Alan Cornette

The High Rock Petroglyph Alan Cornette

The High Rock Petroglyph (rock art) makes a good case for the theory that the Maya/Aztec cultures of Central America DID make pre-European contact with North American peoples. The Red River Gorge area in Kentucky was one of the last places of refuge for some North American indigenous people, and there is a reality that individuals mentally protect and preserve their spiritual needs, accompanied by physical paraphernalia, ritual, and ceremony. The High Rock Petroglyph with its carved image of a "religious leader," and the accompanying evidence of a skull carving and Weeping Eye symbol discovered in a near-by rock shelter, are perhaps the last remnants of a disappearing culture, artifacts of their spiritual needs, and the last of the indigenous ones to occupy the gorge area. Migrating people from Central America between 900AD and 1500AD contributed to the blossoming Mississippian cultures that spread along the southern North American shores, and into the river systems of mid-America. The Southern Death Cult, presumably originating with the Moundville, Alabama culture, exhibits artifacts and paraphernalia suggesting the distribution and influence of Central American people on the developing, North American cultures after the collapse of the Maya Classic period. Alan Cornette's artistic vision illuminates a subject that has all too long been neglected.