00:00.00 Alan Welcome back gang to episode 84 this is segment 2 this is your host Dr Alan Garfinkel and we are blessed and proud to have Anne Norman rock art enthusiast and soon to be rock art scholar who is on board. Doing a bit of a bio epic on her life early life and her passion for the study of rock art and archaeology and continue in your biographical study and we'll see where this takes us. 00:33.93 Ann And I have to say this I'm blessed and honored to be here. Um i. Okay so we're in the Congo in the archives and in Rari and that kind of turned me onto this again and then. I fast forward I didn't do a ph d and I didn't study at the vids and I came back to the United States for a couple of years and I was pregnant. Actually this I left this factor out and if we have time to tell the shame and story of when I was pregnant. 02:20.74 Alan Yeah. 01:49.37 Ann When I was in South Africa I was pregnant and I nobody really knew I didn't wasn't showing until I was like none along and when I went on that big like 5 hour hike I was pregnant and I so I did all of this stuff and. Yeah I mean just had these fantastic adventures. But I came home I had my baby and I ended up you know fast forward a few years in oil and gas which is I'm not an oil and gas person I'm not an engineer I studied history and um, in fact, comparative religions and. That's that is my I've always been fascinated with religions but during this segment of time you know again I I ended up in oil and gas in Africa and if you know the map of Africa well you know that the oil and gas fields are in like the most politically unstable dangerous places to go by way of like insecurity and so Chad and. The niger delta and you know just these terrible places these they're not terrible places. They're wonderful places and and some of my favorite spots in the world Chad is probably None of my favorite most happy. Like it's so amazing to be there and be with those people because you hear all of these things and then you get to the you know you're actually working and and you're working with the people that run the country and a lot of times you know, politics and oil. Are one and the same and you know you you find yourself with these leaders of these countries that you've just heard or devils are mean or they'll you know, kill you and they're the kindest people ever and you know now my son is eleven years old and he's been all over to these places and. it's it's it's just so much fun to go and experience this but Chad is what resurrected my desire to to begin to study this stuff in earnest and I'm at this place in my career now that I can actually make a shift and. I'm in the process of doing that and Chad is what did it because there's you know again like the oil fields are out in the middle of nowhere and then all of a sudden There's this like none you know year old petroglyphs of a giraffe. 07:20.83 Ann And you're standing there going someone touched this someone made this It's nobody actually knows how old they are and and there's a few things that are really famous in Chad and and there's a world heritage site but to me what's interesting is the stuff that nobody ever sees. Unless you have to go out in these desert fields and and you know and again like there's no village. There's nothing There's like a coordinate on the map and that's where we are and then here oh and by the way come and look at what I just found look at this rock. It has a bunch of. Pictures on it and it's just mind boggling and it's breathtaking and the history and you start to ask the village. You know the people that live around there. What do you know about this and they'll tell you the story. 09:10.60 Alan Ah. 09:13.71 Ann And the history is that they they can't read. They can't write as it as it. You know in our capacity the the way that we read and write but look these are some of the most brilliant people I've ever met my life and what they remember and what they record in their minds. Orally and then pass to their Children. We should all be taking serious lessons from that So that. 10:37.34 Alan So these are stories So these are stories so these and so these are stories on the rocks. So the rocks ah commemorate and also communicate stories. They could be incidents historical episodes. 10:31.55 Ann Yes. 11:13.96 Alan Or they can be important elements of their religion and cosmology am I correct. 10:51.51 Ann Indeed and I think they're a mix of all of the above and their actual history because one of the things that's that's. 11:36.32 Alan So what did you learn from some of the natives rig. 11:20.69 Ann Um, gosh I now you put me on the spot. Um, one of the right now I'm thinking of Giraffes and I didn't there's nothing that there's no like great anecdotal story there. 12:03.24 Alan On the spot. Were there certain panels or certain images. Yeah, go ahead. Sure. 11:59.17 Ann But um I do have a good just because they're giraffes are like not something that you think of in petroglyphs like really honestly have you ever seen a giraffe an ancient giraffe in a rock painted somewhere. 12:35.82 Alan Why Giraffes. Okay. 13:03.44 Alan O. 12:37.30 Ann It's just like whoa because I think of rock art and I think of petroogglyphs and I think of southwest United States I think of California you think of Utah you think of the native. Ah you know the Navajo and and the pi you think. That's where my mind goes to or it goes to the caves in France or it goes to the sand but it doesn't go to giraffes and these giraffes are Millennia old. 14:04.46 Alan No. 13:43.21 Ann And hippos. There's there's there's one panel that I um I thought that's a hippo and this you know, according to the people around me they said oh this is older than egypt everybody kind of they tend to date things on Egypt right? because Egypt is such a. 14:49.24 Alan Oh. 14:22.21 Ann Such a point in global history. But and and you ask well what part of Egypt. Oh I don't know really old Egypt and sometimes it's hard to communicate in a language that we both understand but they'll draw things or they'll they'll. Tell you things with pictures because I don't speak a language they do and they don't speak a language I do but pictures speak a language. 