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Famous Pompeii Casts Are Not Who They Seem - TAS 287
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This week we cover 3 recent archaeology news stories that showcase the bias of both journalists and researchers. First, 12,000 year old spindle whirls may be early evidence of the wheel. Then, we head to Pompeii where DNA evidence is showing the modern bias researchers have about personal adornment. And finally, Indigenous populations in Columbia are sharing their cultural knowledge about local Pictographs, and not surprisingly it is different from the assumptions drawn by past researchers.
Links
- 12,000-year-old, doughnut-shaped pebbles may be early evidence of the wheel
- DNA Evidence Is Rewriting the Stories of Victims Who Perished in Pompeii Nearly 2,000 Years Ago
- Secret meanings of ancient Amazon rock art revealed
Transcripts
- For rough transcripts head over to https://archpodnet.com/archaeology/287
Contact
- Chris Webster [email protected]
- Rachel Roden [email protected] RachelUnraveled (Instagram)
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Transcript
Introduction to Episode 287
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You're listening to The Archaeology Show. TAS goes behind the headlines to bring you the real stories about archaeology and the history around us. Welcome to the podcast.
00:00:15
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to The Archaeology Show, episode 287. On today's show, we talk about the first wheel technology, rewriting the stories of the victims of Pompeii, and the secret meanings of rock art in South America. Let's dig a little deeper into all those biases.
Live Show Announcement
00:00:31
Speaker
That's a good one.
00:00:36
Speaker
Welcome to The Archaeology Show. Hello. We're going to talk about some wheel live technology. I wrote that in the notes and didn't even remember I did it. yeah Yeah. You got dad jokes. So many dad jokes that you don't even remember half of the dad jokes that you do. Hey, before I forget this weekend, if you're listening to this in real time, 2024, and you're not some crazy time traveler and listening to us in the future.
Live Show Logistics and Expectations
00:01:01
Speaker
We are doing a live show at 4 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, I guess. So Eastern Time in the United States. We have the whole schedule planned out with ah like six different time zones listed, so go find yours. You can find it on our Instagram. That's kind of primarily where it's at right now, the schedule. So go to Instagram, ArcPodNet, and you can see ah most of the posts that are talking about this. If you scroll to the next picture, there's the schedule. So Tilly, our fabulous social media person, has been posting about it.
00:01:30
Speaker
And that's where you can find it. So there's different shows going live doing different things throughout the day. Right. What are we Well, we are planning on doing basically. alive what you're about to hear now. I mean, if nobody shows up, which is fine, there's not a ton of people on the Discord, there's probably 80 or 90 people there, but to ask people to come live to at a certain time and certain place, you know, that's a lot, right? So if nobody shows up on the time, on the day, we are recording it, so it will be available as bonus content, but we're just gonna basically, you know, present three articles and talk about it live. yeah and And if people show up, then
00:02:04
Speaker
We might focus around audience questions. We might, and if nobody has any questions, then we we're going to prepare to just talk about three articles like we normally do. yeah So that's what we're going to do. Yeah. We're just going to do it with our shutting faces on the screen rather than, you know, nothing. So that's it. So if you want to see us screw up and and not be edited, that's what you can do.
Debate on Donut-shaped Pebbles: Early Wheels or Weaving Tools?
00:02:27
Speaker
So today we're going to start with an article where the researchers are basically being a little presumptuous and saying that they may have evidence, early evidence of the wheel or wheel-like technology.
00:02:42
Speaker
I don't know if they're being presumptuous. They're just drawing a conclusion that does seem logical, but as with everything in archaeology, you can't ever say for sure. but All right, let's get into it. Yeah, when we get into it, I'll get to where I don't like some of the conclusions are drawing. I think some of the conclusions they are drawing are valid, but we'll get into it. Yeah, we'll get into it. All right.
00:03:03
Speaker
Okay. So this article is called 12,000 year old donut shaped pebbles. Maybe early evidence of the wheel. Interesting, right? yeah And what they mean by that specifically is that these donut shaped pebbles might be spindle whorls. That's what they're saying they could be. I mean,
00:03:23
Speaker
That's a really click-baity title here. Let's just talk about the headline real quick, because this could easily have been a super cool article called 12,000-year-old evidence of early um weaving and spinning. yeah right like Let's talk about that. People making fabric 12,000 years ago out of flax and wool. right you know and Maybe.
