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Discussing Rock Art with Director and Producer Chris Finefrock - Rock Art 126
453 Plays7 months ago
Chris Finefrock is a director and producer of cinematic masterpieces. He is now working on a new project featuring in part the Native worldviews and religious metaphors that are represented in archaeological sites, geoglyphs, and rock art sites. In this episode we do a wide-ranging discussion on what makes these topics so engaging and why rock art is such an endlessly interesting subject. Quite the ride!
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- For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/rockart/126
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Transcript
Introduction to Rock Art and CRAF's Mission
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Hello out there in archaeology podcast land. This is Dr. Alan Garfinkel. I'm the president and founder of the California Rock Art Foundation. And what we do is we identify, evaluate, manage, and conserve rock art both in Alta, California and in Baja, California. We conduct field trips, we have trainings, exercise, we do research, and in every way possible we try to preserve, protect, and coordinate treasures of Alta and Baja California rock art, of which there are many, and diverse. We also work closely with Native Americans and partner with them to recognize and protect sacred sites. So for more info about the fabulous California Rock Art Foundation, you can go to carockart.org
00:00:48
Speaker
Also, i'm I'm open to give me a call, 805-312-2261. We would welcome sponsorship or underwriting, ah helping us to defray the costs of our podcasts, and also membership in California Rock Art Foundation, and of course, donations since we are a 501c3 nonprofit scientific and educational corporation. God bless everyone out there in podcast land.
Chris Finnefrock's Cinematic Journey
00:01:16
Speaker
You're listening to The Rock Art Podcast. Join us every week for fascinating tales of rock art, adventure, and archaeology. Find our contact info in the show notes and send us your suggestions.
00:01:33
Speaker
But welcome, everybody. This is your host, Dr. Alan Garfinkel. And we're going to be doing episode 126 with Chris Finnefrock. People call him Finefrock or Finnefrock. He is a a gentleman who I've known for years. And he's in the cinematic realm, both television and cable and other media sources. And he's a producer and ah confidant. and a wonderful guy who is going to share with us some of his latest adventures in the world of broadcasting. Chris, are you there? I'm here, Alan. Yeah, that was a very nice introduction. Thank you so much for that.
00:02:15
Speaker
so The way I kicked this off, Chris, to begin with, is tell us a little bit you know biographically kind of who you are, where you hail from, and how you ever got involved in the entertainment industry and and also this particular platform that you're on that deals with some of the more interesting facets of the ethereal realm. Very good. Well, it started in about 2008. A friend of mine wanted to make a feature film, so we went off and made that and it was nominated for some Indie Spirit Awards and went to Sundance and that was super fun. It was called The Vicious Kind and kind of learns that as a producer, not a lot of work tends to come after you've
00:03:00
Speaker
You know, done something like that. The word can go to the director, of course. But so I was kind of looking for my next project and I was watching the History Channel and there was a ah single documentary called Holy Grail in America by Scott Walter. And, you know, they were talking about the Kensington Runestone. And I was like, well, that's an interesting story, you know. I'm going to call Scott and just reach out and say hello and and see you know if there's more stuff out there across America that's kind of a either anomalous or or interesting.
Exploring Ancient America
00:03:32
Speaker
and And so it's been quite an adventure since about 2009.
00:03:36
Speaker
So, where else have you filmed at this point across America? Well, i mostly in the Midwest, you know, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and then North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, up into the U.P., Michigan, Wisconsin. So, it's been just a lot of fun. Basically, just these, you know, a lot of experts, either amateur or academic, you know, have spent their lives working on certain topics and certain sites and stories. and it's real difficult for them to share their life's work and I certainly noticed that and it's been a lot of fun trying to
00:04:14
Speaker
you know get their stories documented because literally several of them are no longer living. So I have film of people that it's the power of just having a camera is is very important. so what What would you say is the sort of the thread or theme of this adventure you're currently on? Well, it's in the ancient America, lost America world. you know I've been told that archaeology in North America is dead. I don't know if that's for sure true or or if you have an opinion on that. But, you know, just following a lot of these stories, it's it's basically it's what was going on here a long time ago. And there's not too many people working on that. It seems the incredible work that you do with Chris, like 127 episodes, that's like so just
00:05:07
Speaker
so incredible that work, but getting you know millions of people to see it is a real task. and that's kind of been my My objective is to get it you know millions to see something, and it's it's very difficult.
