Featured Image Credit: Desert Drifter/YouTube
A YouTube explorer has shared how he discovered an ancient network of human life while exploring an area he first spotted on Google Earth.
In a video, which has been viewed 1.6 million times, YouTuber Desert Drifter explained how he came across the fascinating site.
While looking on Google Earth for new places to hike and explore in the American Southwest, he found an area that immediately caught his attention.
"There appeared to be lots of [water]," he said. "As I searched the area closer, I was fascinated to find cave after cave after cave after cave. The closer I looked, the more I found."
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So, the YouTuber - whose real name is Andrew - decided to go and check out the area for himself and what he found was 'far more beautiful and complex' than he ever could have imagined.
Upon his arrival to the site, he first spotted a series of petroglyphs carved into large slabs of stone - proof that human beings once dwelled there.
"That rock art's probably at least 800 years old, maybe 1,200, maybe more," he guessed.
Andrew then headed further up the canyon to the network of caves.
"One thing I'd been worried about was if this big alcove would even be accessible," he said as he continued to traverse the rocky surface. "But looking at it in person, it looks very doable."
"What first caught me eye were all these grinding areas, these indentations where stones were used to grind grain, seeds, corn, stuff like that."
The areas around and inside the caves featured further petroglyphs of mysterious shadowy figures that he said may be Shamans, as well as a concentration of footprints, cubby holes carved into the rock and a water spring.
"Clearly this a great spot to live because you've got a water source down there," he pointed out.
Speaking about a spiral petroglyph he'd spotted, Andrew explained: "I've heard the spiral represents tribal migration, it represents eternity or some kind of portal into the spiritual world.
"Which of those is true, I don't know. Maybe all of them. But it does cause the imagination to run wild, doesn't it?"
Following his trip, Desert Drifter reflected: "It dawned on me that there was at least 3,000 years of human history represented in the glyphs and pictures I had found.
"This wasn't a dark mysterious backwater where human existence was hard to fathom... but rather an intricate network for ancient civilizations that once thrived here."
