00:00.00 archpodnet Go go. 00:00.00 alan Talking about the great mural rock art of Baja California Mexico and using ethnography and insights and her wisdom as a professional artist to give us some of the inside inside insights try to say that fast 3 time alanie keep going tell us. 00:01.70 Elanie Moore Well I. 00:18.23 alan Tell us a few more tidbits if you would um. 00:27.37 Elanie Moore Okay, so anyway, that's an example of how I read the landscape and read the art. Um, and so what I'm I'm going to skip a lot of examples but I just wanted to say that the landscape plays a very important. Yep. Part The landscape has bottomless holes that they they look like there's no bottom. The ranchers have shown them to me and the air that escapes through the the opening is very Cold. It's almost sea cold. 00:51.54 alan Wow wow. 01:03.25 Elanie Moore And yet we're in a desert and it's that way in the summer there are caves and cracks that have possible in our possible entrance and exits from the underground did the people really believe in an underground. oh oh yes they did. 01:12.19 alan Ah. 01:22.80 alan Active Active volcanoes. Yeah. 01:23.20 Elanie Moore I mean in a land where you've got volcanoes that actually are exploding. That's what I'm trying to say and and then there's hot springs below them. I mean you know they know there's an underground they have ah ah, cold water springs spilling from the along the sides of the mountains the canyons and so on they have in other words, the mother earth here plays a big role. In taking care of these people. There's um rancho Santa Marta is built in an ancient quo so lostivity in an ancient called thereof at the side of the other two dormant vaul. 02:10.96 alan Wow. 02:18.29 Elanie Moore noes and so they have a lot of earthquakes trembling rocks falling I was in one of the canyons during a really big cheasco. And ah big boulders were rolling down from the top of of la pintata and and the san pablo canyon it was dangerous to be in that canyon and the the river down below filled up with water and flooded and. 02:50.45 alan So it's dangerous. It's dynamic. It's ah it's alive. It's all those things simultaneously. So when you're when you're alive So when so when you're there it it. It seems it seems kind of quite harsh and challenging and unforgiving. 02:51.15 Elanie Moore I was up in a cave watching all of it. So it's it's It's a very dangerous landscape too. It has both the good and the bad it feeds em and it all. Yes, yes, alive exactly That's a good word. 03:08.77 alan As some people have called it but perhaps from a ah you know, ah a preliterate Native American viewpoint Once you've lived there and grown up there. It's ah, a totally different environment isn't it. 03:09.44 Elanie Moore Yeah. 03:17.43 Elanie Moore Yes. 03:31.59 Elanie Moore Well, there's some examples of that from the ranchers kids One of the things that they do ah when they the the young young. Well the teenagers often go along with their guide fathers and learn how to guide. 03:34.60 alan Yeah. 03:47.70 Elanie Moore And so what they'll do sometimes when we're on a trail and they did this 1 time when I was in the bottom of of arroya Sam Pablo where pintata is and it's one of the deepest steepest side canyons. You don't want to get caught in a flood there because. 04:05.50 alan Um, ah yeah. 04:06.70 Elanie Moore It's also called South Sea pueis which means leave if you can and that's you know and and so these these kids were running back and forth and jumping they were playing on the rocks and so they're getting the rocks to sound. 04:16.51 alan Wow! yeah. 04:25.23 Elanie Moore Like you know that working like drums at the same time. Um, they were yelling and and screaming and stuff to hear the echoes so they were also playing with the echoes. 04:32.67 alan Wow. 04:40.88 Elanie Moore And they did this all the way down the Canyon to the site where we turned off on a side Canyon It was fascinating and I'll bet you anything that those little coach me boys did the same thing because that's the way the Earth you know spoke to them. 04:44.20 alan Did the same thing. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So so so the the landscape is truly alive if you know how to engage it correct. 04:57.86 Elanie Moore They they would think of it as the Earth mother speaking to them so it really worked. 05:03.50 alan Yeah, please. 05:06.92 Elanie Moore Yes, exactly. So anyway I want to make a jump here to what I put a picture together of what I think is happening but I haven't gone in all of my I'm working on a book on this and this is a part I haven't written up so I haven't gotten. All of the background research to to support it. But this is what I see happening. There is that the the people we already know the people didn't stay in one spot that they were constantly migrating from the canyons. Down to the ocean and then back up to the canyons again and so I think this was not only their sacred place obviously where it had all these fantastic paintings. But there's something else that's going on. I believe that the sun was probably the most important deity if you could call it that for them that they had in their repertoire that sunshine you're in the middle of a peninsula here and and that sunshine is. To them if they climb up on the top. They can see both sides ah of the mountains they can see the pacific ocean and they can see the sea of Cortes and that sun comes up in the morning out of the sea of Cortes. 