New research out this month estimates an Indigenous geoglyph damaged earlier this year by border wall construction along the Arizona-Mexico border is older than previously understood.
The Las Playas Intaglio is a Tohono O’odham sacred site that features a huge fish-shaped earth carving right along the border in what is today the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge.
Researchers in this month’s SSA Archaeological Record say the site was recently dated using rock and soil samples, and updated methodology. It was found to be at least 6,500 years old — making it the oldest such carving on record in the Americas.
Russ McSpadden, Southwest conservation advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity, says it’s an exciting new development.
“You know, older than Stonehenge, older than the pyramids in Egypt,” he said. “But at the same time, it’s doubly tragic, because there was significant damage done to it back in April."
That’s when border wall contactors drove heavy machinery through the site. Aerial photos and video captured by McSpadden show wide, red-dirt track marks going through a large section of black volcanic rock of the fish body.
CBP did not respond to questions about what steps it’s taking to mitigate those damages in time for publication.
-
Several window panels were broken at the Fisher Industries facility. The parent company, North Dakota-based Fisher Sand & Gravel, is contracted by the federal government for border wall construction. Tempe Police say investigators believe multiple people arrived around 4 in the morning to damage the building. -
The Forest Service is closing off a long stretch of the border to protesters and the public alike, raising issues of transparency as they claim its unrelated to confrontations. -
On Monday, dozens of agents swarmed a stretch of private land where the activists had been camped in and around a centuries-old cottonwood tree. Contractors tore down the tree and agents made multiple arrests. -
Protesters have been camped out in a plot of private ranch land in Lochiel for over two months now, trying to block wall construction as it neared a towering cottonwood tree that was the last of a grove slated for destruction to make way for two, parallel steel bollard walls. -
Activists have spent the last 70 days camped around and inside a cottonwood tree right along the border in the tiny town of Lochiel. The tree was the last of an old grove estimated to be up to 250 years old.