00:03:41
Speaker
Yeah, well, definitely. I mean, that's what you would do with the spindle whirls. You're using it to, I have done a little bit of drop spindling, so I kind of understand how this works, but basically you need a weight on the strand that you're spinning, and that's what these whirls would do, and the the like donut or wheel shape of it with the hole in the middle yeah would allow it to spin, and then that puts the the tension into the thread or Yarn, I guess, I don't know if it counts as yarn when it's like this, but cause you know, they could be, they could be making like ropes, you know, for fishing or whatever. There's all kinds of things that you can make, but sure. Anyway, that's what they're doing is this is the weight that allows the spinning action to happen to, to ply the fiber into something that's a cord or a yarn or a thread or or whatever.
00:04:29
Speaker
Well, archaeologists in Israel have found about a hundred of these pebbles and they have holes in them that the holes are big enough to allow a stick to be inserted that make it easier to spin textiles like flax or wool. yeah yeah Yeah, exactly. You got to have that weight at the base of it to really allow it to spin properly. And what they're saying here, which is why this article, the headline kind of went off the rails in this particular direction, is that This would have been one of the earliest examples of humans using the rotation of a wheel-shaped tool, aka the spindle roll, to do something. right so when you have ah something That's not just something that's round, though. It's something that's round with an axle in it, yeah specifically, aka the stick. for spinning for spinning yeah yeah yeah so
00:05:14
Speaker
you know i mean I'm sure they used round objects to do things before, you know to to grind things and stuff like that, but this is specifically a round thing with a hole in it and an axle in it, right? That's a wheel technology. And I do buy that argument because the other thing they said is that this it could have paved the way for later rotational technology such as a potter's wheel.
00:05:33
Speaker
or, you know, a cart with a wheel. And the cart with a wheel feels like a bit of a jump to me, but like a powder's wheel totally makes sense. You know, like you need that rotational motion in order to make and a vessel and make that shape. And when you're already doing something with a a, you know, you're already doing something with your hands when you do a spindle whirl. So making that jump, making that leap kind of makes sense to me and that.
00:05:55
Speaker
but Scenario. And that is the one spot where I said I would have a problem with this article is when they actually said that because really I do agree that the technology in general could have paved the way conceptually towards that sort of thinking for society as a whole, but not necessarily this particular site, obviously, but somebody just reading this may
Misinterpretation of Archaeological Findings in Media
00:06:15
Speaker
have made that leap. Well, and I don't think journalism does a good job of saying that this this doesn't apply to this site or this place or this people necessarily. It's just, it could have been the entire humans as a whole that could have gotten to this next place.
00:06:30
Speaker
But that's why we do this show. yeah Because the archaeologist never would have said that. The archaeologist never would have said, this is the first site where prior prior to potters making pottery wheels, or people making cars eventually, where here you go, here's your precursor to those inventions. right right They never would have said that. But they don't specifically say that in this page in this article, which is written based on the paper. And therefore, somebody's going to connect those dots and go, oh, well, here it is. Here's the origins of the car. yeah you know And here's the origins of a wagon, and here's the origins of a potter's wheel. And I just feel like people need to do a better job of writing these papers. Yeah. They just need to be clear that it's a human progression, not a society-specific progression. right Because you can't really see that usually. I guess you probably could with somebody like the Romans that has such a long period of time. You could probably follow a technology evolution, but something like this is too long ago. We just we don't have that. so
00:07:26
Speaker
Well, archaeologists are pretty convinced that the wheel itself, as as we sort of know it, was invented around 6,000 years ago. the wheel is used in like I think the wheel as used in, say, a conveyance sort of manner was invented around 6,000 years ago. So not this, obviously. This was 12,000 years ago. So it it would have taken it.
