00:00.00 archpodnet Record. 00:03.99 Alan Ah, right? Gang here. We are on segment 3 on episode 96 your host Dr Alan Garfinkel we're ah going to put the ah put the the icing on the cake and the candles in it and then then roll it roll it away. Here we go Linda you're here. Well let's pick up where we left off. We were talking about some of the more ethereal and interesting sort of riffs that we can have with brock art one of the stories that I have that's an anecdotal story again is I um I went to Utah. 00:19.59 linda I am here. 00:31.34 linda Ah. 00:38.86 Alan I was the keynote speaker at the Utah Rock Art Research Association and they had a and they had a field trip so I went out to one of those enormous canyons I don't know if was Seago Canyon or not. It's the one with the um with that praying animal-human figure and then the. 00:43.71 linda Um. 00:56.99 Alan Ah, sort of the king kingly people that were up on the wall. Um, and so we drove in there I wasn't driving and then we parked the vehicle and I got out of the vehicle and I immediately had Vertigo I could not even stand up I was like. 00:59.80 linda Oh yes, yes. 01:15.67 linda Ah. 01:16.67 Alan Flown away by the landscape. It was so overpowering and so disconcerting to me to be standing there with this rock shelf that sort of leaning over me towering above me and this other thing kind of coming at me. It. It just confused the hell out of me in terms of where I was um. How to stand properly and I yeah almost fell down I'm absolutely so not Exaggerating. Go ahead. 01:39.93 linda I know I I believe that when I was you know it's Interesting. You go. Um I believe it Sago Canyon but I might be wrong I might have to correct myself later in the edit. But. You go into this Canyon and like you said there's this huge vertical wall and these huge figures and they're stunning. But you also look at how they're placed on the landscape. You know they are meant to be Seen. I Mean they are just right at the at the head of this Canyon and they you can't miss them whereas you know there's other rock art that is probably not meant to be seen I've seen rock art that's Underneath. That's. Like there are slabs and there's rock art like underneath or they're in Hidden you know hard to get to places and so just the fact that these figures were like guarding the Canyon was astonishing. 02:37.00 Alan Um, yes I I agree. Yeah and I think when I've looked at the coso rock art that I've looked at for 50 years I think that's a similar phenomenon. What I see in in this canyon that gave me Vertigo and I've seen it also in little petogliff canyon is there's there's sometimes a relationship between the images that appear that are these. 03:08.26 linda To her. 03:12.80 Alan Decorated Animal-human guardian-like prophetic ancestor shamanistic ancestor deity like figures that are usually very large and very impressive and then if you look Over. An under ah at a lower elevation.. There's usually ah sometimes a smaller figure and it is adoring or paying homage or supplicating itself to those figures and. 03:45.28 linda Oh. 03:50.43 Alan They will be having their hands open and and those hands are directed ah in in an elevated fashion out out in front of themselves out there. Ah you know in that supplication mode. 04:07.45 linda Um, yeah, yeah, it's so fascinating. It's so fascinating. 04:07.53 Alan You know what? I'm talking about? yeah but I mean that that that sort of again shows the gestural nature sometimes of rock art imagery that can communicate. 04:21.69 linda And her. 04:26.50 Alan To viewers across hundreds if not thousands of years isn't that wild. 04:32.67 linda Right? There are some images that are just sort of that you find yeah that you find cross culture. You know the sun or. Hands or or whatever. There's just certain images that you can relate to and it doesn't matter if they're five hundred or five thousand years old 04:54.28 Alan Our friend who's a board member Aaron Barnia has taken ah cinematography photographs all over the world of 1 kind of image and that's the ah longhorned or or you know. 04:55.66 linda And. 05:11.90 Alan Ah, horned or or you know these these these enormous beings animals that have these enormous horns or antlers and they're normally centrally placed in certain um cultures so he studied. 05:19.98 linda Where I have. 05:30.16 Alan Comparisons of what those horned figures are doing and how they relate cosmologically religiously to the cultures that are depicting them So one of the funny go ahead? yeah. 05:42.12 linda Does that have anything maybe to do with the fact that oh no I'm wondering if that has anything to do with the fact that a lot of the large horned creatures in real life are maybe primary food sources and so they're very important. 05:48.60 Alan Go. 06:00.70 linda Um, to the people that are depicting them in that trans. 06:04.60 Alan That's part. That's that's certainly part of it. Yes, that's part of the story. But what they found is when they study the ah animal remains of these people. You know the actual economic animal bones they're They're not usually the Principal animals that they're eating. 06:18.27 linda Ah. 06:21.89 Alan They're good to eat but they're they're more good to think because you can't get many of them. They're normally fairly hard to hunt and if you can get a couple of them that's sort of a feast right? because they're big animals. Yeah, but but 1 of the one of the most amazing things that that he he told me and i. 06:30.88 linda Right. 06:41.36 Alan I was somewhat shocked when he told me this because I I wasn't sure about my assessment. Um I said you know I've looked at these animals they're on the rocks here they're they're figures they're ardiidactyls they're they're um, you know large game animals. 06:55.68 linda Her her. 07:01.34 Alan And and they represent them on the rocks and they like to show their big horns right? because they're called bighorns sheep so and they show the bodies. They're big and the legs are you know, rather small or dainty or thin. 07:09.75 linda Um, right. 07:19.67 Alan But 1 anatomical detail that they almost always have that you never see on a real- life animal is what their tail. No they tan their tail. They're always showing tails and you never see tails on bigorn sheep. They they tuck them neatly within their backside and. 07:26.85 linda The reproductive one of the tale. 07:38.98 Alan They're they're relatively tiny. Why do they show these tails all the time and so they also show the tails not tucked neatly, but they're parallel to the ground or they're sometimes upturned towards the sky and so a lot of people have written about this. And I was always curious to know why the heck they would do that well when I talked to Aaron Barnia he says oh yeah, all over the world wherever I go and look at them. They have the same thing going on. They always show their tails their tails are 08:15.95 linda Um, tails take are. 08:17.32 Alan Are um, up or parallel to the ground or towards the sky go ahead. 