06:41.60 Elanie Moore They don't understand how it really works but to them. That's what they see and it makes its its way across the sky and then it goes back down into the water at sunset. Now. There are instances like this in the the history of other hennagather societies. There's one in um, in Europe that's a really big lake and you can't see the other shore. 07:12.99 alan Um, a. 07:15.58 Elanie Moore From the one side so they see the same phenomenon and those people believe to this day that when that sun goes down into the water it sizzles and they can hear the sizzle. 07:26.37 alan Ah. 07:34.61 Elanie Moore And I thought okay that explains how the primitive mind works and there's no way you're going to convince any of those people that it's not sizzling I have a feeling that that same kind of experience is what the coach to me experienced. 07:36.48 alan Okay. 07:52.92 Elanie Moore So we have a cycle of the sun ah regenerating or or maybe I should start with dying by going underwater and having to swim underwater and probably get its light put out and everything in the underworld. 07:55.65 alan Me here. 08:11.61 Elanie Moore And then regenerating and coming up full force and full power to be born again make its same trip again over to the other side to the Pacific and then go underground. Now on its way Underground. It is on the other side of the Cave wall and the cave paintings are on a veil between the the upper world The the Profane world. 08:26.86 alan Um. 08:46.16 Elanie Moore And the underworld which is the sacred world and I believe that these people when I look at the paintings I believe these people the shaman actually fought. They were seeing the images of the animals and people they painted on the wall in the forms on the wall just like when you were a kid you laid down and looked at the sky and started seeing the clouds and shapes like Mickey Mouse or something and and so. 09:09.62 alan Um, no yeah, yeah. 09:21.85 Elanie Moore They literally saw them and they they believed that somehow the spirit of the beings that are in the wall had been on this earth and that's where the dead people went Eve thinks Maybe they went to the sky. 09:40.87 alan Yeah, yeah, yeah. 09:41.77 Elanie Moore I Think that's possible. She has a good idea there but they travel down to the underworld and to come back to life to provide food again. This is not an unusual phenomenon with Hunters us. 09:50.24 alan Um. 09:54.30 alan No, no, it's exactly it's exactly the way it is yes the regeneration from the underworld. Yep. 10:01.53 Elanie Moore Societies to think that they have to replace. Yeah, they have to replace the food that they take and so they exactly yeah exactly and so I look at these paintings and I see that most of the the. 10:08.00 alan And and. 10:19.32 alan Okay. 10:21.21 Elanie Moore Animals are actually more like baw relief sculpture. You can see that the form of the animal was there first and then they painted it. They bring it to life and they they. Well first they paint the human beings who are probably shaman or powerful gods or who knows what but they paint okay, so and trying to get the picture straight here you start from the underground and then you've got ah a wall. 10:58.33 alan Um, ah. 10:58.88 Elanie Moore That these spirits are going to sort of meld through by osmosis or whatever and make their form visible to the the other side of the wall to the painter's side the painter sees it and then he. 11:05.41 alan A. 11:18.54 Elanie Moore He paints the image of the shaman or whatever it is on top of that and then he paints the image of the animal that they saw making the form What have you gone? You've got. Ah, sandwich of of the animal spirit the human or anthropomorphic spirit between the real one that they paint on top. 11:47.13 alan A. Yes, so that. 11:56.67 Elanie Moore And the form that was coming up from behind the wall now could you have a stronger transformation ritual than that and I think that's yeah and I think that's what's happening. 11:58.86 alan No, no, it's fantastic. Makes perfect sense to me. Yeah, so so how how did how did they ah acquire the picture. The sense of the forms of the animals in which to and. 12:15.28 Elanie Moore Occasionally you. 12:17.74 alan And how did that come to them was it some sort of a vision or was it. How did they see those. 12:28.22 Elanie Moore Well it was it was the same thing we do when? Um, when we're doing cloud watching they imagine what it was and yeah and Leonardo da vinci actually talks about this phenomenon with painters that. 12:29.45 alan Um, they imagine them. Yes. 12:45.92 Elanie Moore You know you can you can see ah an old ah wall that wooden wall that's built around a property and it's been painted and the pain is getting old and is chipping and falling off and then he talks about how you can envision a battle going on there. 