00:07:47
Speaker
So they are, I mean, just 6,000 years between those two. Yeah, the society that was using these spindle whorls was completely changed. I'm not going to say they were gone, but they have completely evolved as a group you know in that 6,000 years. The cool thing I like is they didn't look at these and say spindle whorls. They had to look at other things within the area was in the archaeological record of this area, you know dating back to the same time period, just to say, hey, could this be something else? right And that's one of the things you have to do when you find something. And they looked at other early, what they called rotational technologies, and to see if these pebbles
00:08:23
Speaker
could be something else. and They looked at over 100 limestone pebbles so with similar holes and of a similar size in previous excavations in northern Israel. Again, that dated back 12,000 years. They created virtual models of these through using 3D scanning so they could do some better analysis. and and They found that most of the pebbles have holes drilled into their centers. yeah so which makes sense. And it wouldn't even probably just be holes that were drilled, but there's probably wear marks from the whatever, whatever they put into the middle of it to be like the pole or the post or whatever first for spinning. So you're going to have marks from that too. Although if I remember correctly from the little bit of drop spindling I've done, you you put that stick in the middle of it and it doesn't really move after you you put it in. It just sort of stays attached, which then makes me wonder is how in the world did they keep them attached? They must've been using some kind of Maybe just jam it in. Yeah, maybe just tight or they could have had some kind of rope or something to to tie it on, which again, you would see wear marks from that kind of thing too. So yeah, yeah there's probably things that they could look for though. Yep. Well, what these could have been based on the archeological precedents in the area were beads.
00:09:33
Speaker
you know some sort of bigger beads obviously, but beads are usually a bit smaller than this and they probably weren't, so they probably weren't beads. And they could have been fishing weights, and but fishing weights are usually larger. And two things, fishing weights haven't been found this far back. doesn't Doesn't mean they aren't fishing weights though. They just haven't been found this far back, but also usually fishing weights are not only larger, but made of material heavier than limestone. Yeah, because limestone's kind of porous, right? So it is a lighter rock material. Compared to what they usually are. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, a fishing weight is going to go on the end of a net and they'd usually just cast the net off so the so the weight, you know, literally weigh the nets down. And this wouldn't have been very good at that. Not that somebody didn't use it. a It would have had to have a pile of them, right? Like an actual pile, which maybe, you know, a society could have evolved that sort of technology as possible. But yeah, I like to spend a little while playing. It makes sense. And then, you know,
00:10:25
Speaker
The next thing they did to prove this or try to prove this is experimental archaeology. I feel like we need like a sound for experimental archaeology. We talk about it kind of a lot, but it's my favorite thing that the researchers get to do.
00:10:39
Speaker
Yeah, so using those 3D scanned models that they created, they actually created pebbles from those scans. They created some, I guess, they had the models and then they created 3D models from those scans. And then they had some experts in traditional craft making, see if they could be used as spender rolls. And one of those experts, her name was Janet Krystal, which is a great name. That is fantastic, I wish it was my name, go on. yeah was able to actually spin textiles effectively once she kind of got used to it and and and just kind of get used to the weight of them. And she actually found flax easier to work with than you'll wool for some reason, just trying them both. Super surprising because, again, just with my limited knowledge of
00:11:21
Speaker
of spinning, the fibers of flax or any kind of plant material are shorter than the fibers of wool usually, which makes it harder to spin. The shorter the fiber, the harder it is to spin usually. So I wonder if there's something about the way these spin or the weight of them or something that makes flax easier. Interesting.
00:11:41
Speaker
Now, if you're going to go ahead and call a spindle whirl because it's a round shape, you're using the roundness of the shape and the centrifugal force and things like that to its advantage, and you're going to put a stick through it and it needs those things to work. If you're going to call that the first example or an example of a wheel with axle technology, then I guess yes, this does point to the pebbles as spindle whirls and as one of the first examples of wheel and axle technology. It is really hard to see the connection between wheels and spindle worlds though, like because there's not like, what are the steps in between? right There's not a lot of steps. I guess the pottery wheel sort of, which also feels very different. So yeah it's hard to, I mean, it's amazing that humans did get there and and figure that out, but it is, it is really hard mentally to make that jump because they're very different things that you're doing and emotions that you're making too. Crazy.
00:12:34
Speaker
Indeed. And some of the people interviewed that were not connected to the research, but just have knowledge of these types of things, they were questioned for the the article actually. And one of them actually said that, just so we know, this is not the first example of spindle whirls being found or that sort of technology. Right. There are older examples. Not much older. This is kind of like right at the bleeding edge of that sort of technology. yeah People are starting to figure out how to do this. but So it doesn't get too much older than this. So we're right at right at kind of the cusp of people figuring out how to create these sort of fabrics.
