00:00.00 archpodnet Go the school. 00:00.00 alan Hey out there in rock art podcast land this is your host Dr Ellen Garfinkel with our guest scholar Carlos Carlos Gallinger who's a freelance wildlife biologist expert in all things desert bighorn and he's talking us today about some of the things he's learned. About hunting the big corn sheep their behavior their habits and habitats and how that relates to the landscape the land forms and the ah the psychology of prehistoric hunters Carlos you were telling us a bit about certain. 00:38.50 alan Certain elements that the bighorn sheep needs. What would you call that that's some that's a discovery that you've made isn't it. 00:45.37 carlos gallinger Well, it's something I can't really claim. There's a lot of in our society. You might see a lot of lost information for instance, a lot of the stuff I've been now learning is right off the internet we have veterinarian technology that's available. And you can go and we know what sheep need but we've lost it in the in the natural world in in the East Coast of America a lot of people because the land is private. They make mineral licks for their deer that they hunt. We don't do that on the west coast and we really don't do that for sheep. But I suspect that sometime in the future. This information is going to permeate into the wild sheep. You know conservation groups and we will really utilize. It. 01:35.43 alan What is what? Ah what is that? What is what is the mineral licks or the minerals that bighorn sheep needs. So so critically that you believe are of great Great importance. Please. 01:38.39 carlos gallinger And it's been realized. 01:49.20 carlos gallinger Well, some of them are direct Earth They eat the dirt some of they rip the root out and and they eat the minerals the root which often has more water and the fungus on the root and then there's. 01:52.71 alan Okay. 02:00.13 alan Okay. 02:07.40 carlos gallinger A real connection with birds bird um the the wind and and the mountains can can concentrate the the Efforts birds and they get bird droppings and you can get. 02:07.22 alan Birds. 02:17.75 alan Dung. 02:23.97 carlos gallinger All kinds of stuff like phosphorus and selenium and all these other um elements and oftentimes these places are significant to understanding the sheep for miles around I seen a. You know again, the the internet is a wonderful tool this video where they were showing these people that rained they had reindeer and they lived in a tepee and the way they would urinate is they would leave the tepee and they would run for this stick out in the middle of the the snow sticking up in the stick. And soon as the the reindeer seen them do that they would stampede and to the point where it's kind of dangerous and but once you got to the stick you started beating the reindeer in the head till they backed off and then once they backed off you urinate and then it was okay to leap is that the. The reindeer were going to go for that urine and these reindeer they had put up with being slaughtered and used as beast of Burden all because they needed minerals and I suspect somewhere in the deep past.. That's how in this manner of some Sort. We domesticated. 03:26.31 alan Wow. 03:38.39 carlos gallinger Sheep and goats and that the ancient americans were probably on the same trajectory just a few generations behind it. They understood the minerals they understood the water they understood the sheep they knew. You know there's 5 sheep there but let's not get those ye let's get that old Ram let's get that old you and we'll harvest them and then more sheep will come here next week because they're we know we' at the place where the minerals the feed the water the wind the terrain is all right. And so like the newberry caves sheep come from thirty forty miles away through a range of mountains to get to that particular place and so if you hunted well because you had the minerals you had water. 04:20.40 alan And why is that why is that. 04:28.97 carlos gallinger And you had a place where you could camp your family and have firewood in. Yeah well, there's different ones we know that selenium is like 1 of the critical ones. It has a lot to do with immunity and reproduction. 04:31.73 alan Um, what minerals are there. 04:41.90 alan Okay. 04:45.82 carlos gallinger But Phosphorus is another very important one that that has a lot of outcome on on on animals. Um, and there's a whole range and and some of them again. The biology's already done that I think if you get enough selenium. Then Copper Copper can be.. There's a range which it's necessary higher than that it is poisonous or detrimental and below that you you have a detriment but the more selenum you get the wider that range is so it's so sulenium really helps. 