00:00.00 archpodnet Welcome back to the rock art podcast episode 191 and we are talking about a fascinating panel that was recently discovered in California near the koso range and again look down in your show notes if you haven't done so already and pull up an image of this because it is just It is just fascinating what you see all the different elements when you're looking at it and 1 of the things that struck me as we were kind of going to break a little bit was in the bottom right? Hand corner. There's 2 things that are interesting to me one is the apparent star and it's like a 5 pointed star like we would draw. As a child you know and and it looks like there might be even some things coming down with it down from it almost like it's a like shooting stars. You know like ah like traces or something like that and they're all kind of coming down on top of this this human figure that has what looks like a cross in its like head and I know. 00:51.10 alan Um, yes, absolutely yeah. 00:52.55 archpodnet Ah, cross symbol is not unique to christianity. It's just a symbol. It's just a drawing but it's really interesting this whole this whole group of elements here. 01:00.97 alan So the biggest figure in the panel is down at the base. The smallest figure is up at the top. Um, the top figure besides having a face as a star has a wand and is holding a snake either holding 1 snake or even have another snake and there's a. 01:07.54 archpodnet Um. 01:20.53 alan Multiple stakes they have snakes that look like lightning and that end in projectile points that end in projectile points and that again is something That's very characteristic of the uosztec in cultures the Pueblos in the southwest the hopi the zuni. 01:25.28 archpodnet Ah. 01:39.50 alan And the high cultures of even Mexico and they see these projectile points raining down from these supernatural beings these gods and goddesses and they see them as inseminating elements that they would go down into the earth. 01:50.89 archpodnet Um. 01:58.96 alan And fruit defy or create new life. You see what I mean it's like rain. It's rain It's lightning. It's a projectile point and all of these things are piercing this mother Earth metaphor and growing plants causing life. 02:04.49 archpodnet Um, yeah. 02:18.31 alan To ascend. How's that. 02:20.26 archpodnet You know you just said something that just made me think because and I never really thought about this before but I'd never really looked at the snakes and things like that were were're drawn in this detail these ones that clearly have like Diamond shaped heads representing the the Diamond shaped nature of the the rattlesnake I mean you know. 02:40.11 alan Um, yeah. 02:40.45 archpodnet There's so definitely snakes out here in the west that have that shape and and I know that those snakes don't exist all over the world. But I wonder if just in some places the triangular shaped nature of the the deadly projectile point is mimicked after the Triangle shape of the deadly snake hit the way that it strikes at its prey. 02:54.97 alan I have never I have never thought I have never thought about that. But I'm I'm sure that that that metaphorically and now you know an analogy again. You've got the projectile point form of the rattlesnake in the projectile point form of the points, the darts and the arrow points. 02:58.82 archpodnet Yeah. 03:14.80 alan And they they mirror 1 another? um additionally the lightning strikes the lightning strikes that that you know that crash of thunder and that bolt of lightning is mimicked by the rattle of the rattlesnake. 03:15.58 archpodnet Um. 03:18.48 archpodnet Um, yeah. 03:32.33 alan And that hissing noise that they make and then the strike of the rattlesnakes bite where they rear back and then they bite you so that was seen as lightning that was another another analogous a metaphor for lightning and and of course. 03:44.61 archpodnet Um, right. 03:50.80 alan You know the lightning the Thunder the rain those are all the most heavenly and ethereal and celestial elements coming from the sky. But then you've got that paired with ah with an animal that lives and works. 04:02.55 archpodnet Um. 04:08.31 alan And and you know ruminates its Habitat is the ground. It's on the ground and under the ground so you've got a a unification from the highest realm to the lowest realm. Yeah so I mean there's a. 04:21.61 archpodnet Um, well. 04:24.90 alan There's a thing called the journey of ascent and descent and I've talked about it in my papers and it's It's one of the cycles that are depicted in in rock art and also in the cosmology etc. Native people see the world as Cyclical. And they see the connections between the heavenly circuit to the terrestrial circuit and it's a big huge wheel that continues to go and grow as we move through our lives and as we begin to understand the nature of things. They're always looking for those. Kinds of connections. Those kinds of relationships the principles of Reciprocity. That's what interfingers in everything about native culture does that make any sense to you. 05:13.36 archpodnet Yeah, it does I mean they were so connected in you know, tuned to the land and their surroundings that I mean that only makes sense I mean to a degree that there's no way we could ever truly understand. 