Pompeii Victims: New DNA Insights
00:13:08
Speaker
Makes sense. Yeah. All right. Well, our next two articles are about
00:13:12
Speaker
people using their biases in the wrong way. Not that biases can be used in the right way. Biases are always bad, yeah I feel like. So we're going to head over to Pompeii first and find out some new things about the cast of the people that died there and why our previously held assumptions are completely wrong. Back in a minute. and Welcome back to episode 287 of The Archaeology Show. And now we're going over to Pompeii. Yay. I feel like it's been so long since we talked about Pompeii. Are you joking?
00:13:41
Speaker
Yeah. Don't we talk about Pompeii every other episode? No. Oh, okay. She'll like it. I mean, it's been a little while, I feel like. Oh, okay. Well, I've been to Pompeii twice. I've been once. Indeed. And we've seen some of the stuff we're about to talk about. Yeah, we have. yeah Well, it's a huge draw to the park, is these... Yeah.
00:14:01
Speaker
people So, okay, what are we talking about? So, you can see plaster casts of burned bodies of citizens supposedly right where they died after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE in Pompeii.
00:14:15
Speaker
Yeah. And it's really haunting to see it in person, because some of these people are like, it's just a cast. It's not an actual skeleton. It's not an actual person. There's no body there, obviously. yeah But they are and it's very haunting, because they're in these like laid out positions of terror, kind of. Sometimes they're curled up in the fetal position. I almost feel like you can you can't see their facial expressions. It's not that good. But you almost feel like you can. There's a reason for that, which we'll find out later. Yeah. so In the 1800s, they were created by pouring plaster into the people-shaped voids and the hardened ash that covered Pompeii. People have been exy yeah people have excavating this for several hundred years, and that was 100 years after they'd started excavating. yeah and they They were noticing that, hey, we're excavating down here. because when the When the hot ash hit them, i mean
00:15:05
Speaker
Yeah, the hot ash was kind of stopped by a person a little bit, but that person was vaporized inside of there. But it did leave, for the most part, a cast of their shape. Yeah, the impression. And they started realizing that, hey, these voids that we're finding are kind of people shaped. And somebody decided to pour plaster in there.
00:15:22
Speaker
Can you imagine digging away, coming across a pocket, and being like, oh, that's a leg. That's crazy. Yeah. But I can't even imagine pouring the plaster in there and then chipping away at that and coming away with what they found. Like a human shape. Yeah. It's so, so haunting. The whole thing is just crazy. Anyway, these casts have been sort of the storytellers of Pompeii all along. And they are. They really are. They really drive home what happened to these people, what you're seeing when you're going through the park. Sort of. Well, sure. When you're just there as a visitor and just experiencing it. Well, new genetic research is starting to tell the real stories about these casts because really all we've had so far is the positions they've been found in and where they've been found. So people have been kind of inventing stories all along with, oh, they were found in an embrace. So they were found like this. They huddled together. They must have been this or could have been that.
00:16:20
Speaker
It's what people do, they just have to draw conclusions, like mentally tell themselves a story. And in this case, it's been so long, it happened so long ago that these stories have become like, they've been treated almost as fact, basically. So a study published in Current Biology about four figures found huddled beneath a staircase, and there's a bunch of others, but this one was really big here, about four figures found huddled beneath a staircase, long perceived as a family with one thought to be the mother holding a small child, has found that they are all likely male. First off. Which doesn't mean they weren't a family. Well, true. It could have been all male family members. Sure. Well, I mean, we'll find out that they're not, but yeah. Yeah, I mean, sure. Yeah. They're in what is now known as the House of the Golden Bracelet, and that was named for what was thought of as the mother and her bracelet, right? So this person had this bracelet on, and that's what they called it. And what do we do with our modern minds and our modern brains? We assume that's a woman. We assume it's a woman because it's jewelry. And you just cannot make those assumptions. I mean, even in the 1700s, they should have known that early Romans wore jewelry. It didn't have to be a woman. Yeah. I mean, I don't know why they made that assumption. But you can see it in their statues and in their paintings that men had jewelry on, too. They wore jewelry and dresses. But it's just really hard to see past your own preconceived notions, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, it turns out these plaster casts have, some of them anyway, have skeletal material fused into the plaster casts because when the volcano vaporized these bodies, they didn't do a very good job. And there were some skeletal material remaining. And when they poured the plaster in there, it just kind of pulled the skeletal material out. Yeah, and then it's like stuck to the plaster basically. So does that mean that there might have been like little bits and piles of bones inside these cavities that the people in the 1800s just like scooped out and dumped?