12:46.00 alan Yeah. 12:58.48 alan Um, ah. 13:05.70 Elanie Moore These things will actually take the form of something that we know and it's really it's a phenomenon that happens in our mind and we call it in art. We call it closure if you think of if you put 3 dots on a piece of paper no matter where you put the 3 dots. 13:20.35 alan Um. 13:24.17 Elanie Moore We will make a triangle out of it and we'll connect those dots that's called Closure and the human mind has that ability and I think that's all they're doing something that's very natural to all of us and that's yeah because. 13:29.60 alan So They're somehow envision envisioning the animals I presume they're invision. Yeah. Please? Yes, she does I remember that. 13:43.59 Elanie Moore Okay, so the best example is the pregnant lady the famous pregnant lady she has a great big giant boulder in her stomach. Ah, and she's she's red and she's got 4 fingers and well she also has 4 stripes painted on her belly and 4 13:57.30 alan Ah, her. Okay yep. 14:02.17 Elanie Moore Stripes paint for her hair. Everything is 4 which is interesting because there's your force corners of the earth. So anyway, so you you can look at that and you can see that there is a woman. 14:18.73 alan Yeah, she's in the rocks they're in the rocks. Yes I could see what you're saying. Yes yes so you yeah you could You could picture them and see them and draw them out just like when when you look down at the ground or on ah or on a mosaic something you know. 14:18.86 Elanie Moore Everybody looking at that if we didn't have the pain and you would still see the woman because the forms are in the rocks. Yes, and so that's how they do it. That's how they do it. 14:36.52 alan Where you have stone like in my bathroom you can look down and I see the animals and the people they're there. They always stare back at me. It's true. No, it's true. It's the mind has a way. Yeah. 14:37.33 Elanie Moore Um, yes, yeah, yes. 14:52.86 Elanie Moore Ah, no, it is yes it does our mind is built so that it has to have order at all times if we don't have order. There's actually a ah name for that psychosis because you can't do anything. You can't think you can't study. You can't. 14:59.47 alan Wow. 15:06.54 alan Amazing Nick order you've got a minute or 2 15:12.20 Elanie Moore You cannot do anything you have to have order and so our mind will find a way to make order and that's one of the ways it finds it uses closure. It picks up clues and then it it takes the Clues someplace. 15:23.90 alan Ellenie you got a minute or 2 You want to you want to say something to our listeners as ah as sort of a you know a way to wrap it up. 15:36.61 Elanie Moore Well okay I would like to suggest that everybody who is able should actually go down and and see the cave paintings that if you can afford the mule trip or find a way to do that. You need to have at least a week I think the best trips are two weeks because it takes a couple of days to get there and a couple of days to leave and that's already used up half a week so you get to see more and you can spend more time at the caves and. 16:02.85 alan And I think what I think once once you go there, you're you'll never be the same because yeah there Yeah, please go. 16:16.52 Elanie Moore That's right I've had many? yeah I've I've had many people on my trips I used to run tourist trips to pay for my way into the mountain so I could keep my research going and and it. Ah. 16:17.78 alan Right? right. 16:29.98 alan But Ellenie L It's been Ah, it's been a what go ahead. It is it is once in a once in a lifetime never be the same you. You'll see the biggest the largest images some of the largest images in the world. 16:33.17 Elanie Moore Ah, darn I got sidetracked Um, any anyway Anyway, it mind blowing experience and it's worth it. Definitely. 16:46.14 alan And you don't know what to look at go. 16:51.30 Elanie Moore Well, that's the other thing the the human figures all come out to measure about 6 to nine feet tall and the animals are much larger than life. So these people were short. They were probably about. 16:52.92 alan Wow. 17:03.73 alan Um, ah oh yes, oh yeah, giants. 17:11.23 Elanie Moore You know, five and four feet so those are giants. It's an amazing ah of accomplishment that these short hunter gatherers run around barefoot could create this incredible art. 17:12.17 alan Oh it's incredible. 17:19.59 alan Well, that's about all the time we have to ah to pack in I have I asked I have to ask ellenlanie to come back again because I'm sure she has 1 or 2 additional things that she's missed god bless you ellenie for doing this I really appreciate it. 17:28.51 Elanie Moore Okay, well thank you you. 17:36.80 alan And I can't wait to read your book God Bless you out there in the rock Guard Podcast land see on the flip flop. 17:43.31 Elanie Moore Okay, well thank you.