Significance of Petroglyphs and Geoglyphs
00:05:22
Speaker
It's a very hard industry. Yes, yes i would I would agree. now You probably weren't aware of this, Chris, but I was on the History Channel and they asked me to they asked me to participate in sort of the Skinwalker Ranch and they paid for my trip there and I i spent a ah day with them looking at the rock art and also looking at the physical features that were quite interesting. One was a geoglyph that exists.
00:05:51
Speaker
and talking about what I saw with my own eyes and how I would perceive it and what I would think would be its meaning and function to the native people. now you You're aware of that? Yes, and very cool. and And that was a good experience for you, correct? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I loved it. It was taxing. I spent you know i don't know. it It was more than half a day roaming around with 20 different people and all kinds of dozens of different cameras. and and they When I thought it was over, it wasn't over and they they did even more footage. I mean i bet they had you know hours and hours of footage of me for that you know it's little three-minute or five-minute little you know snippet that I was perceived on that show.
00:06:40
Speaker
ah they were They're rather selective and they want they want to hone in on just you know the creme de la creme, if you will. Well, yeah. You bring up geoglyphs. and you know Another word that we're working on in Wisconsin is petroforms. and so That's basically rock that has been manipulated you know and not natural. and I guess there's no laws that protect these you know petraforms because they're just a pile of rocks. But when you really look it up on mountaintops, and it's it seems like there's stuff everywhere that you know has been manipulated by man and woman long ago. i mean Is that what you found, Alan, or is that a crazy thing to say? Well, there's different ways to think about this. I think I know what the petraforms are.
00:07:27
Speaker
And there are such things that have an archaeological reality or that are considered valid. The things that I call geoglyphs I think relate to rock pictures or rock alignments that are on the landscape that native people have engineered that are associated with homage, adoration, supplication to sort of creator deities. The one that I saw at Skinwalker Ranch had a central mound in it, a rock cairn, I think, at the top of it. And then surrounding it was a circuitous line of rocks that almost make a huge spiral. So it was it was rather large. Not huge, not as big as the ones in Nazco, or even not as big as the ones along the Colorado, but sizable nonetheless. And it was obviously something done by the Native people
00:08:24
Speaker
typical typically to demarcate or identify a place of power. Does that make any sense to you? Yeah, and you say it the best, Alan. So yes, and continue if you'd like. Yeah, so so that was one thing that I saw there. And I'm sure that that's you know kind of some of the things that you're, of course, perhaps looking for or recording in your series. Now, besides that, what I saw was petroglyphs that were highly patinated, difficult to see. And one was obviously a serpentine line, a snake. And there was also an an interesting rock
00:09:04
Speaker
that had like a, I don't know how to explain it, had like a little convexity to the very edge of it and a hole in it. So if you looked in the hole, it it would point you towards the the very edge of a nearby mesa. And then additionally, when you turned around on this mesa top, when you talk about the petraforms, there was a volcanic exposure, a volcanic bench that looks like two snakes' heads meeting at ah at a drainage, basically face-to-face. And it was it was rather clear to me that that was maybe one of the reasons that this particular mesa top was was selected and
00:09:49
Speaker
I guess what I would call that serpentine or that concentric circle, when they've talked to Native people about that kind of thing, right? They tell us that that that is a demarcation, that is a visual shorthand for a place of power. It's where constant power is concentrated, but it's also a portal And this is where the shamans, the medicine persons, are those that are endowed with you know sort of the ability to travel or connect mystically with this realm of the creator gods and goddesses and and the divinities that live above us in the heavens. And this is where they go to get into a trance
00:10:41
Speaker
or figure out some way either through meditation or ingesting some sort of psychotropic to then travel to those heavens and talk to those talk to the shamanistic ancestor deities or others and bring down their messages or bring down their strength and vitality so that they can do certain things. They can heal others. They can bring down the rain and change the weather and make it rain, or they can also ah help the kin, the descendants, the relatives of those who have passed, right? And they can either talk to the ancestors or communicate with them through the the shaman.