00:18:07
Speaker
I'm sure they did, but I think there's also a lot of skeleton material that's sitting in boxes that have never been analyzed, too. There's thousands and thousands of boxes of compound material. So they probably saved it. But anyway, a lot of that's probably out of context as well, but we know exactly what the context is of these plaster casts, which is really nice. So anyway, the evidence and findings after doing the research on these these bones, is starting to challenge the notions like the association of jewelry with femininity yeah and women and the physical proximity of the individuals as evidence of a familial relationship. yeah They could have just been like, holy crap, there's a volcano. yeah Let's try to save each other. This might be our last moments. yeah We're all huddled together, trying to survive as best we can. yeah And unfortunately they didn't, but we have that snapshot in time for them saved in these plaster casts. Yeah. So it turns out the bracelet wearing man had black hair and dark skin, likely from his DNA evidence. And three of the four people had ancestral roots in North Africa or the Eastern Mediterranean. Which, would that mean that they were more likely to be slaves? Well, they could have been slaves, but Pompey was also oh think a trade town. It was a huge trade town. It was a huge port right nearby. yeah And there were people all over that place coming through, right? So they they could have been slaves because the Romans definitely traded in slavery from those areas, both from Africa for sure. But it could have been free people, too, with that same ancestry. yeah Sure. yeah There was another scene in plaster that was analyzed, and it was a pair of embracing individuals found in a multi-level, richly decorated, what they called House of the Cryptoporticus. Cryptoporticus, that's a cool word, I like that. I know, Cryptoporticus. Historians have thought that the two were sisters, a mother and child, or possibly lovers. yeah And so they've done some DNA evidence, given the skeletal remains that were left. and
00:19:58
Speaker
the study is ruling out the first two because the genes revealed that one was male, and I guess the other female is what they're saying, and then and also that the pair was not maternally related. yeah So it could have still been lovers. sure Or it just could have been a man and a woman who found themselves stored together in this terrible situation, and they huddled together trying not to die. I mean, this Vesuvius erupted for several days. It could have been servants left in the house, to be honest with you. Yeah, yeah.
00:20:26
Speaker
I kind of is starting to feel like a lot of the people that died in Pompeii were slaves servants Yeah, people being paid to do a job and get out who didn't prioritize their own lives They prioritized their master or it could have been looters boss could have been people who just you know Buck it could have been houses are empty. Yeah, you know good in anything I Very well could have been. It was unlikely to be, I feel like, the people who actually lived there, like the owners of the house, only because if they could, they would have probably tried to get out. Right. They would have had the means to get out. They would have had the means to get out. There also would have been people that were super skeptical and went like, ah, this'll blow over. Yes. Those people definitely would have existed too. Yeah.
00:21:10
Speaker
Well, the guy who did all this, his name was Giuseppe Fiorelli and it was really cool. I just thought this was neat. He did this all in the 1860s, more than a hundred years after excavations began at Pompeii and he produced 104 chalk replicas. That's what the plaster was of victims using this method. So that's really crazy.
00:21:30
Speaker
I mean, it's really, I like the forethought in it. I'm not sure that he knew that the bones and bone fragments would be useful in the future. Of course he didn't know that, but just trying to save these impressions, because they are, you're you're going to destroy them in the process of excavation. There's really no way to get around that. You have to destroy them. So having the forethought to at least do this, to to preserve it in some way was really, really forward thinking of him. Good on you, Giuseppe.
00:21:57
Speaker
Yeah. Well, this study analyzed 14 of those casts and extracted DNA from five of them. So that's what they were able to do. Now we talked earlier about how it looks like, you know, the expressions and the the figures, they just looked very haunting and they looked very, they looked like they were in a very purposeful arrangement. and It does seem like you can see more than maybe you should. be able to. Yeah. yeah and Well, apparently during some of this analysis, they could really tell that, you know, first off, the plaster doesn't last forever. Right. And a lot of it has degraded through time. yeah And so other restorers in the past 150 years plus have come through and tried to restore these plaster casts. Well, some of the restorers of the past weren't exactly ethical. Right. And they came through and tried to enhance or alter some of the features and body shapes to reinforce what was assumed about them.
