Customer Reviews

Petroglyphs of Hawaii

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Very simple intro to Hawaiian rock art. Perhaps best suited for grade school level. Inadvertently promotes destruction of rock art by "rubbings". A better book would be Cox & Stasack's "Petroglyphs of Hawaii", available from the Bishop Museum Press.

This book provides a varied repository of information about the petroglyphs that can be seen on the island of Hawaii. Topics covered include: location, documentation, theories of who made them, when, and what they mean, and how to take rubbings. The book is illustrated with maps, reproductions of petroglyphs, and a few photographs.

For the most part, McBride doesn't definitively settle any questions about the mysteries of the petroglyphs. Instead, he carefully lays out the competing theories and leaves it up for the reader to decide which of these is more likely (although he does express some bias in some instances). One interesting theory that McBride attributes to Dr. Kenneth Emory is that when both simple and complex forms of a petroglyph shape are found, the simple one is presumably older. If this is so, it suggests that the petroglyph carving may be more likely to be art than a form of writing, since in ancient writing systems, symbols tend to become simpler and less concretely representational with time. The book can make an interesting record of a trip to see the petroglyphs, and it has some potential pointers for more information, but it is not likely to answer all the questions you might have about the petroglyphs.

This is a good introduction to the subject in Hawaii. Easy reading and informative. Not a good read for rabid conservationists. In addition I would recommend the Hawaiian Petroglyphs by Cox...