The Blythe Intaglios or Blythe Geoglyphs are a group of gigantic figures incised on the ground near

Blythe, California Blythe () is a city in eastern Riverside County, California, United States. It is in the Palo Verde Valley of the Lower Colorado River Valley region, an agricultural area and part of the Colorado Desert along the Colorado River, approximatel ...

, in the

Colorado Desert The Colorado Desert is a part of the larger Sonoran Desert located in California, United States, and Baja California, Mexico. It encompasses approximately , including the heavily irrigated Coachella, Imperial and Mexicali valleys. It is home to ...

. The ground drawings or geoglyphs were created by humans for an as-yet-unknown reason. The intaglios are located east of the

Big Maria Mountains The Big Maria Mountains are located in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of California, near the Colorado River and Arizona. The range lies between Blythe and Vidal, and west of U.S. Route 95 in California and east of Midland. The mounta ...

, about north of downtown Blythe, just west of

U.S. Highway 95 U.S. Route 95 (US 95) is a major north–south United States Highway in the western United States. It travels through the states of Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon, and Idaho, staying inland from the Pacific Coast. US 95 beg ...

near the

Colorado River The Colorado River () is one of the principal rivers (along with the Rio Grande) in the Southwestern United States and in northern Mexico. The river, the List of longest rivers of the United States (by main stem), 5th longest in the United St ...

. The Blythe Intaglios are the most well-known of the over 200 intaglios in the

. The Colorado Desert contains the only known desert intaglios in North America. These intaglios are mostly located along the Colorado River. The Blythe Intaglios contain three human figures, two four-legged animals, and a spiral; although Harner (1953) reported two spirals. The largest human figure in the Blythe Intaglio group is long. The intaglios are best viewed from the air.

Geoglyphs A geoglyph is a large design or motif – generally longer than – produced on the ground by durable elements of the landscape, such as stones, stone fragments, gravel, or earth. A positive geoglyph is formed by the arrangement and alignment ...

are found throughout the world, the construction methods ranging from earthen mounds, piles of stone, or the removal of surface plants or soil. The most famous desert intaglios are the Nazca Lines in

Peru Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...

. The Blythe Geoglyphs or intaglios (

anthropomorphic Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology. Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics to ...

geoglyphs) were created by scraping away layers of darker rocks or pebbles to reveal a stratum of lighter-valued soil. The displaced rocks outlined the figures and the exposed soil was stamped down which makes it more difficult for plants to grow in the lines. The intaglios are located on flat terraces in the Colorado River

floodplain A floodplain or flood plain or bottomlands is an area of land adjacent to a river. Floodplains stretch from the banks of a river channel to the base of the enclosing valley, and experience flooding during periods of high Discharge (hydrolog ...

. While these "gravel

pictograph A pictogram (also pictogramme, pictograph, or simply picto) is a graphical symbol that conveys meaning through its visual resemblance to a physical object. Pictograms are used in systems of writing and visual communication. A pictography is a wri ...

s" are found through the deserts of southeastern California, human figures are found only near the Colorado River. Other intaglios depict

mountain lions The cougar (''Puma concolor'') (, '' KOO-gər''), also called puma, mountain lion, catamount and panther is a large small cat native to the Americas. It inhabits North, Central and South America, making it the most widely distributed wild ...

, birds, snakes and unidentified

zoomorphic The word ''zoomorphism'' derives from and . In the context of art, zoomorphism could describe art that imagines humans as non-human animals. It can also be defined as art that portrays one species of animal like another species of animal or art ...

and geometric shapes. The figures are so immense that many of them were not observed by non-natives until the 1930s. The set of Blythe Intaglios and nearby geoglyphs include several dozen figures, thought to be ceremonial in nature. No Colorado River Native American group has claimed to have made the intaglios, although some have claimed to use them. Many of the intaglios are believed to date from the prehistoric period, but their age and the identity of their creators are still uncertain. If the

quadruped Quadrupedalism is a form of locomotion in which animals have four legs that are used to bear weight and move around. An animal or machine that usually maintains a four-legged posture and moves using all four legs is said to be a quadruped (fr ...

figures represent horses (reintroduced in North America by the Spanish) then a historical date would be supported. Jay von Werlhof and his collaborators obtained 13 AMS radiocarbon dates for the figures, ranging from 900 BCE to 1200 CE. Blythe Intaglios - Animal and Spirit Figures

Blythe Intaglios - Animal and Spirit Figures

Rediscovery

In 1932, George Palmer, a pilot flying between

Las Vegas, Nevada Las Vegas, colloquially referred to as Vegas, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and the county seat of Clark County. The Las Vegas Valley metropolitan area is the largest within the greater Mojave Desert, and second-l ...

and

noticed the Blythe geoglyphs.Gilreath, p. 289 His find led to a survey of the area in the same year by Arthur Woodward, Curator of History and Anthropology at the

Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County Nature is an inherent character or constitution, particularly of the ecosphere or the universe as a whole. In this general sense nature refers to the laws, elements and phenomena of the physical world, including life. Although humans are par ...

