00:00.00 archpodnet Action. 00:01.92 alan Hey, welcome back. This is your host Dr Alan Garfinkel with your rock card podcast number 71 in the third segment. Final third, we've got Trudy Onhill of sadly south talking about the. Fabulous! Great mural rock art of Baja California and the sierra day San Francisco Trudy tell us a bit about this organization called ina and also the types of resources that potentially we could in fact, connect with. On the tours of this remarkable world class phenomenon. 00:46.10 Trudi Okay, well the department of called inna I n a h is insituto naciona the anthropologia a istoria so national institute of anthropology and history in Mexico. And in the early nineteen ah 1990 SA woman named Lucierra Lucero Gutierres took it upon herself singlehandedly almost um to organize both. The. Families in the wreches of the Sierra the San Francisco because it is such a highly concentrated area and easy to protect. Um, she took it upon herself to make this a world heritage site. And beyond the normal um routes that people go to to go see the world heritage rock art the the most popular one is the Santa Teresa Canyon which will visit twice in the month of March on the craft trips. And the sangregoio area to the north of there which we will also visit twice during the during the craft trips this this year um there are so many other trails and canyons and pieces of rock art that are. Rarely visited the Eastern Southeastern side of the whole mountain range is the Santa Marta area and so another very ah worthwhile visit to into serpiente cave and I'm sure Ryan and Christine and others. Ah, representatives of Kraft will probably want to set up another trip into that area but there are so many other routes that can be had into canyons. To go visit. Beautiful petroglyph areas. There's a whole canyon to the northeast of the Sangreorio Ranch area that it takes another day and a half to ride ride to and you can make a camp There's plenty of water. Aretinachhas in the canyon which means holding tanks of water and just a whole canyon to go exploring. It's like a treasure hunt just to go and find all of the beautiful petroglyphs in that area. There are other areas down farther from the. 03:27.32 Trudi Site of The La Pintaana and fletches the most visited area that are rarely visited and and go by the old mission site of San Pablo and so often you might hear the San Teresa Canyon being referred to as San Pablo and because the ranch called San Pablo is at the head of that water course and the old mission site ah excuse me the rancho Santa Teresa at the head of the canyon and the mission site of San Pablo is at the bottom towards the mouth of that canyon and so it gets 2 different names at times and then there's ah, a route that we do in a sometimes on whole circle loop trips and that would take for a craft trip. It might end up being a super long one. It might be twelve days by the time you fly into loreto. And get yourself up to the get ourselves up to the rock art area. Do a loop trip for eight days and then come back but I know you know one thing that happens is people often come down for these shorter four day three night camping trips c one canyon and then they want to come back for more. So I'm great. Yeah, and there is there's just so much to explore. It could be a whole month. You can take a whole month writing you'll. 04:39.36 alan They're hooked. Yeah, definitely definitely and the pet and the petroglyphs themselves are are any of them right? right? But the petoglyphs themselves are in in and of of themselves are remarkable. Are they not. 04:53.76 Trudi Um, yeah, there's you. 04:54.99 alan Because they sometimes have sometimes they have the similarities and differences with respect to the the paintings and those petrolyphs certainly go back even further in time than the paintings. 05:10.78 Trudi Right? exactly and so you don't see a lot of the the great mural of style of petroglyph in the Sierra Day San Francisco I've seen it in other parts around the peninsula other places it doesn't have much to do with that. It's more um, concentric circles it's more um well there's a beautiful rock if you recall near just down canyon from la pintada that is called piedra they chewy because one of our favorite guides who. Works for ena as a custodian now discovered that as he was looking for a lost mule and no one had ever come up upon this beautiful rock with a beautiful gorgeous patina on it suggesting very very ancient. Ah. 05:53.85 alan So. 06:08.30 Trudi Peckings into this rock and and it's a gorgeous sample of the petroglyph style in the in the range. 06:14.73 alan Well, what we found is when you see those the desert varnished petrolyphs that are on basalt and when you can see that that varnish appear pretty much the same color as the. Lifts themselves. They've been revarnished through the iron manganese coating that we're talking about a ah time span not not extensive in terms of we we do know confidently when. Those who have the ability to sort of test and estimate the ages of those images we're looking at 10000 years of prehistory which is absolute remarkable. 07:04.17 Trudi Yeah, it's very fun, very exciting even on the loop trip that we've done into Paral Canyon where the serpiente ah site is on the southeastern Part. We can also go up and around to the top of a mesa. And of course it's near waterholes where you're going to find the the highest concentration at least in this range of the of the the petroglyph art. Yeah. 07:32.78 alan Right? Because they'll be concentrated around the water sources and the natural the natural tanks now I understand that some of the and ah the people who live in this area actually serve As. Liaison Protectors or you know partly ah deal with or or help out and are compensated for that kind of relationship in terms of being an interface with the visitors am I correct. 08:06.97 Trudi Yeah, and ena has designed that Lucero Gutierre is specifically but the department of history and anthropology has designed that ah designed 2 sides of the mountains. Let's say the northwestern. Side were the cueva pintara and cueva de Las fletchas the the mostly most visited level 2 piece of rock art. There are different levels and so different guides on the guide roll in the sierra they San Francisco um are authorized to take people into different sites so in order to make this spectacular rock art available to the general public as well. For people who can't really. Um, or really don't want to get on a mule and ride down into a canyon you can visit 1 rock art site on the northeast northwestern side near the the village of San Francisco de lasiera and that would be cueva de ratton. And so people. Yeah you can get there by bus or by a local, not not a bus per se but ah, a local taxi van kind of a situation you can drive your own vehicle there hire a local guide sign in with the ina coordinator in the village of San Francisco 09:16.70 alan That's right. 