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Track Rock Gap Historical Marker
- Track Rock Gap State Historical
Marker
- Located on Track Rock Rd. 2.3 miles south of U.S.
76, 6 miles east of Blairsville
(Text)
- TRACK ROCK GAP
One of the best-known of the petroglyph,
or marked stone, sites in Georgia. The six table-sized soapstone
boulders contain hundreds of symbols carved or pecked into their
surface. Archaeologists have speculated dates for the figures
fom the Archaic Period (8,000 to 1,000 B.C.) to the Cherokee
Indians who lived here until the 19th Century. No one knows the
exact meaning of the symbols or glyphs which represent animals,
birds, tracks and geometric figures. The earliest written account
(1834) was by Dr. Matthew Stephenson, who was director of the
U.S. Branch Mint in Dahlonega. One of the favorite stories about
Track Rock Gap was recorded by ethnographer James Mooney who
gathered Cherokee stories. The Cherokee called this site Datsu'nalasgun'ylu
(where there are tracks) and Degayelun'ha (the printed or braned
place). Cherokee stories include an explanation that hunters
paused in the gap and amused themselves by carving the glyphs:
the marks were made in a great hunt when the animals were driven
through the gap, and that the tracks were made when the animals
were leaving the great canoe after a flood almost destroyed the
world and while the earth and rocks were soft.
144-1 GEORGIA HISTORIC
MARKER 1998
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