00:22:48
Speaker
to make them more horrific or grotesque or something to bring it more whatever yeah yeah just to And you can tell that apparently, the the skilled people who were doing this can tell that this wasn't part of the original plaster and it was just, you know, you could tell that some things were added but it shouldn't have been. And yeah so that's human nature there.
00:23:06
Speaker
At the same time, I'm not even mad about that. as long as they I guess they could have really changed it dramatically, but yeah if they're just trying to make them more human, although it's almost more morey haunting to have it have less human features, you know yeah but to add the more human features, I guess I can see why they did it. yeah So, long-held assumptions, it turns out, can be wrong and biases regarding gender and relationships, as we found time and time again on the show, often are usually not right. You really have to remove yourself from that, or else you're going to be drawing an incorrect conclusion. Or you might be drawing an incorrect right conclusion. so yeah
00:23:48
Speaker
All right, well, we're now going to go to the other side of the world to South America and find out that the result of six years of research about rock art concluded one thing. Duh.
00:24:01
Speaker
Welcome back to The Archaeology Show, Episode 287.
Amazon Rock Art: Ritualistic Meanings
00:24:05
Speaker
And this next article is called, Secret Meetings of Ancient Amazon Rockart Revealed. It's not really secret. Yeah, who is it a secret to? Yeah, it's only secret if you don't live in the Amazon or Columbia. Right, if you're not from that culture. Right. So it's secret if they didn't tell you, basically, if you're not let in on it.
00:24:24
Speaker
But anyway, researchers have been looking at rock art in the Serenia de La Lendosa, and they used La Lendosa as a shorthand for this whole area. But anyway, it's a 12-mile long sandstone outcrop located in Colombia's Hualier Department. And department is just kind of what they call almost a county kind of. Kind of. And it's kind of a national park, too. Oh, OK. OK, yeah. But area, yeah. So it's like a government department. Mm-hmm. There are tens of thousands of rock art motifs depicting humans, animals, plants, mythological creatures, and geometric designs. And these researchers say that they are the best rock art in the world, which feels a little bit subjective, but you know. Yeah. So, but apparently, yeah, and there is a lot here. It's that a lot of it is actually what you would call pictographs. So not like, not petroglyphs, not petroglyphs, which are etched into the rock. Although there is some of that, but a lot of it is pictographs made of red ochre, which is a paint. And that's that, that can be dated. And that suggests the rock art, uh, some of the oldest of the rock art is 11,000 to 12,000 years old. which is crazy because that is like not long after the first people, first peopling of the Americas, as far as we know. First peopling of the South Americas for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that is crazy. That's so old. And definitely click the link in the show notes and go look at the pictures yeah because they are pretty stunning. I mean,
00:25:48
Speaker
I haven't seen a lot of pictographs that have that much color in them still. And that's the red ochre. It's just a really vibrant color to begin with, but it stayed so well over time. I mean, 12,000 years, what? And you can still see them so well. That's crazy. Well, and a lot of this is not, some of the oldest stuff is 12,000 years, but some of They're actually still making some today. Oh, okay, yeah. Yeah, some of the more indigenous groups.
Language and Rock Art: Indigenous Connections
00:26:11
Speaker
But yeah, it's it's throughout time, so it's it's got a long a long history to it, but and we'll learn about that here in a minute. But the indigenous groups living in the region today, in fact, are speaking several languages, including Tukano, Dasana, Nukuk, Ju, which is G-I-W, so now I'm pronouncing that right, and other languages. And it's and they're only talking about that because they're using this, language is is often used to
00:26:36
Speaker
analyze descendant relationships. Yeah. It's a distinguish between populations by what language they speak. Well, they're using that to sort of analyze the indigenous groups in the area, but they're finding out and through this discussion and all that. But it's highly likely that the ancestors, the people that live there now and today produce this rock art, that it wasn't, you know, other groups that live there before, it like literally the people that live there today.
00:26:59
Speaker
Yeah, its like they didn't die out and leave, like it's so commonly said about indigenous groups. right They are still there and they're still going. Yeah. And they said it's also possible that there's other indigenous groups that live close to this area, to the Lalindosa Brokart, including Ian, and I'm going to get this really wrong, Chiribekete. I think that's right. Yeah. National park, um, who are still painting today yeah in that national park. So, uh, anyway, over the last 100 years, it's been really difficult to study this because of political unrest and just the sheer inaccessibility of the rock art itself, which is high upon cliffs and the area to get to the rock art to begin with.
