’s maps, drawn between 1731 and 1733 during the French regime in Canada and showing the so-called Domaine du Roy in Nouvelle france, where it says “Pepéchapissinagan [the stone thing on which there are paintings] naturally painted figures can be seen on the rock.” Heads, or faces, carved at the foot of the great falls on the Connecticut River in the village of Bellows, Vermont, have been commented on by travelers and researchers since 1789, the petroglyphs being described variously as Indian chiefs, families, symbols of male authority, memorials of noteworthy events, idle artwork, and the work of shamans recording vision experiences.

In the eighteenth century, a Jesuit missionary called Schabel visited Pedrazza, Venezuela, and thought the petroglyphs there to be engraved by “angelic hands.” Alexander von Humboldt himself saw many petroglyphs during his travels through South America at the end of the century, and he put forward some interpretations of petroglyphs in the Orinoco region. Father Pedor Lozano, in about 1730 to 1760, interpreted the abundant engravings and paintings of colombia, brazil, Paraguay, and peru as tracing the itinerary of St. Thomas, with all footprints being attributed to the saint as usual (conversely, red handprints were often attributed to the devil in Latin America). But Filippo Salvadore Gilii, another Jesuit missionary in Venezuela, reported in 1781 that, according to the Tamanaco Indians, rock inscriptions there had been made by the creator-god Amalivaca.

There was a great deal of activity in Mexico in the eighteenth century. For example, a 1792 compilation commissioned by the Spanish viceroy of New Spain, Conde Revilla Gigedo, contained a natural history of Baja California that was attributed tentatively to the Jesuit Juan Bautista Mugazábal, who died in 1761. If correct, the compilation would be the oldest known reference to rock art on the peninsula, and it describes a clear attempt to obtain relevant ethnographic information:

In all of civilized California, from south to north, and particularly in the caves and smooth cliffs, rustic paintings can be seen. Notwithstanding their disproportion and lack of art, there can be easily distinguished the likenesses of men, fish, bows and arrows, and diversely assembled lines in the fashion of written characters. The colours of these paintings are four: yellow, red, green and black. The majority of the images are painted in very high places, and from this, some infer that there is truth in the constant tradition of giants among the ancient Californians.… It has been impossible to ascertain what these figures, lines and characters mean, despite extensive questioning of the California Indians. The only thing which has been determined from what they say, is that they are from their ancestors, and that they have absolutely no knowledge of their significance.

An eighteenth-century Jesuit missionary, the Spaniard Miguel del Barco, wrote hundreds of pages about California that were not published until 1972 by Miguel Leon-Portilla in Historia natural y crónica de la Antigua California. This account contains an extended reference to the great murals of Baja California, and it quotes Joseph Mariano Rothea, a missionary at San Ignacio from 1759 until 1768:

I happened to investigate several painted caves.… one would be about 30 to 35 feet long, about 16 feet wide.… From top to bottom it was all painted with various figures of men, women, and animals.… The colours were the same that are found in the volcanoes of the Tres Virgenes: green, black, yellow and flesh-coloured. The durability of these colours seemed notable to me; being there on the exposed rock in the inclemencies of sun and water where they are no doubt struck by rain, strong