The mountains of North Carolina tell ancient stories on a grand scale – with some of those stories dating back more than 1,000 years.
The popular hiking spot known today as Devil's Courthouse was known in Cherokee lore to be the dwelling place of a giant named Judaculla.
Other WRAL Top Stories
Judaculla guarded his hunting grounds from high up above on Judaculla's Judgement Seat. According to the legend, a group of hunters once wandered into his hunting grounds against his command. The giant angrily jumped down from his mountain to chase them. When he landed, his giant hand sank into a soapstone boulder – and can still be seen there today.
His seven-finger hand print can be found in the lower right-hand corner of Judaculla Rock, a sizable chunk of soapstone covered with ancient petroglyphs dating back 1,500 years.
Historians believe members of the Cherokee tribe were carving glyphs in the NC mountains around 500 A.D.
The carvings in Judaculla Rock in western NC date back to within a century of "the Fall of Rome." Around that same time, the Dark Ages and Medieval Age had only just begun in Europe. Europe would have still been inhabited by tribes such as the Franks, Saxons and Visigoths.
"The petroglyphs, or rock art, at Judaculla were carved intermittently within the Late Woodland to Late Mississippian periods from about 500 A.D. to 1700. The rock itself is actually one of several petroglyph boulders within a 15-acre area that is an archeological site of great significant," writes the North Carolina Department of Cultural and Natural Resources.
Incredibly, the soapstone carvings have survived centuries of weathering – although the rock has been kept in the open for visitors to view. There are over 1,500 designs carved into the boulder, more than any other known petroglyph boulder in the eastern United States, according to to the Blue Ridge Heritage Trail.
Judaculla Rock was likely being used long before it became a place for carving these glyphs. Archeologists believe the site was being used up to 3,000 years ago as a place to carve into the soapstone to make bowls for the tribe.
What do the petroglyphs symbolize?
Petroglyphs, according to archeologists, were usually engraved to symbolize important places, stories or events.
At one time, historians believed the glyphs represented a map of the Battle of Taliwa, fought between the Cherokee and the Creeks in the 1750s. The prominent lines carved across the stone's face could have symbolized the battle lines in the field. However, this theory has been mostly debunked, since some of the carvings have been dated back to hundreds of years before this battle.
Brett Riggs, a professor of Cherokee studies at Western Carolina University, believes one of the more prominent carvings depicts a solar eclipse.
Hundreds of years ago, a solar eclipse could be seen as a world-changing event – an enormous mystery happening in the sky.
One of the largest pits in Judaculla Rock resembles a sun during an eclipse, with lines of light out around its circumference, according to Riggs.
"The upper portion of rock really jives with traditional Native concepts of the way the universe is structured," Riggs said.
According to Riggs' research, much of Judaculla Rock is a Cherokee depiction of the nighttime sky and what we now call constellations.
Newspaper articles dating back decades prove historians have long tried to solve the mystery of Judaculla Rock. If you want to see the ancient soapstone boulder for yourself, it's open to the public dawn to dusk at 552 Judaculla Rock Rd, Cullowhee, NC 28723.