I remember seeing my first petroglyph in Wyoming, and I just had to sit and be silent for awhile. We humans have such a yearning to be remembered, so we build pyramids that will eventually crumble--and long ago we painted our hands to mark a wall. Robinson Jeffers wrote the following poem, titled "Hands":


Inside a cave in a narrow canyon near Tassajara
The vault of rock is painted with hands,
A multitude of hands in the twilight,
a cloud of men's palms, no more,
No other picture.
There's no one to say
Whether the brown shy quiet people who are
dead intended
Religion or magic,
or made their tracings
In the idleness of art;
but over the division of
the years these careful
Signs-manual are now like a sealed message
Saying: "Look: we also were human; we had
hands, not paws. All hail
You cleverer hands, our supplanters
In the beautiful country; enjoy her a season, her
beauty, and come down
And be supplanted; for you also are human."