Border wall crews damaged ancient Arizona geoglyph now dated to 6,500 years

A fish-shaped geoglyph in southwestern Arizona, part of which border wall construction crews scraped away in April, is thousands of years older than previously believed, according to the Center for Biological Diversity, a Tucson-based environmental group.

New research published in the September issue of The SAA Archaeological Record finds the damaged Las Playas Intaglio is at least as old as the earlier part of mid-Holocene warm-dry period, dating at least 6,500 years old.

“This discovery makes an already devastating loss even more profound. It’s a cultural and historical atrocity,” said Russ McSpadden, Southwest conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity in a news release about the damage. “The Trump administration’s destruction of this 6,500-year-old site is a wound to the deep history of Indigenous communities and impoverishes all of humanity. No administration has the moral authority to bulldoze an irreplaceable piece of the human story.”

Archaeologists had previously estimated the site in Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge at about 1,000 years old.

The new date makes it the oldest ground drawing in the Americas to be dated with scientific testing, according to researchers David Whitley and Ronald Dorn.

Intaglios are geoglyphs that were scraped into desert pavements. The 272-foot Las Playas Intaglio figure was made by clearing dark volcanic rock to expose lighter soil. Such sites are central to the practice and retention of Indigenous cultural and religious traditions.

In April, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol admitted that contractors destroyed part of a geoglyph while working on a second border barrier in the ancestral homeland of the Tohono O’odham.

The Center for Biological Diversity documented a roughly 50-foot-wide area damaged from the figure.

The Department of Homeland Security issued waivers in 2025 setting aside laws including the National Historic Preservation Act to speed wall construction in southern Arizona.

CBP plans 225 miles of secondary barrier across Cochise, Pima, Santa Cruz and Yuma counties.

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