00:01.95 Alan Well hello out there in archeology podcast lan this is your host Dr Alan Garfinkel with the California Rock art foundation and we have a very very special guest. One of my ah, greatest friends and. Collaborators Eve Ewing known as Eva De La Cueva and she will be talking about her experiences studying rock art intensively with the grand des morales of ah sierra de San Francisco 00:24.11 Eve Ah. 00:36.53 Alan Eva you're there. Well wonderful, wonderful to connect. We've been. We've been attempting to do this on and off for quite some while and now you're you're ah just on the tip of the hundredth and first episode that we're doing and i'm. 00:36.80 Eve Um, yeah I Am we. 00:54.60 Alan I'm just blessed and honored to have you as our guest scholar. 00:58.41 Eve Well wonderful one ah 1 happens to be the highway nearest to me Parallels I 5 and that mostly is a continuation of el camino real. From San Diego clear up to San Francisco so I'm honored to be on 1 oh 1 number 1 oh 1 and okay. 01:16.16 Alan Fantastic eve. So this is eve eing her. Her background is in in sort of the study of of natural history and prehistory and and also expertise in climatology. So I'm gonna I'm gonna ask you the million dollar question to open up. Tell us a bit about your background and how you got involved with the study of native people archaeology anthropology the study of rock art and specifically your hyper focus on the great murro rock art in this in the heartland of Baja California 01:45.21 Eve Um, okay. 01:54.12 Eve Yes, yes oh for a focal point I will talk about the South Gallery of Quava Pintata Ah, but for now how did I get into this world where in my goodness. Um I was. 01:55.96 Alan Please. 02:09.36 Eve Ah, born and lived on a farm in Duchess County New York state um and during world war two. My father had to go or volunteer to go into the navy because he knew how to navigate from his summers in in Maine and my mother was a great. Farmer type and she took care of the farm while dad was hit at the war and no one knew if the germans or the japanese were going to land in America so her job was to keep the farm going and that meant us kits really? we had the free reign of of ah. The farm we did have a nanny that checked in on us once in a while but she was told basically leave us alone and let us let us roll and so we roamed the meadows and the forests and the the barn I got to be friends with all the animals. And so in a sense because my mother didn't have time to really be there for us and my father was gone to the war I really bonded with the land and the in the animals and the trees and the birds it was an elm tree I'd come out and hug every morning. For example I'm a real tree hugger. 03:25.20 Alan But. 03:26.68 Eve Way back and and then all the mystery of the birds of learning how to lurk slowly through the forest until you could see the bird that was singing behind the leaves the big leaves and then you would just wonder and wonder like the hermit thrush. Oh my what? a. Lyrical, wonderful song. So anyway, eventually. Ah my father was transferred to California to San Diego to finish out his term in the Navy and towards the end of world war two and I. Took a terrible emotional um landslide after moving away from the the farm and the East Coast is very flat and and but forests and meadows and things like that were wonderful. So slowly what happened is I began to transfer my love of forests it was into into the desert and into the back country and into the sense of something wild and something far beyond the the. Can of man. It just was some wonderful experience and my father became an ocean oceanographer at Scripps and he studied the currents and all kinds of things from the air and I began to be able to in 19 I think about 4053. 04:57.12 Eve We began to go down. Ah whenever he had a spare seat in the plane when he didn't have a script scientist or somebody with him I'd get to sit in the back of the plane and flying over baha just fascinated me because there just wasn't anything there I mean there was the road hadn't even been. 05:13.98 Alan Ah. 05:16.52 Eve Finished yet. It was just a dirt track and in the wilderness and and as anita aspinosa in El Rosario who used to say she was at the end of the the first part of the highway being built so there was you know two hundred and fifty miles below the border and she said. Good people, bad road bad. Well good bad people. Good yeah bad people will look good because when they finally finished the highway in about 1974 then you had caravans of stolen cars and. 05:39.64 Alan Ah, ah yeah people good road. Yeah. 05:52.80 Eve And all kinds of stuff going down the peninsula. But anyway, ah so but I got to go on first trip into Baja was probably 53 on with ah and from my dad's airplane and we would land on the salt flats of now. 05:55.17 Alan So when did you make your first trip trip into bar. 06:09.60 Alan Um, hello. 06:11.37 Eve The largest town in Central Baja California it's it's ah it's ah ah ah, it's well it's north of so Ignacio and north of viscaino. Um, anyway, it'll I'll have to add it later on because right now I can't seem to. 06:22.53 Alan Um, okay. 06:26.27 Alan Come there. 06:31.48 Eve Can't seem to pull it out of my head. Oh scammons up. Um, ah no, no, no, that's the lagoon that was near it. No, it's Guerrero Negro and Gurero Negro was the name of a british ship that would hide behind the the. 06:33.30 Alan Um, yemen's lagoon. Yeah. 06:48.60 Eve Land points and wait for the spanish galleons to go by and Rob them and only this one sank and it was called Guerrero Negro means the black warrior and so that was the um, okay the the highway finally went through there. So. 06:52.25 Alan Ah. 06:58.42 Alan Well. 07:07.00 Eve And 63 long 63 64 long before the highway was ever built down the peninsula the peninsula by by crow is about 800 and some miles by road. It's about 900 and by. Ah, 900 and something I'm roughly and by trail it's it's well over a thousand miles because you're switch packing forth up and down mountain passes and all kinds of things. So the milling expedition went from takati to Cabo San Lucas in 63 64 and I joined the trip. In um, pahia de Los anhiles in January right? after Christmas of ah 1963 s turning into 64 and I got to join the expedition and. That's when I saw my first rock art. It was about three months into the expedition that we finally got. Ah, anyway we when we got down into so Ignacio that's when we went up to the great mural country. We were planning to go into. Ah. The great mirror to see the great murals Cueva Pinta ah because the article that came out in 1 62 or Earl Stanley Gardner was flown down into the mountains and um. 08:34.31 Eve Then helicopter down and flew past the paintings. You could see him as you're flying down the canyon and he was so excited about it that he called Ucla and got Clement Megan professor Clement Megan to go down there with him and that's the first western introduction. 