05:15.95 alan It it. 05:25.19 carlos gallinger Process I think it's selenium copper So it it gets to be very hot. 05:28.15 alan Well, you know it? Well you know what's in it. You know what's interesting. Ah Carlos you're talking about newberry cave right? And you're saying how the minerals are there and I think you alluded to perhaps that selenium or. 05:36.13 carlos gallinger Yes. 05:44.94 alan Or some sort of copper-based mineral might have been there. Well, what's the what's the more unusual thing about that Cave is certainly.. It's a middle archaic from about 2000 bc to about one thousand Bc is when it was being occupied. And there is about a thousand effigies that were done but they call them split twig figurines where fashion there and we believe that that was ah a base for ah, a hunting cult. Ah Also a um totemic you know group that. 06:09.15 carlos gallinger Me. 06:22.29 alan That worship the sheep and did ceremonies but importantly on on top of all that the Principal rock art. There is not petroglyphs but Pictographs. There's paintings and the Principal color used to paint. Those pictures is green and the green is both painted on darts and on ceremonial objects including ah including Quartz Crystals and also the green is used for the painting of the pictures of. 06:45.59 carlos gallinger Um, yeah. 07:01.20 alan Bighorned sheep and other abstract figures. Well that Green is a It's a volcanic element and I believe it is found in the vicinity of the cave because there was so much of it. They even used it on the pallets. 07:08.28 carlos gallinger See. 07:20.47 alan Themselves to grind and make the pigment and there there might be some relationship between that green pigment and those minerals you're talking about. 07:31.68 carlos gallinger Right? The newberry cave site is is basically men went into the cave and no doubt had religious things going on while they were waiting for sheep at the bottom of the waterfall that was a tanaha water source. And that if you look at tanaha's out in the desert. You'll see their their ability to hold water waxes and wanes and the way you can tell that is if it's still holding water or held water in the last few centuries there'll be a scum line. And depending on how fast the debris and in the case of the newbury caves. It's relatively fast will grind out that that scum line and depending on the rocks and the cracks and how much fine particles get packed into the cracks after a while you can see this. But. 1 time that and right now the newberry tanaha at the at the cave site doesn't hold water but in the past it almost certainly did and I would even go so far as to say that if you had the ability to. If if radiocarbon dating say it was accurate enough. You'd find that it was only used in the summer and anytime you could pick a year that they were hunting and it was abandoned. That's why there's no archeological stuff from from the archery age or the pottery age because that. 08:58.63 alan Yeah, yeah. 09:03.24 carlos gallinger Tanaha didn't hold water it at that time and if you look at some of the ash deposits in that area right around the the you can actually see where the sheep have reshaped the angle of the mountain to a concave where they've been eating it for so long. But. 09:03.25 alan I see. 09:21.73 carlos gallinger They can only really eat it I mean they can eat it without liquid water. But if they have liquid water then that minerals becomes far more so useful. So what you have they're just above. 09:32.43 alan And the minerals are the minerals around the tanaha itself. Ah, ah yeah. 09:38.85 carlos gallinger If you're facing the cave. The main source is to your left and just above it. But there's others right in that area within fifty or a hundred yards where this outcropping of a ash comes out and. 09:49.80 alan And and to this and to this day there is some sort of a water source there now. 09:55.70 carlos gallinger No that it doesn't it doesn't hold water the that to naha again, the after a while you've watched these desert to nahas you'll learn that their ability to hold water waxes and wanes over centuries or eons and at 1 time. 10:02.86 alan Um, yeah, yeah, right. 10:14.78 carlos gallinger At the time that that was used that to naha no doubt held water and then that water made those vent minerals way like the like the some of the parts kind of thing way more valuable that site became way more valuable and then you had a cave. 10:16.80 alan Was active. 10:25.16 alan Yeah. 10:34.41 carlos gallinger Which meant you could be there in this roaring heat because it was almost certainly only during the summer that because that's the only time you could really effectively hunt the sheep in the summer because they had to come to liquid water. 10:49.34 alan Ah. 10:50.20 carlos gallinger If you had a battle addle and you had to hunt the sheep across that face of that mountain. You're not going to be very effective. But if you know they're coming for that liquid water and they got minerals there too. You're going to attract a conveyor belt to sheep sheeps are going to come there from thirty forty miles away 11:04.74 alan Wow. 11:08.40 carlos gallinger All the way from Ord Mountain So these people and then you had the perfect little campsite down in the in the valley but that would have had mosquite and it had it had grape vines and all this firewood So you had a place that had everything together. The men could leave. 