09:34.58 Trudi And then take just a short little day trip out to 1 site where it only requires you to go up a little flight of stairs but it's protected very well protected because it is so accessible. It really necessitates that they actually put fences around those areas so that it won't be. Vandalized and that's just a wonderful thing that has happened to be able to have it be more accessible to most people and then there's what a beautiful site on the southeastern side in the Santa Marta area which requires from the town of San Ignacio in the. 09:57.40 alan Absolutely. 10:14.20 Trudi Central part of the the heart of the peninsula. Basically you can access that by a couple of our car ride signing in with the custodian in the Santa Marta side of the canyon or the the mountain range and then local guides will take you there either by mule. Or on foot and you can hike for a couple of hours to get up to an amazing site called el pal marrito and so there's 11 that's level one that's available to be able to go and visit some spectacular rock art without doing a camping trip. Um. And to get there mostly on foot or or by car and then there's the level 2 where it's protected in the Santa Teresa Canyon for instance by having wooden walkways that have been built with railings and everything so you can. Actually walk along Cueva La Pintada for two hundred yards and admire all of the the art in that site without degrading the the poet. 11:18.88 alan So really, so really, what the bet what the what? the mexican people have done what lucero has done and and others is make these paintings available to the general public in a way that protects them and yet. Allows them to be visited and appreciated and and this is in a way that is a little different from what we do domestically even the United States they take it one step further and they have provided almost a personalized. Connection to these images to these sites through those site stewards and through the the protective nature and interactive nature of how how well engineered and managed these particular sites are. It's it's it's it certainly is a wondrous way of of of managing these treasures don't you think. 12:27.29 Trudi Yeah, and the cowboys the Voqueros their families are so hospitable when you go into those areas they um, you actually sometimes ride past in Sangreorio in the case of sangregoio. They've built some. 12:30.93 alan M. 12:47.10 Trudi Amenities for us near the little garden camp site in the sangregoio Area. You get to camp in in there in the orange grove just down from the ranch down the Hill from the ranch and with a little stream going through it. So It's a beautiful area. And the people at the ranch have been always been very hospitable. They do some great leather work at that Ranch. So There's more history to be absorbed even beyond the the rock art in the area and definitely um, the the people who live in that mountain range. 13:06.46 alan Amazing. 13:23.99 Trudi Really do count on visitation to these sites as part of their economy for sure. 13:31.57 alan yeah yeah I could see that so. What's what's rather remarkable is we're seeing sort of this intimate dynamic between cultural resources rock guard sites prehistory anthropology and the local people. Who are ah challenged yet collaborators and working with ia and luceto and others in terms of researching protecting and interpreting the sites. Um. Justin Highland years ago did his ph d dissertation on these sites and he he worked with Lucero in terms of publishing a number of syntheses about the sierra day San Francisco and understanding great mural rock art and it's it's been ah a wondrous collaboration and I've I can see that from from that kind of relationship both from the american side and the mexican side there's been a tremendous interest there's been several ph d dissertations come out of the study of the great mural rock art and it's been quite revelatory interesting and adding to our understanding of. Really forge your hutter gatherer cosmology religion and religious practices in a remarkable part of the world and endlessly engaging obviously and one that has been very helpful to me to really begin to. Understand and appreciate this kind of relationship does that make sense Judy. 15:33.79 Trudi Yeah, and it's such a unique area. Um with the cosmology and energetic side of things I will tell you a little anecdote of my own. It was very interesting for me 1 time to have a friend of mine. Ah, call me up 1 time and ask me Trudy What do you know about the area of San Ignacio and that area are you very familiar with that I said yeah boy do I know I do know a lot you said well you know i'm. 16:08.10 alan And. 16:10.46 Trudi This is interesting. There's going to be do you know what? grid lines are and I said well not really she said well there are the energetic lines that encircle the earth and there are certain areas and so I just need to tell you I'm somehow drawn to this grid line number 17 16:16.82 alan Ah. 16:29.99 Trudi Ah, grid line number 17 tends to run straight north ah from san ignasio this area so I'm wondering what you know about that. This grid line is called the plumed serpent and I said um you know. 16:41.20 alan Oh my word. 16:47.38 Trudi That grid line actually runs through then a rock art site that has a serpent with deer horns. So wow what kind of energy. How did that happen. The plumed serpent. Grid line goes right? basically through the serpent cave in the southeast side of that Sierra so it just opened up a whole new world of vision for me of of how cosmic. Ah the. The understanding or the lack of of understanding that we have of what the painters might have known or felt or understood. Energetically in a particular area. Very very interesting when that little light bulb came on for me. 17:43.24 alan Absolutely absolutely and we we owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to their the ancestors of the natives and those that were artisans who took the trouble to capture the cosmic. Sensibilities and bring them down to earth so we could appreciate them and with that we're at a time. Thank you Trudy and thank you all listeners of the rock art podcast see you next week in a brand new show see on the flip flo. 18:10.77 Trudi Okay. 18:21.68 Trudi Good job Allan you really learned that. 18:21.75 alan Ula huh. 18:26.80 alan Um.