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See how ancient Indigenous artists left their mark on the landscape

For millennia, Indigenous peoples etched and painted their stories across present-day North America. Today, everyone can still learn from that rich cultural heritage.

Added to the National Register of Historic Places a decade ago, this sandstone rock formation features more than 30 petroglyphs scattered across 500 feet. As Watkins explains, ancient Indigenous artworks often reflect a “connection of people to place,” including the flora, fauna, and cosmology of an area. That’s exemplified in this depiction of a horse and rider created by Plains tribes artists, which pays homage to Indigenous peoples’ long-standing relationship with equines. The outcrop also includes carvings of anthropomorphs, warriors, bears, and other cultural motifs.

ByKate Nelson

Photographs and video byStephen Alvarez

April 16, 2024

There is so much we don’t know for certain about ancient Indigenous artwork.

When precisely was it made? What exactly did it mean to its creators?

And yet there is still so much to be learned from these works carved into rock, painted on stone, drawn in mud, or built into the Earth’s surface. Perhaps most important is that thriving Native American societies, including my own, have inhabited Turtle Island, as many tribal peoples prefer to call North America, for tens of thousands of years.

(North America’s Native nations reassert their sovereignty: ‘We are here’.)

Considered alongside a contemporary Native reckoning—with historic Indigenous representation across everything from politics to pop culture—these sophisticated petroglyphs, pictographs, and geoglyphs help connect our past to present to future. For Native-descendant communities, this art represents a return home and a revitalization of the traditional lifeways that were all but destroyed by colonialism.

“We’re so lucky that we still have our religion, our culture, and our language; every tribal nation understands the fight to preserve those,” says Chief Ben Barnes of the Shawnee Tribe, whose ancestors likely built the Serpent Mound effigy in Ohio. “Many Americans have forgotten that land itself can be sacred, that spaces can be holy. Here in the Americas, our holy spaces are Indigenous.”

Photographer Stephen Alvarez has been documenting natural wonders for nearly three decades. He founded the nonprofit Ancient Art Archive in 2016 to act as a living record of prehistoric paintings and engravings worldwide. Now he has focused his lens on America’s murals—an effort to put this nation’s 250th anniversary, in 2026, in the context of millennia-old history. “The landscape tells its own story,” says Alvarez. “What happened to it over time, who lived there, and what they did. You cannot separate the artwork and the landscape.”

(A photographer makes luminous images of Mexico’s Indigenous people.)

For the archaeologists, anthropologists, ethnographers, artists, and other knowledge keepers—both Native and non-Native—who have spent much time studying and preserving these artworks, they are masterpieces, as well as miracles, withstanding the elements for centuries so people may wonder at and about them today.

None of us want to fade away without having made our mark on the landscape.
Joe Watkins, Archaeologist (Choctaw Nation)

“None of us want to fade away without having made our mark on the landscape,” says archaeologist Joe Watkins (Choctaw Nation), who works on Alvarez’s Mural of America project. “Rock art gives us an opportunity to share insights from people who no longer walk this Earth.”

For everyone, this artwork is a call to recognize and revere the legacies that ancient Indigenous peoples left behind. It’s an urging to acknowledge the traumas that our communities have endured on Turtle Island and beyond. And it’s a reminder that Native Americans have long been here—and that our voices, stories, and art from the past matter just as much as what we’re creating today and what we’ll create tomorrow.

(3D scans reveal largest cave art in North America.)

Four human footprints up-close. — Immortalized in gypsum-rich deposits, these footprints at New Mexico’s White Sands National Park are more than 20,000 years old and upend previous assumptions about the duration of human life in North America. “It’s geographical, geological, and climatological happenstance that they are there,” says Watkins. “You can see this path that people took 20,000 years ago as they walked across the landscape.
Photograph by National Park Service

Panel of a mural with multiple figures undow low sunlight. — Sego Canyon Pictographs: 300-2,000 years ago, Utah“This awe-inspiring place has three major, distinct panels, each from a different cultural and temporal time period, including Barrier Canyon, Fremont, and Ute,” says former state archaeologist Kevin Jones. These richly colored paintings—some depicting oversize ghostly figures and others minute animal-like attendants—reflect the Barrier Canyon people’s sophisticated use of long-lasting polychromatic pigments. Sadly, the site has been subject to gunshots and graffiti over the years, though conservators have tried to minimize the damage.