11:13.21 alan Um, yeah. 11:25.52 carlos gallinger The the women there was a spring right down there in the plaa. So the women would have water you walked just up the little ways up into this canyon you knew the sheep were going to come in if you killed 3 or four sheep great. You dragged them home. 11:28.48 alan Ah. 11:40.88 carlos gallinger And those guys the next 3 or 4 guys were going to wait up there until 3 or four more sheep came in and that was going to happen almost like a grocery store ah because they needed the minerals they needed the water. But once the winter hit those sheep aren't going to be there. They're not going to go to dangerous. 11:47.10 alan Yeah. 11:55.40 alan They're out of there. 11:58.81 carlos gallinger And you would have also found wolves and Mountain Lions bobcats and coyotes also going to that water source. They would have been well aware any beltline down in the valley that was in the Mojave River would have been well aware of that water source. 12:05.80 alan Well. 12:15.17 alan And so they they they liked it for the water source. They liked it for the cave. They liked it for the minerals and I guess it also had Escape terrain right. 12:16.16 carlos gallinger Up there in the newberry caves he would have been part of his paraport. 12:26.77 carlos gallinger Escape terrain and ah and ah, an essentially a cool place if you had to wait? Yeah remember these people didn't have you know they they had kind of canteens they could weave a basket to hold some water. So being cool being in the cool of the cave and waiting for a day or 2 or getting up there in the morning and waiting until evening or something when the sheep came in was much more doable in that cave just way more doable than than out in the hot sun. You know it's some other water source that didn't have a shelter and in that cave you could have 4 or 5 guys you know and a place to walk around and eat some snack food and just wait and one guy's sitting there waiting for the sheep to come in when they come in. They make a plan. Who's going to throw their addle atddle who's not what sheep they're going to select and why and make the kill drag it on home if everybody's going to go or some people are going to stay because if you made a kill you might have killed like out a. Maybe 10 sheep you got 2 or 3 maybe those sheep scattered and they're not coming back but there's another 2 or 3 groups that haven't got the message that are going to be an hour away they're coming here. So once they yeah because you've got water. 13:38.72 alan No. 13:44.60 alan Oh Wow So it's multiple multiple multiple herds will come and follow and so they could have multiple huns. Yeah yeah. 13:55.85 carlos gallinger And minerals and escape terrain and once the the Indians figured this out again. It was just and of course you can imagine. You know we still some people still pray at a meal. Um, how bountiful. 14:13.30 alan Sure sure. 14:14.39 carlos gallinger They might have felt about this the great spirit the great Ram the spirit of the mountain. The spirit of the cave. Whatever their religious ideologies were would have been piqued by just the experience. You know how many young men you know. Finally left the village. You know, left mommy and went with the man and killed their first big game at that cave and that would have been in memory for a lifetime a memory. They'd had told their grandchildren you know I was here and this is what I did son and you got to do this and this is what's gonna happen and. 14:37.50 alan Um, yeah, right right? yeah. 14:52.51 carlos gallinger And some young you know we're talking probably a kid fourteen fifteen dragging home with the men a ram or or you a sheep entering the village this this victorious like hey he's a man now you know. 15:08.80 alan Carlos we only have about a minute left and the very last segment here. Ah for years for your sign off is there ah a message you'd like to share to our listenership about your lifetime of studying the sheep. 15:09.43 carlos gallinger I Mean so there was like okay. 15:23.67 carlos gallinger Well, you know you can get up bit my plug my my website the wayofthings dot org If you're interested in this kind of information and that's pretty much I guess I'll leave it to you. 15:27.89 alan Sure. 15:40.92 alan Ah, Carlos it's a joy. You're a treasure. There's no one like you on the planet that knows more about the habits and habitats and the hunting techniques and how to go about knowing something about the bighorn and it's been a blessing and an honor to. Associate with you over the years god bless you all in archeology podcast land see on the flip flop.