00:00.00 archpodnet Welcome back to the rock art podcast episode one eighteen Allen continue on we we we ended the last segment there and we were just in midthought. So let's keep this going. 00:11.76 alan But we're talking about large game animals. You know you want decent meat packages If you're going to risk your life and you know do this kind of work and try to harvest the game and slay these large animals we're talking about. Ah, it's rather difficult. It's still rather difficult. 00:28.72 archpodnet Ah. 00:30.64 alan I talked to people who are who um work with as ah, you know the assistant to these game drives or these game where they try to get a bighorn sheep. They're using high tech technology and it and it it doesn't always work. They can't always get 1 even though they're around and they know they're there. Find them right? and then they got to make sure that they don't they don't see them because if they see them. They're they're gone and then they've got to be able to get close enough to get a shot off and then they've got to be able to kill them. Um, it's not so simple. 00:52.79 archpodnet Ah. 00:58.11 archpodnet Yeah. 01:07.68 archpodnet Maha. 01:08.83 alan It's really, um so it takes skill patience thoughtful strategy. They had to know about the wind patterns. They had to know about the the way in which the animals move. They had to find the animals to begin with. They're not so they're not so easily found and. 01:25.18 archpodnet Oh. 01:28.76 alan I I contributed to a book that just came out about the ah you know masters of animals and the spiritual gamekeepers and this was a concept all throughout the world through the globe that there are these supernatural animal-human figures that were. Deity Supermundane beings that interceded for the people and helped them to hunt the game and kill them and only if they practice the proper ceremonies propitiation and. 02:04.50 archpodnet Try. 02:06.44 alan Also did the proper rituals in association before and after would they be first of all, be allowed to hunt the animals and kill them and if they did not do that even if they hunted and killed the animals. They're not going to get no mo because the spiritual get. Gamekeeper the animal mistress or Apple Pastor is going to be pissed off with them and going to pull the plug on this cycle that they are responsible for and the cycle has to do with when the animal passed away. They have a postmortem ceremony and they showcase the the bones. 02:35.18 archpodnet Yeah. 02:45.22 alan Sometimes their bones have to be placed in a certain way or cached in a certain way and then they are ah and then you know a special they have to eat the animal and share the share the meat in a certain way. Otherwise they're they're plumb out of luck if um. 03:03.68 archpodnet Ah. 03:05.13 alan And it's it's the animals themselves were viewed as part and parcel beings at the same level at the same physiological interpersonal level as Humankind. So What I'm saying by that is that animals were viewed as other than human persons I know that sounds crazy but that's what it what they were beings that when animals were people. 03:35.88 archpodnet Um. 03:42.83 alan They continued to be animals now but but we lost our animal nature but the animals kept it and so what this is seen as is when you hear about these tribes These people they say well we are the you know bighorn sheep eaters or where the you know. 03:53.20 archpodnet Ah. 04:02.24 alan We're from the elk people people these individual groups believed that they were descended from a animal human bighorn sheep or an animalhuman bear or an Animalhuman Elk and they trace their descent. 04:14.45 archpodnet Rent. 04:19.92 alan Directly from that being as a ah as a as a bit of tottemism as a bit of Animism shamanismism in in court incorporated with all that but it is part and parcel of who they are their identity their signature their um. 04:39.86 alan Their character is emblazoned upon the land as part and parcel of that animal being and that animal becomes a significant signature of the group. So for 1 it might be a bighorn for what it might be. 04:54.18 archpodnet Okay. 04:58.95 alan It might be a bear or it might be a snake or it might be an antelope and this happens all over the world that these particular animals become an index or a semiotic being just a package of metaphors relating to. Who these people are who they are prone to be and it's they know them in terms of their habits and their habitats. They know the intimate elements of how they do things so that they can connect with them kill them and eat them. But also. Because they have an intimate kinship with that animal. 05:46.46 archpodnet I Wonder if you can track because I was just thinking about certain animals obviously are migratory and ah, definitely native American groups would follow Migratory animals you know for sustenance and things like that. But then Also you know as. As things changed and and maybe Tribes got got bigger and you know turned into larger entities and and moving was hard then they would become more sedentary in certain places and then you know maybe maybe deal with migratory animals as they came through. But started hitting more Non-migratory Game. You know smaller game that doesn't migrate and mammals I'm talking about not just birds but those sorts of things and I'm wondering if the the like Kinship felt with animals can be traced through ah can can be traced through that sort of. Sedentary ah tend to tend towards sedentary Behavior. You know what? I mean like has as the animals change in the sibyism the rock art and and how they thought about the world. How that was parallel with their settlement patterns. 