PICTURES FROM PAST ENDANGERED ART FORM

They are a thousand years old and were created by the Mississippians whose civilization once thrived north and south along these river banks. The paintings and carvings on stone often depict birds and serpents and, for some reason, feet. Pictures of two-legged and four-legged creatures also are found.

Most of the petroglyphs and pictographs known to exist in Missouri initially were surveyed in the 1930s and 1940s. Dr. Carol Diaz-Granados, a lecturer in anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, recently went back and resurveyed them, documenting more than 140 petroglyphs and pictographs in Missouri caves and along outcroppings.

Her book, "The Petroglyphs and Pictographs of Missouri," has just been published by the University of Alabama Press.

She will talk about her findings and show slides at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Cape Girardeau Public Library. Her appearance is sponsored by the Cape Girardeau Historic Preservation Commission and is part of the 29th annual National Historic Preservation Week that began Sunday.

Petroglyphs are carvings in stone. Pictographs are paintings on stone. They can appear in a full panel of complex designs, which indicates to scientists they have a story to tell, perhaps a mythology to communicate. Or a single image appearing alone could be a vision quest symbol or meant to mark territory, Diaz-Granados says.

"They could be religious in nature or social or magical," she added. "At Lascaux (the French cave containing 1,500 pictographs of animals alone), people frequently refer to the pictures as hunting magic." The images at Lascaux are 17,000 years old.

The colors in the Missouri paintings were made with charred wood and red ochre. Pigment analysis of some pictographs has found blood in the mixture.

Most of the petroglyphs and pictographs found in Missouri are in the southeastern quadrant of the state. Thirty-nine of the sites are in Jefferson and Washington counties alone.

Cape Girardeau County has one site. There are two in Scott County, two in St. Francois County, and one each in Ste Genevieve and Bollinger counties. None has been recorded in Perry County, but Daiz-Granados is sure at least one exists there.

Most of the sites are on private land, and their locations are kept secret to prevent trespassing and vandalism. But three of the sites in the state are on public property. The nearest to Cape Girardeau is a 50-foot panel of petroglyphs at Washington State Park in Washington County. A boardwalk enables the public to approach the site, and interpretive signs provide information about the images.

Compared to those in the Southwestern United States, Missouri's petroglyphs and pictographs are worn and often difficult to distinguish. That's because the wetter Missouri climate enables the rocks to repatinate (corrode) very rapidly.

"When you look at them you frequently miss them," Diaz-Granados says. "If you're not looking for them you are not going to find them."

These images are an endangered species of art and history.

"They are endangered because of weathering and vandalism," Daiz-Granados says. "One of the reasons I did my project to survey and analyze them was because of their endangered state. They're not going to last forever."