Aerial view of what looks like a huge green serpent meandering under trees. — Serpent Mound Effigy: 900 years ago, OhioIn 2021, the Shawnee people returned to their ancestral homelands to reclaim the world’s largest remaining earthwork effigy, whose origins have long been the subject of pseudo-scientific theories. “Our people built this—not giants, not ancient aliens,” says Chief Barnes. “This magnificent work of civil engineering was a massive community endeavor. I want my people to experience the ceremony of going home and seeing this sacred serpent built with soil that our ancestors held in their hands.

Aerial view of group of gigantic figures incised on the ground. — Blythe Intaglios: 450-2,000 years ago, CaliforniaSome of the most notable of the American West’s hundreds of geoglyphs, these giant distinct figures—six in total, with the largest measuring 171 feet long—were designed by scraping away the dark desert varnish to reveal lighter-colored stone. Though the artists behind these so-called Nasca Lines of North America, and their intentions, remain unknown, the Mohave and Quechan peoples of the Lower Colorado River believe the human figures represent Mastamho, the Creator of all life, while the animal figures represent Hatakulya, who helped in the creation.

Speared animal — Three Rivers Petroglyphs: 800-1,400 years ago, New MexicoSet along the eastern edge of the Tularosa Basin, part of the Rio Grande Rift, this site is one of the Southwest’s most notable petroglyph areas. The more than 21,000 carvings vary in their symbology and technique, with some appearing as scratches, and others, such as the bighorn sheep pierced by a spear and arrow (at left), made using two rocks as a hammer and chisel. Rock art researcher Margaret Berrier thinks that given the lack of nearby habitation sites, this was likely a seasonal gathering place for trading and ceremonies

Archaic paintings — Halo Shelter Pictographs: 2,000 years ago, TexasOne of the best preserved examples of Pecos River-style pictographs, on Halo Shelter’s limestone wall, features a complex hundred-foot composition of 103 anthropomorphic, or human-like, figures intermixed with animalistic figures and enigmatic icons. “These represent ancestral deities and spirit beings associated with the artists’ sacred stories,” says artist turned archaeologist Carolyn Boyd, founder of the Shumla Archaeological Research & Education Center. The organization’s extensive radiocarbon dating indicates that this intricate mural was planned out and painted in a single episode, requiring significant time and effort away from hunting and gathering.

A snake-tailed mountain lion petroglyph under the night sky. — Three Rivers Petroglyphs: 800-1,400 years ago, New MexicoCreated by the Jornada Mogollon people, this carving, thought to be of a large cat with a rattlesnake tail, is one of 21,000 densely packed petroglyphs spanning one mile of basaltic ridge set against the picturesque Sierra Blanca.

Animal depicted on red cliff. — Hog Springs Pictographs: less than 2,000 years ago, UtahThe mysterious Moki Queen got her informal title thanks to a series of white dots arching above her head that many viewers construe as a crown, says archaeologist Kevin Jones. The animal-like figure by her side is often interpreted as a dog. Because of its proximity to Highway 95 and the popular Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, this elaborate, oversize Barrier Canyon-style painting has captured the attention of many adventurers. Other pictographs and petroglyphs adorn nearby canyon walls.

Petroglyphs on riverside. — Wedding Rocks Petroglyphs: 200-500 years ago, Washington stateHikers consider themselves lucky to stumble upon these unmarked petroglyphs located along Olympic National Park’s Pacific coast. Best seen at low tide, the 40-some etchings by Makah artists depict whales, hunters, ships, and other motifs. According to tribal oral history, a mudslide partially destroyed the village of Ozette, one of the Makah Tribe’s five permanent settlements. Then, in 1970, a severe storm battered the coastline and surfaced about 55,000 preserved artifacts bearing similar iconography. Many of these objects are now on display at the Makah museum in nearby Neah Bay.

This story appears in the May 2024 issue of National Geographic magazine.

A Tlingit tribal member, Kate Nelson’s a 2024 40 Under 40 honoree of the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development. Her stories often amplify Indigenous voices and topics, such as this issue’s feature on ancient art created by Native Americans.

Stephen Alvarez’s latest feature builds on his work as founder of the Ancient Art Archive, which preserves and shares humanity’s oldest stories. An Explorer since 2018, he shot his first Nat Geo article in 1995.