08:18.93 linda Or North Ground do I wonder if some of these large animals I think they flick their tails when they're trying to communicate either danger or. They're trying to communicate to other members of their group and I wonder if there's some sort of parallel there possibly so what I found I think I think. 08:39.81 Alan So so what I found was when I began to ask the Um wildlife biologist right? is they said the only time that their tails um are up or moving is in estrus. 08:49.20 linda Ah. 08:56.40 Alan And they do a thing called flagging So the females Wag their tails to tell the males that they're open for reproduction. So it's a sign of sort of yeah so it's it's a sign of of vitality of. 09:05.87 linda I Was gonna say had probably has something to do with reproduction. 09:16.13 Alan Of increase of of sort of that. Um, that element of reproductive fertility and when he's asked other archaeologists about that same question in other parts of the world. They all explain it exactly the same way I just did. 09:33.68 linda Well, there's got to be some truth to it if it's It's one of those universal symbols. You know. 09:34.24 Alan Which I was shocked I had no idea that it was yes Yes, yeah, So I think the reason. Ah, yeah, it's a universal symbol and it's something that's being rendered on the rocks in a way that only someone. Who has listened and seen and sensed the world and got got a real intimate connection with animal habits and habitat to know. Ah that behavior. Yeah yeah, So this comes comes back again. Full circle. 09:56.76 linda Ah. 10:01.70 linda At behavior. 10:12.40 Alan To really understanding the the world. The natural world doesn't it. 10:20.89 linda It does and you know it it and would it have to do with seasonality or you know ah is it? ah ah I don't know when and when the animals calving season. But you know if if DS has to do with. 10:28.30 Alan It It is a seasonal thing because they are right. 10:36.13 linda Animal reproduction in the health of the ecosystem or whether it um translates them. 10:40.98 Alan They've studied the same and the same phenomenon on those big game animals that are depicted at you know lascaw and the other places you know the twenty thirty forty Fifty Thousand years ago they have found that there are seasonality indicators based on how. 10:48.66 linda Right. 10:58.55 Alan They're depicted when they're depicted and the actual um frequencies of those little dots that appear on the walls they're they're almost like a counting or numerical system that relates back to the the months or the frequency of when those animals reproduce. And when they're available for hunting. Amazing. 11:19.57 linda Well, you could almost think of it as maybe even a ah language I mean we always think of our language as simples. But maybe these rock art elements By the way they're depicted. You know they have specific you know like we just said seasonality or other elements that they're depicting. It's almost like they're telling you or that you could almost even think of it as maybe a language. 11:38.95 Alan It's ah it's almost a proto languageguage correct. Yeah I think it's a proto language um stand Sandy Rogers and I think and Robert Yoey interviewed ah Owen Owens Valley piute about rock art in the Owens Valley in Eastern California and what he said was that these are storyboards that we we write our stories on the rocks and I haven't talked that much about it. But there's ah, there's a panel in um, little petogliff cany that I discovered. 11:59.72 linda Her. 12:15.80 Alan That is a creation narrative. It's a creation story and it's one. That's an ah archaic utah aztechan creation story and it's it's as plain as day I mean it's not superimposed. It's ah it's a very clear and precise description of this creation story. And it's there on the rocks. Ah, only if one was schooled in that particular arena would want to understand that and fortunately it it was something that I had run across you know from schumula actually and Carolyn Boyd 12:35.91 linda No. 12:53.71 Alan Talks about the the image ah has to do with the the fiveness or or the Archaic Udoahz Techans and how they ah examined the world early on when there was no life in the world and following in the darkness. Ah, the lunar goddess and then creating the sun and um then lifting up the heavens so that the sun would have enough of a sort of a landscape to move about the sphere and not not burn up the place or. 13:26.68 linda And it's interesting that that panel you said didn't have any superposition on it or it wasn't it was. 13:30.40 Alan Freezing. No no nothing. It's so clear. Yeah, yeah, it's like it was impressive and just telling a story in such a way that the native people could share that with others. 13:42.22 linda Because some panels. And it was important enough or unique enough or for whatever reason that it didn't get superimposed on you know so many panels have 2 3 or you know different layers of images on top of images. 14:03.89 Alan Exactly well we're closing in on the third third segment would you like to ah give any messages out to our ah our listeners the key theme the key takeaway of our. 14:07.11 linda And this. 14:17.67 linda You know if you have the ah if you have the opportunity to go visit any rock art sites anywhere. Do So and it doesn't really matter if you want to study or or make it You know? Ah, ah. You know a focus of your study just know that they're there and that they're they're sacred spaces and they're important and they need to be preserved and protected and they're just they're just iconic pieces of the landscape that are very enduring and. They're special and they need to be preserved and protected. 14:56.93 Alan Their ah treasures as I call them. They're ah their ah memorials immortals on the rocks. Thank you so much for gracing our humble program lindy. 15:06.93 linda Um, they are I mean I I you know I I don't consider myself a. 15:16.85 archpodnet Cook go ahead and do the close that allen. 15:17.26 Alan Thank you Linda! Thank you Linda see on the next one catch on the flip flop god bless bye bye. 15:21.83 linda Um, thank you Allen! Thank you bye.