06:55.31 alan Well, they morph they change. So. There's an evolution of changes in the symbolism and the ideology there's a ah change in the meaning and metaphor but the symbols ah can be deconstructed and and you can see the sort of evolution. Of how people's beliefs are altered by the changes in their demography and they're in the subsistence basis in the way in which they're conducting their their activities in the complexity of their civilization. You can think about it in the sense of thinking about the great high cultures of Mexico. Who still ah practiced. You know a a livelihood or a ah religious metaphor relating to snakes and that became ah the significant element to who they were and what they were it was snakes in the sun. 07:45.41 archpodnet Um. 07:51.31 alan And was all about those particular elements that became the the hallmarks the pinnacle of their signatures again and again now those go way back and so there's a continuous thread. 08:05.53 archpodnet Rep. 08:09.75 alan That you can deconstruct and see all the way back to when they're hunter-gatherers and see that same element. It didn't have exactly the same meaning but yet they were still depicting and using those particular creatures as a means of communicating. Who they were now. The other thing that I haven't mentioned that's rather important here is that if you're dealing with rock arts as we're talking about this is a rock art program. 1 of the places that you want to put your rock art is where you see those creatures. 08:42.72 archpodnet Um. 08:49.41 alan You can see them in the rocks. The rocks have shapes the rocks have ah you know particular forms and the forms of those rocks sometimes mirror the actual forms of the animals I think back to the creation site. In the tatchepe mountains where you can see the rabbit you can see the Raven you can see the the um the turtle they're there plain is plain as day. Also what you want what you see is this portal this this. 09:13.32 archpodnet Ah. 09:18.30 archpodnet Right. 09:26.54 alan A relationship between a nexus that we're going Into. We're looking for some means of entering another world and this particular world is a layered Universe. So that if you want to go to the animal underworld and ask for some help from this animal Mistress Animal Master Supernatural Gamekeeper you have to do so through some sort of a clefted rock. 09:58.70 archpodnet Ah. 10:03.49 alan So If you're a shaman and you want to help someone do that or if you want to do that yourself. You want to find a rock that's been broken in two and has a distinctive shape and size and cleft in it and so if you have a split rock. Then you have the possibility of a portal and that's what that's almost always where you're going to find the rock art paintings The rock art drawings will be especially abundant and concentrated on these enigmatic mysterious clefted. Rock Landforms make sense. 10:45.54 archpodnet Yeah, that does um, it's It's really interesting again. It goes back to the the intimate relationship with the landscape and you know I mean the human brain has always been. 10:48.66 alan How. 10:58.70 archpodnet And amazing pattern recognition device I mean we do it now without even thinking about it. Yeah, and but we don't do it as much I mean you do when you look up at the sky and you see shapes in the clouds and and constellations and things like that. But when you just like live outside and you live with nature at all times you're going to start seeing you know. Patterns where you know maybe we wouldn't see them today and of course that would be that would be rolled into your perspective. 11:26.23 alan And it and you know you just sewayed perfectly because I said the timing of the seasons was measured by the moving the stars you see the stars and the stars are beings they're alive. They're sentient they have agency. 11:34.70 archpodnet Um. 11:41.81 alan The the first star you see in the morning is venus and it's considered to be the morning star the last star you see at night is venus again and that's considered to be the evening star. Those are the twins that's shown. That's a bit of a resurrection. It's a rebirth. It's a renewal process. 11:54.27 archpodnet Ah. 12:00.24 archpodnet Oh. 12:01.10 alan And and those particular stars are then part of a quinsunk a fiveness which is a a key hallmark symbol for the high cultures of Mexico the southwest the great basin all over the world. They have this. Interconnection looking at a set of symbols that we've talked about before sort of this box cross symbol that has to do with connections and the upper atmosphere and the lower atmosphere and the center and the center being a tether. 12:35.32 archpodnet And. 12:38.70 alan A ah ladder that runs from the heavens to the underworld and that particular tether that particular line is known as an Axis Moondi or ah, the axis of the world and that is depicted in the rock art. How do you? How do you see it well in the grapevine tradition you see it as. 12:49.10 archpodnet Um, right. 12:57.50 alan As some sort of an E and they show the different brackets of the different compartments of the universe the lower the middle and the upper. 13:04.46 archpodnet All right? Well with that. Let's take our final break and come back and wrap up this discussion on the other side back in a minute.