00:01.20 alan Welcome back to the rockard podcast this is your host Dr Alan Garfinkel and with Tim Wag Historian Enthusiast Native american advocate and rock art aficionado of sorts. So Tim. Let's continue our conversation um in your adventures and in your movement throughout California ah you seen a bit of rock art. 00:29.65 timwaag I have and frankly when I give presentations or have an opportunity to speak like this I have to go with this most important message which is that the indian culture physical cultural sites. Are disappearing through natural degradation as as well as vandalism graffiti and things like that. So I really have to make this statement before I start talking in more detail about some of these things with the internet. To a large degree. It ruined a lot of sites because people would spout off to the public at large about sites and the sites would get ruined. They would get devastated so treat these every indian cultural site. In the western us in California in particular, you need to treat them with the utmost respect and I'm going to be detailed here because I have to be I'm always m it's my duty do not walk on cultural sites. Do not touch the items do not chalk the rock art. Do not splash it to me with to make bring out the color. no rubbings no castings no graffiti no leaving trash correct the behavior of others and be respectful but adamant because we're not creating more of these sites. 02:00.41 timwaag And they are disappearing and we have to show the the appropriate respect for these sites because I'm going to talk about a few places that that you're not going to be able to find from my descriptions. But when people get fascinated with rock art like me, you tend to listen to other people. And you go out in the field to explore and in the beauty of the vast western wilderness you often find sensitive cultural sites and in the beginning. What do we want to do we want to touch them. We want to. Chalk them. We want to do all these things hear them and that's a no no. And in fact I took my wife and I both and a lot of my friends took the blm site steward class which trained you over a long weekend to be a protector of these. Sensitive indian cultural sites and as one of my favorite Blm geologists pointed out. You can barely stick a shovel in the ground in California and not find indian cultural artifacts. So. It's really important that when you. Wander into them that you treat them carefully treat them with respect and please for goodness hey do not post locations on the internet that is just a recipe for destruction. 03:27.86 alan Absolutely thanks for that that we yeah probably have not done enough of advice or or counsel to the listeners of the rock art podcast but Tim those are all cautionary notes and very very important. In your ah activities of visiting rock guard sites. Um, what have you learned? What have you found what patterns ah sort of hit you and um, which which sites do you find. Most engaging in why. 04:08.21 timwaag That's a great question. It's a vast field again for the same reasons I mentioned the indigenous people spread out all over North and South America and pretty much to a tribe they have various types of let's just call it. Um, indian art forms and again you know the major 3 which we talk about on the California Rock Art Foundation site which are petoglyphs which is pet rock pictographs which is painted rock and then my new obsession which again is the most sensitive ah of all. Is we like to call it rock alignments. But it's also called geoglis or entanglios turns out in the western us. There's a ton of them and for people who don't know what that is. It's simply that on these beautiful on these beautiful? Um, um. Flat areas of the western us and they actually call it. Um I'm blanking on the name of it. Maybe he can help me out here alan that um, yeah, desert pavement. Thank you on these desert pavement sites the indigenous people did what again. 05:10.85 alan Um, ah yeah's ah the desert desert desert pavements. 05:24.42 timwaag We might have done ourselves. They have this beautiful palette in the form of desert pavement and what do they do? they align rocks to form again. Geometric shapes animalmorphs all kind and again things we don't understand what they are and. Again I'm gonna be very vague on this. These are the most sensitive sites of all because you can literally inadvertently approach a rock alignment site and kick a rock and move it before you even know you've hit the site. So. Yeah, yeah, really have to exert extreme caution but these are really fascinating because these are things that we had never heard of before that was new to me. They fortunately, they're not well publicized, but it's common across the whole western us and. It really they cover lots of ground they're in the great open spaces of the great desert valleys and it gives you the opportunity to spend a day walking through these remote locations that probably another person has not walked in that area in 102030 years and you get to see the the beauty of nature as as it was before european contact and you get to find these beautiful different geometric rock alignment shapes and you get to look at them just like we do pictographs and petroglyphs and try to figure out. 06:59.54 timwaag What are they trying to tell us what were they trying to express and it just opens up your mind to this great imagination. 07:01.84 alan Ah, absolutely yes, yes, amazing. Um I know that in my work in the western Mojave Desert we have ah a few of those. Rock alignments that you're talking about and there's ah quite a lengthy one on a mesa in the western mojave desert and I learned when I wrote a book about the native people in that area that that ah that rock alignment was. Ah, it. It worked so that it was a um, ah targeted alignment that showed I believe it was the winter solstice sunset. Um, because when one stood on that alignment and looked to the south. 