00:27:39
Speaker
Yeah. And like, as we're going to find out, like there's some really nasty creatures there. I just don't really know why anybody would want to go there, but I'm sure it's beautiful. You just have to not be a scaredy cat like me. yeah Anyway, after a 2016 peace agreement, the study authors were able to get in there and have now had the last six years to do research and even published a special issue of advances in rock art studies. So they're really doing some good work there now that they can safely access these pictographs.
00:28:05
Speaker
yeah Yeah, they combine a range of ethnographic sources, local indigenous testimonies, and propose that the rock art is associated with, wait for it, ritual. Ritual! Who's shocked? I know. Negotiating spiritual realms. It makes sense. I mean, why are you going to go through the time and effort to do this if it's not something really super important and I feel like ritual spiritualism kind of has to be part of that, right? Yeah. yeah What they say is that the rock art itself is an interrelation, a depiction of an interrelation between the human and supernatural worlds represented, rather than a literal record of the environment. Because some rock art, I mean, as far as we can tell, now this is also a bias and an interpret interpretation, but there is actually a lot of like say European rock art that is like
00:28:55
Speaker
ah often seems to be a representation of animals that you might think you would see on the landscape, right? And just like landscape depictions. And there's a lot of rock art that seems to be that way. It does. I mean, when you see an animal, you you're like, okay, cool, they're drawing the animal, say hunt, right? But we also saw we are so art just kind of making that yeah assumption. It's a modern assumption. right yeah So, but what they're saying here is that while some people may have made that assumption here in the past, after talking to descendants and other people who are you know really kind of just in it right now and and learning from them that this is exactly not that. This is shamanistic behavior. This is people communing with what they thought of as their spirits and then you know essentially writing down their experiences of that of that relationship.
00:29:45
Speaker
yeah Yeah, this is there this is the ah a window into their minds, if you will. Yeah, yeah that's cool. so This paper focused on figures that indigenous elders and ritual specialists drew their attention to when standing by the rock face. These include anacondas, there's the creatures we were talking about, anacondas with legs and plumed heads, bizarre human animal conflations, and geometric motifs that indicate a portal to the spirit world behind the rock face. yeah which again makes sense. If you're looking at an animal that has, that's fantastical, you know, like of course that's not a real animal on the landscape that they're hunting. They've, it's part of their spirit world in some way. And we don't know what those ways are. We can't know them, but with this connection to the elders, the current elders in the current population, it's really cool to kind of get a bit of an idea of what these things might mean based on their, their current spiritual ideas.
00:30:40
Speaker
A specialist from the Matapai people told the researchers that the artworks have to be viewed from the shamanic viewpoint in order to understand them, obviously. And researchers are not shamans. It's difficult to see them from that. It's really hard. And you're just like stuffing your bias and to get out of that is really important as a researcher.
00:31:01
Speaker
One of the things I thought was cool is that in order to depict this relationship between the the kind of to the two worlds that people inhabit is they tried to there's, there's a lot of examples of species or animals they thought of that inhabit what they call liminal spaces and transcend realms, right? So liminal spaces are the spaces that are on the edges of things, right? Like spaces between, spaces between, but there's little spaces in your own world too. Like those are often thought of as spaces in between like light and dark, like yeah the edge of a shadow or something, or, or the edge of a river or the edge of a lake. Those are all spaces because they're at the edges of things. But one I thought was really cool. And they thought they said that's herons. Herons are represented because herons fly in the air, they walk on the land, they dive underwater, they do all the things. yeah They seem magical when you really think about it. It's true. they Yeah, they do all that. And they I would imagine when they saw one dive into the water and stay under for like a really long time, they're like, well, I guess they're really in underwater. They must be. How could they possibly like i know survive? They must be thought of as literal magic beings. Yeah, I love that. And the shamans would try to,
00:32:07
Speaker
you know, imitate the herons, so to speak, you know, and their spirit like behavior in order to, you know, cross over into the spirit world sort of thing. So anyway, simple objects such as textiles or blankets are ritualistic clothing that the shamans put on in order to transform. Yeah. So anytime you see those on the walls and you can see those in some of the big pictures that you see here that look like textiles, so it's not just simple objects. They really are part of the shamanistic viewpoint, I guess. Yeah. It's like that connection to the ritual world or whatever.
