How Can You Tell Rock Art Is Real?

Often when I show Native American rock art in my SUV RVing videos, I’ll get a comment or two saying something like this:

I had to chuckle when I saw the rock art because I knew a guy who used to go around making it.

Or even just this:

How can you tell that rock art is real?

I have a few answers to that. The primary answer is that I get my information from archaeologists and others who spend their lives studying this stuff and who know way more about it than either you or I. I get information from books, scholarly journals, articles online, etc. If the consensus among professional archaeologists is that a site is authentic, for someone who isn’t an expert in that field to say that it isn’t is… well, I’ll let you fill in that blank.

On top of that, having seen literally thousands of authentic rock art figures at this point and more than a few fake ones, I can say that it’s easy to spot fake ones. They just don’t look “right.” They’re either scratched or painted on in a style that doesn’t fit in with other rock art in the area, or the weathering on them isn’t consistent with what you’d see on other rock art in the area. They often look “fresh” and “amateurish.”

And finally, I’ll say that real rock art is just way more abundant than you might think. I believe that those who are unfamiliar with it sometimes think of it as something exceptionally rare, but it’s really not. The likelihood of any given bit of rock art being fake is low just because there’s so darn much of it out there that’s real.