Rattlesnake Canyon closed?

Let's see -- scratch or paint a picture on a rock a long time ago and it becomes a resource.

The rarer some things are, the more valuable they are.

In addition, glyphs tells us much about a subject we know relatively very little about, namely, prehistoric human beings: who and where they were, and clues to what kind of lives they lived.

Native Americans lived in the Joshua Tree environment. They were not visitors there who lived in another mileau , like modern vandals

They sought to convey something about themselves and their life and death interaction with that environment.

Modern vandals are there to deface and defile.

and then there was that dude that wrote on those rocks way off the beaten path... (In the 30's???)...

I don't think the NPS is doing a very good job of running any of our parks......I give them a C- at best.

Mr. Keesee, what would you like to see the NPS do differently?

How come they don't add more camping????

Are you NPS person?????

And I don't have problems with the workers, most are just trying to do a good job and follow their dreams of working in the outdoors.

to keep harping on it gets a little old.

Not necessarily. Diamonds are hardly rare. They are expensive as hell due to clever marketing.

Wait. What? How can we know much and relatively very little at the same time? They tell us someone marked the rocks. They do not tell us whether their contributions were even valued by their contemporaries. For all we know it was the work of native hooligan teenagers who were roundly criticized at the time. It's called prehistory for a reason.

Whoa, there! Ascribing motives. Danger! Danger! Glyphs don't have annotations reading, "I did this because...." They could also mean, "I'm bored." We weren't there and we can't ask.

Pluck someone from the distant future who can't read, plop them down at barker dam without telling them anything, and they just might assume they are at a sacred site due to all the graffiti. It's been known to happen.