00:11:29
Speaker
And I know that all sounds rather you know striking and paranormal and unusual, but those are the kind of things I learned about being in the field I am in. anthropology and archaeology. Does that in any way interfere with the kinds of things you're dealing with? Yes, yes, Alan. And I just one more question would be, does that does that seem any like not Mayan or not South America connection with that, right? Or is it more from the north that that connection would have been? it's It would be from Mesoamerica.
Little Lake's Prehistoric Mysteries
00:12:04
Speaker
It would be from the area of the Kochimi.
00:12:08
Speaker
on the peninsula of Baja California. And that's directly from the ethnographic record there in the Sierra de San Francisco, where you find the largest prehistoric paintings, some of the largest in the world. And with that, we'll cut this as our first segment. And we'll move to the next one. See you in the flip flop, gang.
00:12:33
Speaker
Hey out there in podcast land, this is Alan Garfinkel, your host, for the second segment of episode 126 of your rock art podcast. And we're blessed and honored to have Chris Finnefrock, who's going to talk to us about his thoughts and reflections on the world of the cinema, the the entertainment world, the world of movies and television and documentary films and all all of the above. Yeah, Alan, that's that's good. Yeah, we we were kind of riffing on some of my experiences working with television, and you recently filmed me in that rare experience of trying to run a ah field trip out of Little Lake.
00:13:20
Speaker
but And that was ah that was quite an adventure, wasn't it? Yeah, just very special. The one day, you know, that I think maybe you guys are going there the rest of the year and just happens to be available. And I mean, what a just, what an earth changing, important spot, Alan. I mean, it's just a really big deal. It's so close to the COSO range. So that's all part of, this just ancient civilization, this natives living there that we don't really know a lot about it. Is that right? It's very mysterious. It's very enigmatic. It's very problematic. It's, it's common like the America's Gobeliki Tepe. um Here we have a culture it who flourished in an area that's not supposed to be flourishing. It's, it's one of the driest places on earth. It's only one,
00:14:19
Speaker
or two valley systems away from Death Valley, they barely get three inches of rain a year. And yet they they produced one of the greatest concentrations of prehistoric rock drawings in the entire Western Hemisphere. So in about a 10 mile by 10 mile area, 100 square miles, there's probably 200,000 images, individual images or panels of rock art, it's it's mind boggling. So Alan, let me just jump in. So these these maps that I've seen that show California as you know a different, you know where it was kind of this island type thing, like was that wet there? were were there ten i mean Is that possible?
00:15:05
Speaker
Really, no. It wasn't wet. It was dry. and It may have been a little bit wetter than it is now, but during certain times, it was extremely dry. In fact, there was a period of time between AD 970 and AD 1350 where we had epic droughts. It's called the medieval climatic anomaly. And when I say epic droughts, I mean droughts that were 100 or 200 years long. And so they probably had less less rain than the three inches that they even have now. So there's no there's very few springs in there and certainly no bodies of water except for Little Lake, which is on the very edge of the Kosos.
00:15:51
Speaker
but And most of the rock art within the Kosos is not there at Little Lake. It's really more to the interior of the ah North Base. And what I learned, and this only recently, they've only surveyed, they've only examined about 30% of the North Base to see what's there. so You can imagine 70% of that North Base has not even been surveyed or they haven't discovered the amount of rock art
00:16:23
Speaker
and archaeology that could be there. The reason for that is they would have to fly helicopters or have people and you know plan on spending overnights there because it's so far away from any roads or any other easily accessed areas. So it's still quite a mystery unto itself. Well, yeah, it's, it's you know, the big controversy now with Goblecke Tepe in Turkey is that, you know, such a small percentage of it has been looked at, you know, obviously.
Revisiting History: Early Human Settlement
00:16:54
Speaker
And so, you know, what I learned on our recent trip to Little Lake was that there's there's three colors, right, of the rock art. There's the red, the black, and the white. And
00:17:05
Speaker
You know, just wondering if if, you know, some of those could go way, way back or farther back than than perhaps what they think. I don't know which color that would be the black one, right? Yeah, we have we have both petroglyphs, rock drawings, and we also have pictographs, paintings on the rocks at Little Lake. Now. We have dates that have been done on rock art and dates that have been done on archaeological sites that I was part of the research on. And we do know that there were people occupying and living on the edge of the COSO range
00:17:52
Speaker
12,800 years ago, 13,000 years ago. and there was There's quite a ah distinctive expression of that. It's called Western Fluted or Western Clovis. and We know that because we dated the volcanic glass artifacts that are fashioned in a way similar to that earliest Clovis expression that we used to think was the basement culture for the peopling of the Americas. But now we are beginning to believe that I think many archaeologists and broadcast scholars and other people are now beginning to appreciate that the ah peopling of the Americas appears to go back considerably earlier, much earlier,
00:18:41
Speaker
than we ever had figured before, as we have the growing evidence that comes from numerous archaeological sites and even that site in New Mexico with the ah footprints of men, women, and children that have been preserved on the sand that has been dated numerous ways and consistently comes up between twenty one and twenty three thousand years ago that's old yeah why i wonder about the reliability of the carbon fourteen dating when it goes way back maybe it's just a solid then or you know but when they throw out the hundred thousand years it's like.
