00:00.00 archpodnet Welcome back to the rock art podcast episode one zero five and you just mentioned something at the end of the last segment that I was actually thinking about and was going to ask you and and and this is a good time to do it. We talk about the purpose. Behind rock art all the time which is probably 1 of next to dating sometimes but dating is getting a little bit better. But next to dating it's one of those questions that we'll probably never exactly know the answer to we can probably get closer and closer to what we think it might be but without speaking to the people who created it. It's it's really difficult. To discover the intent behind something but and you know there's there's almost a joke amongst archaeologists you know, just because of of historical references and anytime somebody didn't know how to explain something they called it ritual right? There was like oh I don't know what this is it must be ritual right? because we didn't understand it. But now that we. You know we we go forward in time and we learn more things we have better dating techniques or analytical techniques and we say oh okay, well maybe this was used for this and not necessarily ritual and it makes me wonder well well obviously some rock art is definitely used for ritualistic purposes. I mean there's almost no question there given some of the. Fantastical nature of some of those things but I just wonder how much of it really is for that and how much of it is more for instructional purposes, especially with pre-literate societies. You know they had no writing or anything anything like that. No other way to really demonstrate to other members of their of their tribe or band or community. 01:31.47 archpodnet Or even the children you know the teenagers that are coming up learning how to do these things I mean it wouldn't surprise me if more rock art than less ended up being instructional in nature. You know what? I mean. 01:41.54 alan Yeah I know what you're being and I I know that even in my own in my own work when they've worked with a native american from the Owens Valley and looked at the rock art I know that's Sandy Rogers who's another person that we had interviewed here who's a specialist in rock art and also in. 01:59.26 archpodnet Ah. 02:01.25 alan Obsid and dating um but an article about rock art at Storyboards and about they were a means of communicating educating both adults and children to the value merits and the nature of the cosmology now. 02:05.23 archpodnet Um, yeah. 02:20.18 alan 1 thing we should remember is we're thinking about this in sort of western industrial. You know thinking when when we try to think about indigenous ah ways of of thinking or functions. 02:26.97 archpodnet Right. 02:37.85 alan There is no difference between religion and non-religion. There's not a sort of a cosmological religious supernatural and a natural world. They're all intertwined so intimately that no matter how they think about it. It's all the same. 02:42.22 archpodnet Okay. 02:57.19 alan Stuff. So when you when you look at images on stone they they probably have some sort of a religious or ceremon or ideological element to them. But that doesn't mean that it had didn't have a very functional basic. Ah, tutorial or educational element as well. Does that make any sense. Yeah, and and we have to.. It's very difficult to think like a native person or to somehow grasp the way in which. 03:18.20 archpodnet Ah, okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, okay, that. 03:30.75 archpodnet Um, yeah. 03:35.31 alan An indigenous preliterate person would be thinking about the world. They they would grasp and and and connect with the natural environment in a whole different way. Totally different. 03:50.79 archpodnet Yeah, and that it's so interesting. You say that because I hadn't really thought about it like that before because it you know I'm not very much a religious person but just you know I've seen churches I've bend to church and things like that you are a religious person and and go to church and it makes me think of that sort of. Ritualistic behavior that we exhibit today which is on the one hand it's it's ritual it's ceremony. It's it's ah you know, worship. But on the other hand it's instructional and in the way that they see it right? It's both things simultaneously. Yeah, okay. 04:24.51 alan Exactly Yes, yeah, it's it's It's how to live. But it's also ah to be to being deferent or understanding sort of the instruction manual for life which is which is a guide from our creator. 04:27.74 archpodnet That's interesting. 04:37.83 archpodnet Um, yeah, okay. 04:41.74 alan And so that's the kind of thinking that we might have ah Engendered also remember that every everything about this exercise we're talking about is different than the way we think about the world today. And what I mean by that is the rocks the trees the wood the water, the sky. All of them were alive with agency. They all had active roles in the environment. 