One of the inescapable tools in the understanding of our history, insofar as our ability to know what happened before our time, is a written record that can be passed on to future generations.  Of course, as we well know, a particular written history may well be rife with errors, but still, it is a start.  Native people carried great respect for the wisdom of their ancestors.  The actual detailed history was lost to the ether, but ancient people accurately recorded particular observations and happenings using the tools at hand.  Not day by day but important events of reflections.  One method was to paint positive or negative images on protected rock surfaces and those were called pictographs. In other instances, sharp rocks were used to peck images and important symbols of life into contrasting stone surfaces to form petroglyphs and these ancient recordings are found on rocks surfaces from Chile to Alaska.  We don't always know what is being said or depicted all the time but we are humans and we form ideas and images to decipher what we see in our own way, just as these two young men are doing as they read some old news.