00:19:22
Speaker
Can you for sure, you know, those dates is so that's a question of mine, but the the individuals that would would throw out the those kinds of numbers are are rather excessive. But I think if you deal with the the scholars and those that are confident. I think we're getting a bevy of it of of interesting results using multiple different ways to to date them. They use optical luminescence and radiocarbon dates and come up with the same numbers. So that 21,000 to 23,000 appears to be solid. There's another place and in South America called Monte Verde, and they have ah preserved material that's perishable
00:20:08
Speaker
that they believe goes back to 35,000 years ago, but people are still rather skeptical on that one. But I think it's hard to argue with that 21,000 to 23,000 because it's been so well examined, so detailed examined, and so so heavily researched and published for peer review multiple times. But it's an outlier. i mean We didn't believe there was anything older than about 13,500. And that's the what's been written in the in the school books for decades and decades. No one thought there was anything earlier than that. And the discoveries made in the Pacific Northwest of these Western stemmed projectile points in open air sites that went back to 16,000 years ago
00:20:59
Speaker
and even the work that my friend out there on the coastal islands out from California, mr Erlinson in Daisy Cave and other caves there are in the 15 to 16,000 years ago realm. Well, that puts a whole new spin on this whole question of the peopling of the Americas. The reason it puts a spin on it is because We've always thought that it was that, you know, ice-free corridor was the way they populated the Americas. Well, that ice-free corridor wasn't open. It was closed. And there wasn't any way to sort of travel in that whole area. So if they came here, they had to come here on boats or somehow along that coastal route, which has been something that no one had ever
00:21:52
Speaker
really examined or tendered any sort of posture on that as a working hypothesis. So the whole realm of theories and and potential models for understanding prehistory in the Americas has been turned on its head. Yeah, you know, and you say also the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter, Pennsylvania, right? Right. You know, you say you say boats, the tamul, is it Dr. Terry Jones, right on the tamul? Yes. Uh-huh. That those islands out there, I mean, you're dealing with some of the old, you're dealing with many elephants.
00:22:31
Speaker
Yes. you know you're You're dealing with some of the oldest stuff in the Americas right there on those islands out there. Yeah, you're exactly right. You got to what they call pygmy mammoths. I've seen a reproduction of them. They were tiny. there I was taller than they were. The pygmy mammoths on the islands. Can you imagine? so you know you You get into the the crazy things on also you know the horse you know that did that come over from Spain. you know that's a You could argue, and a lot of people in some of my circles argue, that the horse actually originated in the Americas. And then from there went over to different places. But you also had these small Appaloosa type, I believe, ponies. Maybe you know more about that. but
00:23:19
Speaker
You know, a goofy conversation, Alan, and since you said I could be goofy today, is, is Lemoria and Mu and Point Magoo and all these Mu, you know, that, you know, you have Atlantis in the Atlantic somewhere, you have possibly some Lemorian civilization. And I just, yeah you know, forgive me for bringing that up if that's a little crazy, but just wondering on ancient water levels. So. Well, I know that there was just an article that appeared today on the internet about some sort of buried city under the water, a whole civilization that archaeologists didn't know about,
00:23:59
Speaker
and and they're trying to trying to understand it. And then, since they have all these high-technology LiDAR and this DAR and that DAR that they're using now in the Amazon, they found out there's there's whole civilizations, there's whole expressions of of cultures that lived there in South America that we never knew anything about. They used to think that parts of the Earth were pristine, right and they were untouched, and that humankind had never bothered them, and that was sort of the ecological balance we were going towards. Well, they threw that one out because they found out that humans have been here for such a long time. They were everywhere
00:24:46
Speaker
and that it was after they left that the forest came in and produced what we call the jungle, the hungla now. So below the hungla is there's a lot of a lot of structures and temples and other things like that that we're just beginning to understand. they There's a lot of stuff we don't understand. and There's a lot of stuff that that needs needs study. one thing that we're fighting One thing we're fighting about constantly, and that's that's the sort of the newest issue for archaeology, is that Native Americans now have a
00:25:24
Speaker
a chair at the table. What I mean by that is once they've become federally recognized and casinoed and have money, they also get attorneys and they get trained as archaeologists and they want to participate as full-time people
Cultural Heritage and Controversies
00:25:43
Speaker
and also they want to you know make sure that when we excavate or acquire artifacts, that they go back in the ground where they belong, or if they're in museums, if they're ritual or religious or power objects, they go back to the native tribes from whence they came. And this is this is turning everything upside down and backwards. It's causing museums to have and enormous trouble.