. Malcolm J. Rogers subsequently studied and sketched the Blythe Intaglios in 1939. After National Geographic published an article about the Blythe Intaglios in 1952, people began to visit the site which led to some destruction of the intaglios. The interest in the Blythe intaglios led to the search for and discovery of more desert intaglios. The Bureau of Land Management erected fences in 1974 to protect the intaglios and the Blythe Intaglios were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. Similar intaglios, named the Ripley Group, were found nearby in Arizona across the Colorado River from Ripley, California.

Topock Maze

The Topock Maze or Mojave Maze, another geoglyph site near

Needles, California Needles is a city in San Bernardino County, in the Mojave Desert region of Southern California. Situated on the western banks of the Colorado River, Needles is located near the California border with Arizona and Nevada. The city is accessible v ...

, covers and consists of a series of parallel

windrow A windrow is a row of cut (mown) hay or small grain crop. It is allowed to dry before being baled, combined, or rolled. For hay, the windrow is often formed by a hay rake, which rakes hay that has been cut by a mowing machine or by scythe ...

s approximately apart. However, it is unclear whether the Topock Maze was created by Native Americans.

Edward Curtis Edward Sheriff Curtis (February 19, 1868 – October 19, 1952; sometimes given as Edward Sherriff Curtis) was an American photographer and ethnologist whose work focused on the American West and Native American people. Sometimes referred to ...

reported in 1908 that, "The Mohave Indians near by have utilized the area ... in recent years, as a maze into which to lure and escape evil spirits, for it is believed that by running in and out through one of these immense labyrinths, one haunted with a dread may bewilder the spirit occasioning it, and thus elude them." Similarly, an unpublished mid-20th century report cited second-hand ethnographic information that, prior to 1900, the "Mohave used to put some of their men in the center of the area of alignment and left them to find their way out of the maze without crossing the gravel alignments. By doing this they would leave the devil behind them."Gilreath, p. 289. However, Ruth Musser-Lopez reviewed historic and archaeological evidence concerning the "maze" and found strong support for the conjecture that the feature was originally created as a result of late nineteenth-century gravel harvesting for railroad construction and thus unrelated to the Blythe geoglyphs. For instance, old foot trails exist in undisturbed ground and stop at, but do not cross, the lines of gravel indicating that the gravel is more recent than the trails. The Mojave people have denied knowing the origin of the Topock Maze.

Figures

Patterns and circles at the site suggest that local groups may have danced there. Trails lead to the intaglios and rock alignments and rock

cairn A cairn is a human-made pile (or stack) of stones raised for a purpose, usually as a marker or as a burial mound. The word ''cairn'' comes from the (plural ). Cairns have been and are used for a broad variety of purposes. In prehistory, t ...

s are often near the intaglios. Ethnographer

Boma Johnson Boma or BOMA may refer to: People * Boma Iyaye (born 1969), Nigerian accountant and politician Places * Boma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, a port city ** Boma Airport near Boma, Congo * Boma, Guinea, in Nzérékoré Prefecture * Boma P ...

has tried to place the figures in context of

Yuman The Quechan ( Quechan: ''Kwatsáan'' 'those who descended'), or Yuma, are a Native American tribe who live on the Fort Yuma Indian Reservation on the lower Colorado River in Arizona and California just north of the Mexican border. Despite ...

oral history Oral history is the collection and study of historical information from people, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews. These interviews are conducted with people who pa ...

and

cosmology Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe, the cosmos. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', with the meaning of "a speaking of the wo ...

. From this understanding, the figures portray mythic characters, and are often found where mythic events are thought to have occurred.Gilreath, p. 289 One of the notable mythic figures is a humanoid figure located next to a second glyph, this of a quadruped resembling a

mountain lion The cougar (''Puma concolor'') (, ''Help:Pronunciation respelling key, KOO-gər''), also called puma, mountain lion, catamount and panther is a large small cat native to the Americas. It inhabits North America, North, Central America, Cent ...

