Comet Thrower

About This Experience

Reaching the Comet Thrower felt very different from visiting the more accessible rock-art sites scattered across the desert. There was no parking area beside the panel, no short marked trail and no obvious cliff face visible from the road. This one was hidden deep inside a rugged canyon, surrounded by broken sandstone, dry washes and steep walls that seemed to conceal more of the landscape with every bend. From the beginning, it felt as though the panel had to be earned. We followed the canyon deeper into the desert, sometimes losing any obvious trace of a route and simply continuing along whatever line through the rocks seemed possible. The terrain changed constantly. One moment we were walking easily across sand and gravel; a few minutes later we were scrambling over boulders, crossing uneven slickrock or searching for a passage around some new obstacle. And then the route became considerably more interesting. At one point we reached two enormous rocks squeezed together beside the edge of the canyon. There was no comfortable way around them. The only way forward was to get down and crawl through the narrow gap between the rocks. That alone would have been entertaining enough, but immediately beside us the ground simply disappeared. We were squeezing between the boulders with a sheer drop of several hundred feet only inches away. It looked wonderfully absurd. There we were, crawling on hands and knees through a crack in the sandstone while, just beside us, the canyon plunged away into empty space. It was certainly a place where you wanted to pay attention to what you were doing, but rather than making the hike unpleasant, it turned into one of the most enjoyable parts of the adventure. We laughed our way through it, carefully wriggling between the rocks and emerging on the other side feeling that the route to the Comet Thrower had suddenly become much more memorable. After that, the search continued deeper into the canyon. The walls rose higher around us, shutting out the wider landscape until our world became a narrow corridor of stone and sky. Somewhere ahead was one of the strangest rock-art figures we hoped to see on the trip, but nothing indicated exactly where it was hidden. Every sheltered wall seemed like a possibility. We checked alcoves, scanned dark patches of desert varnish and repeatedly stopped when some distant mark looked suspiciously artificial. Most of the time it turned out to be nothing more than mineral staining or shadow. Eventually the canyon narrowed enough that our attention shifted almost completely to the walls around us. Then, on a protected section of sandstone, faint traces of pigment finally appeared. At first they were surprisingly difficult to recognize. Unlike deeply pecked petroglyphs, these painted figures seemed almost to dissolve into the sandstone. We moved closer, and slowly the composition began to take shape. The first thing that caught our attention was the large anthropomorphic figure. It stood prominently on the wall, and one hand displayed an immediately striking detail: six fingers. Whether that feature had some particular meaning or was simply part of an artistic convention is impossible to know, but once we noticed it, it was difficult not to keep looking at it. Then our attention shifted to the extraordinary yellow form beside the figure. Bright pigment created a rounded, almost blazing object with an extension that made it resemble a comet, meteor or fireball. It was easy to understand how the panel had acquired the nickname “Comet Thrower.” The large anthropomorph appeared almost to be holding, releasing or somehow interacting with it. Seen without archaeological context, the scene immediately encouraged the imagination. Was the figure throwing something? Did the yellow shape represent a celestial event? Fire? A ceremonial object? Something supernatural? The temptation to invent an explanation was enormous, especially because the composition looked so unlike an ordinary scene of hunting or daily life. But whatever the original artist intended has not survived with the image. “Comet” is our modern visual association, not necessarily what the painter meant. The mystery became even greater when we noticed faint yellow lines surrounding the upper body of the anthropomorph. They curved outward in loose, wave-like patterns, almost creating an aura around the figure. Some were so faint that we could see them only from certain angles. Together with the bright yellow object, they gave the central figure an extraordinary presence. Despite being completely motionless on the sandstone, it seemed almost charged with movement or energy. Smaller, darker anthropomorphic figures appeared nearby. Some were much less obvious than the central figure, and differences in colour and technique suggested that everything on the wall might not have been painted at the same time. Perhaps different visitors to the canyon added imagery over generations. What looked to us like one mysterious scene could