00:26:14
Speaker
even there's, this has been brought up on the podcast, but the issue with Ridgecrest where the COSO range is and the COSO rock art, they have an annual festival called the Petroglyph Festival, the rock art festival. And they've branded their city as the city of the Petroglyphs. And so they have images of the rock art that pepper the town. even in the median and in front of different commercial structures. Well, the Indians came and didn't like that, and they want those covered up and ripped up, or they or they want reparations for stealing their their objects and their patrimony and their iconography.
00:26:59
Speaker
And so that was that's something that's been a political football for a while now, and people are trying to to deal with that issue. I don't know if you heard about any of this. Yes, thank you for bringing that up. NAGPRA, and I love hearing your position that you think things should be in the ground. I mean, obviously that's another conversation. but You know, it's it's my understanding that it's a cultural genocide of the Native Americans and eradication of their history to basically have all this stuff just gone from the museums. All this stuff in Ohio that was donated there for 150 years. It's already in Oklahoma. Yeah. Yeah. Let's let's stop it there and catch it next on the flip flop. See you next. See you on the next segment, gang.
00:27:47
Speaker
Welcome back, gang. This is your host, Dr. Alan Garvinkel, for the ah final segment in episode 126. We're here with Chris Finney-Frock, the award-winning producer and director of many different entertainment-related products. Chris, I'm going to start it off with ah a quick recollection. Is that OK? Please. That trip to Little Lake was one of the most supernatural experiences I've ever had.
00:28:18
Speaker
i've I felt ah overwhelmed. When I was there on the edge of that lake and the wind picked up and it got cold, right? And and the and the and the water started to to move and off on the horizon was that, what do they call it? That Virga rain where you can see the rain curtain coming on in. Right? Yeah. and and you had on And you had on the ground the flowers, the spring flowers that were coming up and you got that smell of that sort of aroma. I'm going, it doesn't get any better than this. It doesn't get any better than this. I was blown away. I was just going, I didn't expect to have this supernatural experience on leading this this tour of Little Lake, but boy, I was just
00:29:09
Speaker
in seventh heaven. I just could not believe that day. And the reason I bring that up is I think that native people are much more attuned to this ethereal realm and the natural world than we are. We've packed it so far away and so distant from ourselves that we've you know disconnected. It's disjointed from us. And that's why many people want to go back and enjoy the natural world and are so interested in ah going to the places that are relatively unmarred from and from the industrial Western civilizations and that they can see and feel and sense a bit of the natural world and get reconnected to the
00:30:01
Speaker
the universe, that universal power, that flow, that walking in the spirit, as I say. What are your thoughts on that? That sounded beautiful, Alan. that's That's what I think. I'll tell you, talking to a gentleman today in North Carolina at Pilot Mountain, ah it's ah an all-crystal pyramid type thing, and he's taught me that the Native Americans there, that there was, you know, every time you go to a site or the same site, they see different things each time. Have you heard that before?