05:25.91 alan On. 05:29.15 archpodnet Ah, panel like this and and the symbolism involved I mean we may be guessing at some things based on you know ethnographic evidence. But yeah, how close are we I wonder. 05:34.70 alan oh yeah, oh yeah of course well that that's that's the thing. Um, there's a woman. Her name is Carolyn Boyd she wrote a book on the wait. What the white shaman panel. 05:49.00 archpodnet Ah. 05:52.30 alan Ah, and it's ah there in the ah it's ah in the pecos section the pecos river there in South Texas and the whole book is is deconstructing a single panel of rock art and she argues that she can in fact, understand or deconstruct. 05:58.76 archpodnet Yeah. 06:11.40 alan This this very complex panel because it demonstrates or it creates or communicates. Ah the creation narrative of the weho and of the Nawa people. 06:20.67 archpodnet Yeah. 06:27.00 archpodnet Oh. 06:27.74 alan And it won the 2000 and I think five five award for the best new book. Um for the society for american archeology. So um, using ethnographic analogy using a deep time understanding ah linguistics and also. Examining you know cross-culurly the nature of these symbols I think when we can least approach some sort of a distant understanding of some of the communications that this kind of panel or this kind of esoterica is ah really telling us. 06:52.40 archpodnet Um, okay. 07:06.44 alan Ah, think we got it right? I don't think we even got it close to right? but we may be asking the right questions. How's that. 07:08.98 archpodnet Um, right. 07:13.49 archpodnet Yeah, possibly and you know speaking of questions I've got a lot of questions about the big dude down on the bottom here because just the the wavy almost ethereal nature of this being and then this kind of line that goes across at its um. A neck shoulders I don't know because he's got like a point like a dotted head like it's almost like you know like somebody who's almost high on drugs like that's how your head would feel and then he's got a snake in 1 hand and like a plant in the other. 07:40.43 alan Well there there. Ye yeah, right? And and that that plant is probably the visual shorthand for a bighorn sheep know head that that head thing there. That's what they use in the coso is everywhere to show bighorn sheep. Um, they've got. You've got one of them upwards in the right with the with the 2 dots under the horns see there. It is again. It's a visual shorthand for the bighorn sheep horns means bighorn sheep and you're exactly right that that particular individual if we have if we use the shamanistic model the explanatory platform. 08:05.99 archpodnet Um, yeah. 08:14.74 archpodnet Yeah, yeah. 08:17.57 alan Would be under altered states of consciousness and that's how you feel when you're taking psychotropics you lose all sense of who you are you meld into other things you feel as though you're part of the universe your head is gone and your your whole body like it's melting away. 08:33.98 archpodnet Um, yeah, wow. That's that's amazing I Don't think I've ever seen anything kind of quite like that before. Yeah. 08:36.52 alan And that's what it's showing. So um. 08:44.49 alan No, and I hadn't either. It's It's very. It's very representational. It's very indicative now at that ethereal Individual's foot right on the right most foot right? above there. There's a thing that looks like it's sort of a. 08:49.53 archpodnet Yeah. 08:58.75 archpodnet Um. 09:04.44 alan Ah I don't know like a safety pin that sort of inverted you that is the symbol that's being used all over the great basin for our famous wing trap The wing traps remember the wing traps. We talked about that they used to to shuttle the bit. 09:08.27 archpodnet Um, yeah. 09:23.41 archpodnet Um, yeah turn. Wow. 09:24.38 alan And cheap to kill That's what that is It's exactly that simple. Yeah yeah, that's that's up. That's that's at the perin gap that's all that's at Nine Mall Canyon that is the symbol that they use to show that they are cordoning off and assembling. Ah, hunting party to kill Antelope big horn sheep deer some sort of big game animal isn't that amazing. We get okay. 09:48.41 archpodnet Wow that is amazing. All right, let's take 1 more break and then spend a little more time talking about this panel. Ah yeah, we we need to take a minute to think about this and and give everybody else a chance to think about it and then we'll come back on the other side and keep talking about it. 10:04.60 alan It you you got it Bye bye. 10:06.49 archpodnet Back in a minute.