08:38.86 Alan Well so. 08:53.93 Eve That wasn't just local local cowboys living in ranchers living in the mountains. So yes. 08:56.83 Alan So that was a that was a major discovery and sort of an unveiling of this area Thatd heretofore would be his relative was relatively unknown wasn't it. 09:06.26 Eve Totally unknown except for during the french occupation of of the belleo mine outside of Santa Rosalia the french mining town. 09:18.85 Alan Um. 09:22.16 Eve Excuse me, it was yeah mining and it it was copper mining town and it was founded by the Rothschild family and ah the local ranchers. So the ones that helped the ah the company decide which ranches in the area would be. Good to ah grow food for the spurgeoning mining town and ah, um, the but they were they were called the bellleo ranch my mining sites because they provided the food and ah we ah so so but on the milling expedition. 09:45.68 Alan Um. 09:54.27 Alan Um. 10:01.23 Eve You see the reason that no one knew about those cave paintings from the outside world Much a few people did very few ah is because the the wagon road any kind of a road had to stay on the lowlands and there's no water in the lowlands. So. 10:19.94 Alan Um. 10:20.69 Eve Therefore unlike Northern California where when the portola and and serra expedition arrived in San Diego they they just went up the coast because all the stream beds that were rivers like the San Diego River the san die gito the um ah rivers rivers they came all the way out to the ocean so you didn't have to be in the mountains but in baha if you wanted water you had to trail up in the high mountain country and that required mule trips ah mule expeditions. There was no water everybody in their early pioneer times of baha were terrified of the viscaino plains. There was no water there were herds of antelope. But other than that they just you know they just wanted to stay out of there that was a death scene. Ah a death sign. To try and grow and that's where the highway goes the highway goes right through the viscaino desert and um, stays long, not too far from the coast and and so the mountains were the were the hidden places and that's where people could live year-round. Was were in the mountains where the waterholes they were waterholes that were and springs a few springs a few tiny little streams so it was something else. So then when I got back from the melling expedition we we we got as far as a couple of. 11:55.27 Eve Of of caves. But then we had to go back because Andy Melling said look our meals have enough strength to either go into the cave painting country north of so ignasio here or or kabo san Lucas but we don't have the strength for them to do both so we opted to stick to our. Our trail when I got back but we did go and see a couple of paintings up the arroyo parole area and ah and then had to turn around and come back. Um, so ah, the fun thing about. It was. We got to see just how rugged that mountain country is it's all lava assault which is very hard and tiring to walk on for animals for people. It's just just very very hard so we had to turn around and and and go back and leave the mountains. And ah, could well understand why very few people lived up in them but slowly they were settled by the descendants of the original soldiers that were brought over by the missionaries. The. In the in the ella in the so Ignacio River and that pardon me so Ignacio missionary and the snatter of the peninsula were um, ah ranchers with names like Arse Va Vienio um Rodriguez 13:24.20 Eve Ah, few but there were not more than 5 families but mostly arsess and Harry Crosby when I got back from the mailing expedition I got a call from somebody I had never heard of named Harry Crosby and he said I just understand you got back from a long meal trip. Well, it took the mailing expedition six months to go the whole length because of the drought that was down there and losing animals and all kinds of things that happened to us so we made all the mistakes for the next people to come along and I just told Harry Harry the most important thing you need to do is to find a local guide. Don't go in the mountains without a local guide and they'll know where the water holes are and and if you don't know where they are. You're in trouble so he did and he thank me for it profusely but he came out of course with the wonderful ah book on the. The rock art of Baja California and he spent a lot of time off and on years of of work went into it and exploration and he did the footwork to go into these incredibly difficult canyons and up these amazing passes and the little. Little the the Graham Canyon of baha is where cueva cantata and fletches and the great the heartland of the great mural country is in that canyon and the other canyon which is San Gregorio which is the first cave he ever saw. 14:57.34 Eve And um, his his description of the the grand um, um, quait quavo. Um, one in in Sangreorio is just elegant. It's just the way he described it. He said this cavalcade of. Of animals forty feet high off the sum of and galloping out of the cave what on earth they're all galloping out of the cave. So anyway, I finally got um, okay. 15:26.26 Alan But let let let's let's start. Let's stop there and and we'll we'll pick it up in the next segment. Thanks Gang see in the flip flop.