actually represent several separate episodes that happened decades or centuries apart. That possibility changed the way we looked at the panel. Instead of trying to read it as a single illustration with one obvious meaning, we began examining its elements separately: the six-fingered figure, the smaller dark anthropomorphs, the brilliant yellow object and the strange radiating lines. The yellow pigment was especially striking. It was unusually vivid compared with the darker reds and browns we had seen at many other sites. Even after centuries of weathering, parts of it remained bright enough to stand out dramatically against the sandstone. We could only imagine how intense the colours must once have appeared when they were freshly painted. After the effort required to reach the panel, its location also seemed important. Whoever created these images had travelled through this same rugged canyon and deliberately chosen this sheltered wall. They knew this landscape intimately—its passages, water sources, shaded alcoves and routes through the sandstone. For us, squeezing through rocks beside a several-hundred-foot drop was an exciting little adventure. For the people who painted these figures, the canyon may simply have been part of a familiar cultural landscape filled with places, stories and meanings that are now completely invisible to us. We sat for a while and studied the central figure. The six-fingered hand remained fascinating. Combined with the strange yellow object and the wave-like lines, it made the anthropomorph appear deliberately different from a straightforward representation of an ordinary person. The whole composition seemed ceremonial or supernatural, although that interpretation remained only a possibility. The yellow object was even harder to resist interpreting. From our modern perspective, it really did look like something blazing through the sky. It was easy to imagine an ancient observer witnessing a meteor or comet and recording it on the canyon wall. It was a wonderful story. And precisely because it was such a wonderful story, we had to remind ourselves that resemblance is not evidence. The object might have represented something entirely different—a ceremonial item, a plant, a weapon or a symbolic concept for which we no longer possess any visual equivalent. That uncertainty was part of what made the Comet Thrower so memorable. Almost every feature generated another question. Why six fingers? Why yellow pigment? Why the radiating lines? Why was the yellow object positioned beside the figure? Were the smaller figures added later? Were any of the elements actually intended to form the scene that we now perceived? The wall offered no answers. It simply preserved the questions. As the light changed inside the canyon, some of the faint lines became easier to see while others almost disappeared. We moved from side to side and repeatedly discovered details that had been invisible from our original position. In places the pigment seemed to merge with natural stains in the sandstone. It was also a reminder of how fragile pictographs are. Unlike petroglyphs pecked directly into the rock, these images survive only as thin layers of pigment on the surface. The fact that they had endured for so long was remarkable. Eventually we stepped back far enough to take in the entire composition again. From that distance the six-fingered anthropomorph, yellow “comet,” faint radiating lines and smaller dark figures came together into one wonderfully mysterious image. After the journey through the canyon—and especially after crawling through that unlikely passage between the rocks above the enormous drop—standing in front of the panel felt like discovering a secret room hidden inside the desert. There were no signs, barriers or crowds. Only the sandstone wall, the ancient figures and the silence of the canyon. Then came the realization that we had to go all the way back. We kept turning for one final look before eventually leaving the panel behind. Within moments it disappeared around a bend and the canyon looked empty again. Someone who did not know exactly where to search could probably pass remarkably close without ever noticing it. On the return journey we retraced the same route, including our little crawl between the rocks above the abyss. Somehow it seemed even more amusing the second time. By then it had become part of the personality of the place—the sort of slightly ridiculous obstacle that transforms a hike into a story you remember. By the time we finally emerged from the canyon, the image of the Comet Thrower was still fixed in our minds: a tall six-fingered figure surrounded by faint yellow waves, apparently interacting with a brilliant yellow form that looked for all the world like a fireball streaking through space. We had found the canyon, negotiated the rocks, crawled beside a drop of several hundred feet and finally reached the hidden wall. But the real challenge remained unsolved. We could reach the Comet Thrower. We just couldn't reach its meaning.