05:15.29 archpodnet Ah. 05:20.19 alan They could be connected with they could be communicated with. They could be heard. They could be they would train us they would help us, Etc, etc and that is a whole other realm that is rather difficult for a modern industrial. 05:21.50 archpodnet Right. 05:39.28 alan Literate individual to grasp. Yeah makes it yeah and and and that and that that comes in being very important when you're trying to tease out the salient elements of what the heck rock guard or what the heck an archeological feature. 05:40.41 archpodnet I bet Yeah, okay, well. 05:58.87 alan Or anything about archaeology is go ahead. 05:59.62 archpodnet Yeah, now aside from now aside from potentially a similar thing is the article that sparked this discussion finding like images of I guess game drives or game fences or something like that here in North America can you think of anything else that is just like overtly instructional on rock art that you've that you've seen I mean I aside from well maybe maybe it's just the hunting. Yeah, okay. 06:27.47 alan At at no absolute at no no, no, no absolutely um, what am I 1 of my most mind boggling discoveries was in little petroli canyon and I think I think I've mentioned this um I don't find. 06:39.31 archpodnet Um, yeah. 06:45.35 alan I Find only a handful of very easily decipherable glyphs that that hit me hit me between the eyes and tell me what they're telling me in a way that I can explain it but there happens to it happens to be one of those in little Petrlyph canyon. 06:52.98 archpodnet Ah. 06:58.80 archpodnet Okay. 07:04.52 alan But I've only recently in the last couple of years discovered so on a pyramidal boulder. It has it has 5 figures one is ah a woman holding snakes above ah above the moon and the others are patterned around the outside and they. Looked to be holding things that look like parachutes and I was I was mystified by it for a while and then as I fell over it I found out what that was all about um and the reason this is an instruction manual is it's a the key creation narrative. 07:26.50 archpodnet M. 07:44.23 alan For ancient Uto Asteans In other words, they talk about when the world was dark and there were no people there was these dignitaries these ritualists that accompanied the lunar. 07:45.79 archpodnet Okay. 08:02.92 alan Goddess and what they did was create the sun and so to do that they had to um, move along this path and go to this sacred place and then they had to 1 of the person had to do a sacrifice. And jump in the fire and then as they came out of the fire. They would then be reborn and be able to create the sun and once they did that when the sun would be nested in the heavens they had to make sure that it would stay there. In the in the right spot because if it's too low. It would burn everything up if it was too high. It would freeze everything away and so to do that they were stationed in the 4 corners of the earth and became the pillars of the earth. And they also became ah the people that brought the rain and held up the clouds and the heavens. So what? that whole picture is is the clouds. The people that the so the ah the the goddess of the the moon. They're all arrayed in this one panel. And there's nothing That's that's all that's on that panel. It's very simple. It's very straightforward and that same story is told in South Texas the creation narrative as a pictograph that dates to that same general time period and that same story is identified with the wee hole. 09:28.44 archpodnet Um, okay. 09:38.85 alan And with the aztecs So and the reason I talk about that. It's an instruction. It's a storyboard to anyone who would look if a shaman or a religious you know adept individual would say okay here is here's an example I'm depicting. 09:39.54 archpodnet Okay. 09:57.68 alan Like famous creation story of our people and here it is on the rock does that make sense. Okay. 10:05.50 archpodnet Nice. That's really cool. Yeah I like that. Okay, all right? Well um, you know that's probably about it for this episode. Yeah I mean it's It's really cool. Yeah I Really enjoy. 10:14.78 alan Um, yeah, we could we covered it? yeah. 10:20.33 archpodnet Ah, talking about these news articles when they come out because you know people see them and they don't necessarily understand what's going on there and and how that relates to you know if the audience happens to be here in North America how that maybe relates over here. But you know you go back that far. There's not a lot of differences in in humanity. There's really not now to be honest with you I mean there's cultural differences but you go back 9000 years and people had the same goals. 10:37.96 alan No, no, there really isn't and yes, all right? doc. Thank you God Bless see at the flip see see had the flip flop gang. 10:47.50 archpodnet All right? Thanks Alan! We'll be back next time.