.Gilreath, p. 289 Additionally, figures bearing a likeness to

Mastamho Mastamho, sometimes also referred to as ''Mustamho'', is the creator deity of the first Mohave people along the Colorado River in the Mojave Desert and Colorado Desert. Mastamho is the grandson of the Earth Mother (in South America referred to as ...

and Kataar, the "hero twins of the creation myth," can be seen near

Fort Mojave Fort Mohave was originally named Camp Colorado when it was established on April 19, 1859 by Lieutenant Colonel William Hoffman during the Mohave War. It was located on the east bank of the Colorado River, at Beale's Crossing, near the head of ...

in Arizona. Some researchers hypothesize that the intaglios are stopping points on a keruk pilgrimage or simply the practice of the keruk ceremony at various places. The keruk was a mourning ceremony that was practiced by various Native Americans in southern California. The keruk included the re-enactment of the creator's death and the recognition of the people who had died since the last keruk. Warfare has been offered a possible explanation as to the spread along the Colorado River of ceremonies such as the keruk and the similar style of desert intaglios. Of the nearly sixty sites containing humanoid figures, almost all of them have a deeply entrenched torso, while the limbs are much more shallowly etched into the surface. Often, the head and/or one or more arms of the figure will not have been represented at all. The largest human figure is 171 feet (52 m) long, while the smallest is 95 feet (29 m) long.

Location

The majority of the Blythe geoglyphs are located north of

, off Highway 95, at the

Interstate 10 Interstate 10 (I-10) is the southernmost transcontinental highway in the Interstate Highway System of the United States. It is the fourth-longest Interstate in the country at , following I-90, I-80, and I-40. It was part of the origina ...

exit and down several dirt roads for . An historical marker (No. 101) placed by the California Department of Public Works, Division of Highways, commemorates the site. Chain link fences surround several of the figures.Olsen, p. 99

In popular culture

The intaglios were featured prominently in the Hardy Boys novel '' Mystery of the Desert Giant'', published in 1961.

Notes

References

* Altschul, Jeffrey H., and Joseph A. Ezzo. 1995 Ceremony and Warfare along the Lower Colorado River during the Protohistoric Period. ''Proceedings of the Society for California Archaeology'' 8: 133–45. * Curtis, Edward S
''Indians of North America'', vol. 2
Norwood, Massachusetts: Plimpton Press. * Gilreath, Amy J
''California Prehistory: Rock Art in the Golden State. In ''Colonization, Culture, and Complexity'', edited by Terry L. Jones and Kathryn A. Klar, pp. 273–90.
Lanham, MD: Rowman Altamira, 2007. . * Harner, Michael J. 1953 21
Gravel Pictographs of the Lower Colorado River Region
''Reports of the University of California Archaeological Survey'' * Leska, Amy. 2008 A brief introduction to the intaglios of the Mojave Desert. ''Trough to trough'': 125–26. * Maillard, Federico. 2009 Geoglyphs on the Har Karkom Plateau (Negev, Israel). ''Papers, XXIII Valcamonica Symposium 2009'': 208–14. * Musser-Lopez, Ruth Arlene. 200
"Mystic Maze" or "Mystic Maize": The Amazing Archaeological Evidence. ''Proceedings of the Society for California Archaeology'' 25.
* Olsen, Brad
''Sacred Places North America: 108 Destinations.''
CCC Publishing, 2008. . * von Werlhof, Jay, Harry Casey, Ronald I. Dorn, and Glenn A. Jones
AMS ¹⁴C Age Constraints on Geoglyphs in the Lower Colorado River Region, Arizona and California. ''Geoarchaeology: An International Journal'' 10:257–73
1995. * Welfare, Simon and Fairley, John. '' Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World''. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1985. .

External links

*
Blythe Intaglios
photo gallery, James Q. Jacobs {{National Register of Historic Places Archaeological sites on the National Register of Historic Places in California Blythe, California California Historical Landmarks Colorado Desert Geoglyphs Megalithic monuments Indigenous culture of California Land art Landmarks of Riverside County, California Lower Colorado River Valley Mohave National Register of Historic Places in Riverside County, California Native American history of California Native Americans in Riverside County, California Rock art in North America Quechan