As to why would the Chinese be wandering around a desert, the question is how close was this petroglyph location to a navigable body of water? Most of the sites that Gloria Farley studied over 30 or 40 years were located relatively near rivers and large streams that ships and small boats could travel on. It might be that a number of marks by various exploring cultures were made when the point was reached that they could no longer go upstream, kind of as an explorers flag to claim the discovery or voyage.
> As to why would the Chinese be wandering around a desert...
Maybe they couldn’t remember their names, and there wasn’t anyone around to give them no pain... ;’)
And of course, terrain that is desert today hasn’t always been that way.
Looking for the Middle Of The World?
The peaceful Zuni of New Mexico and Arizona are much studied, partly because their language, culture and physical appearance set them apart from other Native American peoples. Davis, an anthropologist who has made 10 visits to the Zuni pueblo, now offers the startling thesis that a group of Japanese Buddhists left earthquake-wracked medieval Japan and came by ship to the Southern California coast, eventually migrating inland to the Zuni territory, where they merged their culture and genes with Native Americans to produce the modern Zuni people around A.D. 1350. Davis uses "forensic" evidence--including analyses of dental morphology, blood and skeletal remains--to support a Japanese-Zuni connection. Further, she notes the Zuni's exceptionally high incidence of a specific kidney disease that is also unusually common in Japan. Yet she acknowledges there have been no DNA studies to confirm or refute her hypothesis, and she has not turned up a single 13th-century Japanese item in North America. Her bold, highly speculative theory gets a boost from some cultural parallels, including striking similarities between the Zuni and Japanese languages; between the Zuni "sacred rosette" found on robes and pottery and the Japanese Buddhist chrysanthemum symbol (presently Japan's imperial crest). A Zuni mid-January ceremony with masked monsters, aimed at frightening children into proper behavior, is almost identical to one in Japan. Davis's broader thesis that the Pacific was a "liquid highway" mounts a serious challenge to the entrenched idea of the peopling of the Americas solely via the Bering Strait land bridge. Open-minded readers will enjoy her beautifully written book as an opportunity to ponder our shared humanity. Illus. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.