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For reasons unknown to us, the activity of creating rock art once flourished on the lower reaches of the Susquehanna River.Hundreds of carved images (petroglyphs) depicting birds, animals, humans, the tracks that they make, and other more abstract designs survive among the many rocks that dot the river just below Safe Harbor Dam.
The images offer us a precious glimpse of how the people who came to the river many generations ago saw their world.
The act of creating petroglyphs was a sacred practice. Creating them demanded a significant investment of time and energy. And to carve capriciously on the bosom of Mother Earth would be to desecrate her. Petroglyphs are not prehistoric graffiti. They are messages left by the Ancestors to be “read” by those who would come in the future.