00:32:41
Speaker
And anacondas. Yeah, they're not just snakes. Anacondas are terrifying. And those anacondas don't want, wait, no, that's not. Do you remember the movie Anaconda from the 90s? Kinda. Like, I'm never going to be a fan of anacondas or any snakes in general. I just, I'm not a snake person, but that movie really like ruined the thought of going to the jungle ever. Yeah. So thank you, Anaconda from 1990, whatever.
00:33:09
Speaker
I know. The article kind of glossed over this, so I wrote it down as a note, but it says, Anacondas are not just snakes. They're ancestral beings brought to settlers to the Amazon in the distant past. and Then it kind of was like full stop, and I'm like, to eat them? yeah like like What was they for? Did they worship them? What's the deal there? yeah yeah or Did they avoid them because they were dangerous and that made them powerful and special somehow? yeah Yeah. Here's something else I thought was super interesting is when they were interviewing these elders in a number of different areas from these different indigenous groups that are along this 12-mile span. And in the area, a lot of these people don't really believe that their ancestors directly painted these. They believe spirits painted them.
00:33:54
Speaker
Oh. It's kind of like their own ancient aliens theory. Well, it's like it's like these old paintings entered into the lore of the religion, the spirit, and ah they became a the representation of their spiritual world, basically. The reason I said ancient aliens is because of the wacky people that don't think that that ancestors had the the ability and the capacity to actually do something technological, right? Right.
00:34:17
Speaker
the reason is they're actually too high up. they're're They're like, how did they access these? They didn't have ladders, they didn't have rugs. They didn't have the physical ability to get there, so they must have been painted by spirits. right you know Our ancestors, we don't have the ability to get up there, dot, dot, dot, neither did our ancestors. Which I thought was really, really interesting. They didn't give their own ancestors the credibility to to actually get up there. Yeah, totally. yeah Which I thought was just crazy. Yeah, it's so it's so funny how people do that. and yeah Everybody does it. Yeah. yeah
00:34:49
Speaker
So anyway, the point here is that Western notions of these images being depictions of creatures on the landscape or what somebody saw directly with their own two eyes is simply not true, right? and This is spiritual, it's ritualistic and you need to understand that and kind of be in the mind of somebody who would have been in that frame of mind, which is really hard if not to say impossible, yeah really. Like how can you? yeah yeah You need to be in that frame of mind to actually understand some of this rock art, which I think means that most people are just simply never going to have a full understanding of it. Yeah, and you kind of just have to be okay with that and admire it for what it is and who did it and when they did it, because it is the it it means that this population
00:35:30
Speaker
they were advanced enough to have some kind of ritual or spiritual thing going on that would make them draw these images on onto rocks. So like just look at how advanced that civilization was 12,000 years ago. It's just so so many things yeah in the new world. you know just Just adding to the story of people the peopling of the Americas, stuff like this, I feel like it just shows that Yeah, this is 12,000 years ago. They didn't just like roll up and start doing this. This is development of a group like over time. So people have been in this part of the world for a really long time, longer than I think that we realize. so
00:36:06
Speaker
Well, that's it for this episode and the archaeology podcast has never been around for longer than you realize too. 10 years is in fact, yeah and we hope to see as many of you guys as possible on November 24th. I know for some of our people in other parts of the world that 4 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Eastern Daylight Time in the United States here is going to be kind of late, if not impossible. But hopefully you can at least catch the replay if you're a member of the RKLG Podcast Network because it will be in the bonus content on the arcpodnet.com forward slash members.
00:36:39
Speaker
And if not, hopefully you can hit up the Discord and the Discord member join information is free for everybody. You don't have to be a member to join the Discord. just see this To see this, you don't have to be a member, right? So just keep that in mind. But go to our Instagram. It's linked in the show notes. it's linked Oh, it's linked in the show notes as well. Yeah, the Discord join link. yes you Discord is, but also so is Instagram. So you can get all of it through through the show notes.
00:37:02
Speaker
All right, well with that, we'll hopefully see all you guys on Sunday the 24th. If not, we'll see you in the next episode. Bye.
00:37:16
Speaker
Thanks for listening to The Archaeology Show. Feel free to comment in and view the show notes on the website at www.arcpodnet.com. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at arcpodnet. Music for this show is called, I Wish You Would Look, from the band C Hero. Again, thanks for listening and have an awesome day.
00:37:40
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his ah RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at ww www.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.