00:30:34
Speaker
Yes. so Yeah. So I liked that. You can see with new eyes, you experience the world differently upon each visit. It's a new story. It's a new way of seeing. When one is is sort of, you only see what you're looking for. I had a story that I told in a little publication when I came back to archaeology after my 20 year respite. And I think it was Desert USA, the website. And I explained that I was doing my master's thesis and writing up the cultural resource management plan for the Fossil Falls Little Lake District, the archaeological district there. here cool And I had walked around from walked around for months in this area above the falls and kept finding archaeological site after archaeological site and doing the best that I can to record them because it was
00:31:30
Speaker
sort of one continuous, huge archaeological district. But I hadn't seen and any um wildlife. you know i I didn't see a ah ah living thing. I was just there, me and the rocks. And so yeah I said, you know, I've written this whole thing up and I've got an environmental background and it talks about the rocks and talks about the plants, but I haven't seen any life here. There must be some life. So I said, we've got a wildlife biologist here in the office from the Bureau of Land Management. I'm going to ask them to come out with me and see if they can tell me what kind of animals and wildlife I should be seeing.
00:32:13
Speaker
So he came out and of course, as soon as he comes out, we see a rabbit, we see, yeah you know, ah some sort of horny toads, right? And other wildlife quail, but nothing of real consequence. And he he stops me in mid-step, right? He says, stop and don't say, he says, be quiet, don't say anything. And I say, okay, what's going on?
00:32:43
Speaker
And he says, this could be the greatest concentration I've seen anywhere in the entire California desert. I go, what are you talking about? And he takes his finger and he goes under my chin and raises my head up because I'm looking at the ground. And on every rock, there was a Chukawala. There was probably probably a hundred Chukawalas or more just covering every rock that we could see. and And I said, I've never seen anything. I've never seen any of these things. He says, well, you ought to look up from from the ground sometime and you you might see a few things. So so again, you don't see if you're not looking, you don't see, right?
00:33:29
Speaker
So that was a that was a huge educational experience for me. You you kind of see what you're looking for. It's sort of an expectation. When you walk down a canyon at at Little Petroglyph Canyon, every time I go down there, I see new images that I haven't seen before. And I see new parts new parts of the landscape that I haven't seen before. On and on and on. Go ahead, please. So, you know, I showed up early morning to see you and a whole bunch of people there, super exciting. But I woke up super early. And so I drove and it took me about an hour, you know, of just pulling to the side of the road and using my zoom lens, my Nikon 1000 zoom lens, which has been discontinued, I think. But you can zoom so far. And I zoomed all up into those mountains and all up into there and
00:34:25
Speaker
You know, I swear there's stuff just all up there. I was on a cruise down in Mexico leaving from San Diego or San Pedro going down and you zoom up to the top of those mountains and there's just rocks up there. There's just and and you just trust your eyes that you're seeing things. So. You know, it's it's a really cool place I went to was Frank's Hill in Wisconsin. And so that was a. they And so there's there's these eagle mounds, these effigy mounds that are all around, you know, hundreds, dozens, just quarter mile long.
00:35:04
Speaker
But there is supposedly a portal, but they've never been able to find it. And, you know, there's a seat where you're supposed to sit to basically you look out and these eagles that are up to a quarter mile long, they they have a 3D effect. They're almost in motion, right? And you look at some of these rock art sites like in West Virginia, I'm so sorry, rock faces. Yeah. And some of the faces only take shape when there's two rocks
00:35:38
Speaker
You know, so it's literally the depth of two rocks. So not only is the one rock carved, but it's the back one. It's two separate rocks are required to see the face. But that kind of kind of comes to mind. Pilot Mountain, the stories of little people, ah little people seen up there in Wisconsin as well. But Pilot Mountain, that that was a, you know, that that people could be living inside, you know, that that was a where you you went for It's a very special place. So um continue, Alan, what you're thinking? Well, all the things you said and much more. So the creation site for the Kawaiasu in the in the Tehachapi Mountains, part of the transverse range is just kind of north of Bakersfield and west of Ridgecrest. There's a creation site. It's a state park, state historic park. It's called Tomokani, which means
00:36:40
Speaker
winter house in the Koya Sioux language. But you go there, and there's an enormous cave, absolutely immense. It looks like, you know, and an amphitheater. And it has paintings on the cave. And there in a little alcove is where, according to sacred narrative, according to the mythology of the Kauai'su is where the Kauai'su people came from. They emerged from a hole. It's ah it's a bedrock mortar hole, and it's inside this alcove. Well, on the rocks themselves, they have depictions of the animals. there's
00:37:21
Speaker
you know ah a bear, there's a bighorn sheep, and there's ah there's a snake that's um there as well. So besides that, besides these paintings and besides that alcove, when you're there in the cave and you start looking out from the cave to the exterior, you begin to notice that the rocks themselves are shaped like animals. and i'm not This is not like pareidolia. You've got a turtle yes on one, and you walk right by. It's a giant turtle. Another one is shaped like a rabbit, I swear, just like a rabbit. And and then when you're out on out of the cave initially, and you look at other rocks, they're shaped like crows or other birds.