15:49.36 Alan Sure. 15:24.21 Ann So it's it's it's just been remarkable. One of the um I can tell you an anecdotal story about something I learned this was in Sierra Leone but and I don't know if this is relevant and it's not ah. Ah, particular. It's not relevant to rock art. But um in the temney culture. This just came up this is what came to my mind. Um, everybody jokes about africa time. Everybody's late forever. Like if if you say two o'clock they're going to show up somewhere between two o'clock and six o'clock and they'll that no one is late and I used to get so frustrated with that and they said look they taught me this they said many many tribes are this way in our language we don't have a word for time. We don't. tell time like you tell it we don't have o'clock and we don't have the numbers we have yesterday today and tomorrow and yesterday could be 5 minutes ago or it could be ten thousand years ago it was just it was it was behind now. And then you have now and then you have um tomorrow which could be in 5 minutes from now or tomorrow or in 10000 years and that I've asked that question to other tribes throughout Africa and I asked this in chat and they said yeah we have that concept. But now we have time and we have we have ways to calculate it and we have words for it. But how I relate this to rock art. Sometimes when I see concentric circles everywhere I think about that time and I wonder is this that concept of time in the language that there aren't words for and you think about these things that you learn from these native groups all over. West Africa you know the central part of Africa there's kind of the same types of cultures and there's there's you know more tribal relationship between the you know these economic earth sorry these Geographic East Africa and West Africa and Central Africa and South Africa but you wonder like what are those? Maybe they're spiritual. Maybe it's a shame and maybe it's just this time is this swirling thing and I bring up concentric circles as well because I left this part out that when i. 20:52.25 Ann Ah, those concentric circles in the archives in Rari my eyes bulged out of my head I said how how how he said I don't know I said there's concentric circles in Utah and in these places that I know. You know why are they the same how how could there be the same kinds of images here in deep dark you know jungle of Africa you find similar images as what you find in. The american southwest and the san and maybe okay, you can you can say maybe there's some continuity in relationship and traveling going on between the boundaries of what we know to be South Africa today up into the Congo that's. You know, not ah, not a far stretch but how exactly do they get from there to Arizona and they're the same thing so I thought okay, what's going on here. There's got to be some kind of spiritual religious mental I don't know it's It's something to this state That's what drives me these concentric circles. So when I see these concentric circles all over the place all over the place in in various cultures all over the globe. How explain that. And I know that there's cognitive cognitive neuroscience and I know um Dr. David Whitley has has done. You know great work on that almost all of you guys that I've read voraciously. Um. Have written and mentioned that but I just can't help but think there's way more to this than just our minds are wired that way versus they're wired that way but and. There is a big spiritual component to these things and when you ask that. 25:41.70 Alan Absolutely and and you're a hundred percent yep you're a hundred percent right there's a spiritual equation to an understanding of symbols. In other words, you can talk about them as abstract symbols you can talk about them as. End toptics that one might see vis-a-vis altered states of consciousness or as a visionary experience but you can also talk about them in a way as being part of the religious language the um cosmological. Communication language. It's one of the units that we use that are they call them semiotics. They call them. Ah what else they they call it indexical images because they're they're full of needing. And that meaning is often cross-cultural whether they were reintroduced or whether they were reinvented or whether the mind is just set up the software of the mind is set up such that it produces this equivalencies all around the world. 27:41.90 Ann It makes perfect sense and I actually want to add 1 thing I am going to find the name of the man above I will find the name of the man that took me the san um gentleman I'm ashamed to say I I for it slipped in my mind. 28:15.20 Alan Does that make any sense. 28:20.89 Ann But something he taught me and then I when I went back and talked to Dr Smith about this. He said yeah, that's what they that's the sand the concentric circles according to the sand because there were there are concentric circles in sandrock art and I saw some of it with my very eyes. And I asked him about that after we had explored these concentric circles in the Congo and I was kind of starting to put None and None together. He told me this and I found this so interesting he said for us when you see ah a spiral like that a concentric circle. It's a spiritual opening of some sort. It could be physical. It's ah it's an opening to the heavens or a spiritual opening. It could be a physical one that we believe this spot is a sacred spot and right here marks the spot of where the. 30:29.56 Alan It's a. 30:13.99 Ann The you know the other world starts and where this one and there's there's a this is the place where you can come and go between those Worlds a portal. Yes, that's what I'm looking for and he said the other thing is cracks cracks are portals as well. 30:58.80 Alan A portal. Right. 31:24.68 Alan Yes. 30:53.89 Ann And and look and and you know and that's when and this is the other thing that is remarkable when you see cracks and you see snakes coming out of them pick the culture pick the tribe pick the rock art pick the time period. There's animals. There's snakes. There's beings. There's anthropomorphs. There's things coming in and out of those cracks the elund the spirit of the eland when they when the sand peopleop harvest in eland that spirit goes into the crack and if you start to look at their rock art. You'll see elund's drawn. That's their spirit animal. And they're they're pecked. They're painted. However, they're they're on that panel that rock art panel that Elin spirit is going in or it's it's it's going in and and other spirits are coming out and shaman's. Can explain a bit more to you about that I didn't have the experience to actually go with it shaman. Um, but I will one day because it's just fascinating to me. But I think that's gotta hold true and this is just conjecture entirely. But It's not coincidental and it's also not unique to to that tribe. There's cracks. You know there's things coming in and out of cracks and there's these concentric circles spirals. Yeah, and you know sometimes this spiral is. 34:18.88 Alan All over the all ah all over the all over the world. Yeah that but I remember I remember I was telling you about that wonderful woman. Her name is Eve Ewing who travels she's in her eighty s now but traveled on the back of the back of the burrows and. 34:02.61 Ann There. 34:14.87 Ann Yes. 34:58.80 Alan Back of the mules and into the you know great largest prehistored paintings in the world. She ah began she began to publish articles on the meaning and the metaphors of cracks. They called her the crack lady. But yes. 34:33.57 Ann Yes. 34:55.23 Ann Oh my gosh. 35:38.40 Alan And so I'll ah again, here's another reason to introduce you to Eve Eing well and with wave wave wave. We good. We've gone through section excuse me segment 2 and we're going to move on to segment 3 see on the flip flop gang. 35:15.87 Ann It's well and you start. 36:16.80 Alan Ah, oh boy, What? a what? A what? a? What? What? what? a journey I Love it. 35:45.29 Ann I. 36:02.79 Ann It's.