07:59.95 alan He would see the sun setting along that line which is rather remarkable I Yeah I hadn't realized that there was Archeo astronomical alignments like that. So that's ah that was a new one for me have you seen anything like that. 08:18.85 timwaag Yeah, and and frankly it makes a lot of sense. You know today we have a Gps we have gpss in our phones. Um, you know the great spanish um, you know captains had various types of devices. They used to follow the stars to navigate with. So of course it makes total sense that and again we often have to remind ourselves that the indigenous people were basically the same as us in terms of physical mental attributes just in a different environment so they would have the same need to track the seasons and. Navigate and do all these things just like we're used to doing and it makes complete sense that that's what they would do because they're very survival again particularly North America which was largely hunter gatherers. You had to move with the seasons. You had to move at the right time and. You are smart enough to figure out how to create a device that would tell you that so in case oops I forgot well my device is showing that it's time to now move up into the you know Pinon Pine Hill country and start harvesting pine nuts so it makes complete sense. 09:31.45 alan Yeah, yeah, a number of cultures had what they call Sun watchers and I I know that the ah chewbash on the coast of California had a whole class of people who specialized in that area. But even in the far Southern Sierras there's ah rock art paintings that are solstitial sites that when you stand in front of an image of the sun rising over a mountaintop when you're there on the winter solstice sunrise. On the horizon of the highest mountain that's in that area. The sun sits as a sandstill on that winter solstice sunrise for ah, several seconds to almost a minute It's so surprising and it's so ah. 10:15.80 timwaag Um, yeah, absolute. 10:25.68 alan Inspiring that it's something I I will never forget when you experience that phenomenon standing in front of a rock art site and to see that phenomenon occurring. It's some I'd say it borders on the supernatural. Would you agree. 10:41.95 timwaag Absolutely and it sounds like I'm agreeing with you with everything about everything but that's because I am I mean part of it is just simply that they needed to know this information and if all the components of their system. 10:56.26 alan Yes. 11:01.90 timwaag Is still preserved. You can actually it's one of those things where you can go out and test it You don't actually have to look at it and say Gee I Wonder if it aligned this with that to allow them to do the other thing you can actually and this is what people do right? I mean just what you're talking about. 11:18.81 alan You can experience it more. 11:21.19 timwaag We have these different solar these different navigational celestial devices and guess what? Ah Dr Garfinko we get to go out and see if it's true see if they work and nothing's more exciting than that and frankly, you gain a great deal more respect for the indigenous people. 11:28.37 alan Um, absolutely yes, yeah yeah. 11:40.82 timwaag You start saying hey these guys are pretty smart. 11:45.70 alan Yeah, these guys are pretty smart aren't they pretty amazing, Pretty Amazing. So Um I know that almost being a student of comparative religion I think often about the significant similarities and significant differences. Between Euro-american religion and the cosmology or religious precepts of Native religion I think you've thought a bit about that haven't you Yeah what?? How do you?? How do you approach that subject. 12:13.97 timwaag I have. 12:22.00 alan So that your the general public might have an inkling or ah or at least ah you know, ah a smattering of an understanding on how that differs. 12:31.94 timwaag Well I ah as I warned you when you've asked me to come on I've pride myself on thinking a little bit differently I think humans in general again, indigenous european wherever on the planet homo. Homo sapiens on the planet. We had this spirituality built into us and as witnessed by again because I'm I am quite knowledgeable about California tribes in particular they all had. Religious beliefs and they were all many were quite different and they pursued it with a ah fervor that I would say is equivalent to the religion. The major religions that we're used to because. They are a product of their environment just like the religions that we're so familiar with again christianity islamism judaism etc and they had those same they had those same level of beliefs and they just took on a different form because. They came from a different background and lived in a different environment. 13:47.49 alan Exactly exactly and so what I what I think I'm hearing is that native people lived in a world that was very different from the world that Euro-americans and and others. Ah, such as a contemporary industrial economy is used to and so the natural world the world of animals and plants rocks and water etc and the natural the environment became. Ah. 14:26.00 alan A Capsule Ah, ah, sort of ah a canvas for the nature of theology. The nature of their religion and it was it and it was peppered with Animalhuman figures and when we talk about that. There was a ah natural theology in the sense that the theology begins when animals were people and people were animals and we go back to the creator deities in which the cosmos is configured. Does that make any sense. 15:03.85 timwaag It does and believe it or not. There's a Spanish missionary and I'm blanking on his name right now I have a Book. He was many of the Spanish Franciscans did translate the native languages so they could ah. Speak to the indigenous people in their own language and believe it or not there's one book called and I'm going to burture the name. It's ganingrich that was the name of the language and I actually did a paper on comparing the beliefs that were. 15:29.70 alan Um, yeah, yeah, yeah. 15:37.97 timwaag Captured by the missionaries from this particular tribe compared it to the religions. We're familiar with Chris again islam christianity judaism and you know there's shocking similarities. 15:52.54 alan Exactly exactly and so so yeah, and so that's that's one of the things that I always pick up with is when we look at and visit rock guard sites. We're getting sort of a. 15:56.13 timwaag And and that really just goes to show the human mind works very similarly. 16:11.24 alan But getting sort of ah it's a freezeframe on the minds of of people who lived hundreds and thousands of years ago and it is ah a remarkable experience and let's ah close it off their k gang I'll see in the flip flop and we'll. Put a lid on it. Thank you. 16:28.12 timwaag Thank thank you Dr. Fingal