00:38:13
Speaker
And according to the sacred narrative, the mythology of the kawaizu, this is where grizzly bear came and he decided to have a party,
Spiritual Connections to Natural Sites
00:38:23
Speaker
right? He was going to have a fiesta and he invited all of his friends, all the animal people, the Bitcoin sheep and the coyote and the turtle and all the other kinds of animals. And they had a fiesta and he was the, you know, he, they had food and dancing and songs. And they that's when they decided who they were going to be and where they were going to live. And they left their pictures on the rocks and their effigies were frozen in these monumental rock sculptures that we would say were natural, but
00:39:02
Speaker
how you know It's kind of amazing that they would have that kind of rock features and those rock sculptures in association with this huge cave and coincident you know spatially with that. Well, ah amazing. now when In Wisconsin, you know these petraforms are these piles of rocks in the shape of the clan symbols. so in the shape of the yeah I've definitely seen a big whale, you know you know the bear bear, the different clansimals in these piles of rocks in that shape, right? bright well i mean and and that all That all makes perfect sense to me given the non-Cartesian, animistic, shamanistic thought structure of the indigenous people. They believe
00:39:57
Speaker
that we live in a tiered universe and that in the underworld, there's a, you know, a set of spirit figures that sometimes live there and they, they take the spirits of the animals once they're killed and certain key animals are transmogrified, revivified or resurrected, and they are immortal and they repopulate the earth. And then the rocks speak to them and tell them
00:40:27
Speaker
where to paint their pictures or where to sculpture, and they memorialize those rocks and those topographic elements in these sacred narratives that help them to understand the world. And their perspective is they've been there for time eternal, and their gods and goddesses protect them. And so they they use these rock art sites as basically their outdoor churches, and the stories that they tell are inscribed upon the rocks. And the images are visual prayers. They may in fact have symbols
00:41:10
Speaker
kin you know kinship symbols that provide personal immortality to the people that have passed on. And so when we go into these shrines, these living monuments, we're seeing centuries and millennia of activities from the ancestors. Go ahead. Well, it's beautiful that some of the stories of, you know, the UP tribes, you know, going back to ice ages like stories. And so archaeologists responses, you know, prove that. But that's, you know, you're dealing to ice ages. So I love what you say. Rocks speak to them that, plant you know, just talking today plants, you know, speak to the two people and they tell you.
00:41:56
Speaker
you know, how to heal or how to, you know, have these, uh, these psychedelic trips, but that, you know, we used to be able to talk to dolphins, you know, right. I mean, whales also a hundred thousand pyramids in Guatemala, you know, the book, seed of knowledge, stone of plenty. Like you brought your seeds there at supercharged the seeds. There's pyramids down there on, on lay lines. You know, these were very special, smart people. Yeah. So, what we're talking about is things that are in the supernatural paranormal realm. They're part of the landscape, and our Cartesian view of the world is very skeptical. You know, where's the science? So, and what I always like is when when when God steps into history and produces what I call radical miracles.
00:42:49
Speaker
Because I love radical miracles because they they shake us up and show us that that there's a a whole other realm. And if we are cautious and careful and supplicate ourselves and surrender ourselves to the mysteries of the universe, things are going to be okay. And with that, I think I'll sign off. I think we've done a great job. Thank you, Alan. That was very fun and enjoyed learning from you, sir. Thank you very much. and I enjoyed the conversation. See you all next week, gang.
Conclusion and Future Invitations
00:43:22
Speaker
See you in the flip flop.
00:43:29
Speaker
Thanks for listening to The Rock Art Podcast with Dr. Alan Garfinkel and Chris Webster. Find show notes and contact information at www.arcpodnet dot.com forward slash rock art. Thanks for listening and thanks for sharing this podcast with your family and friends.
00:44:02
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 www.archapodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.