ARCHEOASTRONOMY – POSSIBLE STELLAR ASTERISMS CARVED ON A STONE DISK:

Presumed star chart carved into a stone disc. Molaro and Bernardini, 2023.

The whole field of archeoastronomy is interesting, but a little like analyzing Rorsach Blots. What people see is influenced by what they expect (or want) to find when they are looking at possible examples. One good example is outlined in the citation below: 

“Two couples of stone disks found at the entrances and cemeteries of protohistoric hill forts in the north-eastern Adriatic area were suggested to have a symbolic meaning representing the Sun and the Night Sky. In one pair the night sky is symbolically represented by a number of natural holes made by marine bivalves but in the other stone studied here the marks are made by a human hand and show a pattern. We performed a statistical comparison of the chisel marks with the most common asterisms to try to establish if they were randomly made or they had some intentionality.” (Molaro and Bernardini 2023:11) Notice that Molaro and Bernardini said “the night sky is symbolically represented by a number of natural holes made by marine bivalves.”  In other words, clams or barnacles have bored into the surface of a piece of stone in the pattern of asterisms in the night sky. The authors used statistical analysis to identify the patterns. Any time statistics enters the picture I get skeptical. A good mathematician can use statistics to make the answers come out any way they wish. I wonder if the marine bivalves also used statistics to plot where they should bore their holes.

Front face of the stone disk from an adaptation of Bernardini et al. (2022). Curvature map of the disk with the position of the chiselmarks indicated by black circles and numbered.

“The whole pattern is composed by 29 chisel marks, 24 in the front face of the stone and 5 on the back. 28 chisel marks are consistent with the asterisms of Scorpius, Orion, Pleiades and, perhaps, of Cassiopeia on the back side of the stone. The correlation between the chisel marks and the stellar position is very high with r(28) = 0.994. The p-value is formally 0.001 and provides a very low probability that the chisel marks were produced accidentally.” (Molaro and Bernardini 2023:11) The authors suggest the age of these stones as Bronze Age. They also state that there are no written records from the local cultures during that time period. I, then, need to ask how they can know what stellar asterisms the inhabitants of the hill fort would recognize and wish to record?

“One chisel mark remains without an obvious identification. This is the most problematic chisel mark to explain.The mark is close to the stellar system of 𝜇 Ori, formed by two physical binary systems with an integrated magnitude of V = 4.1. Alternatively, if it belongs to the portion of sky of Scorpius it  could be associated to 𝜖 Sgr. However, all these identifications are quite unsatisfactory. One intriguing possibility is that a bright star was present in that position that produced a supernova or more likely a failed supernova leaving a black hole as a remnant. Interestingly, this prediction could be tested through detailed observations and, therefore, specific studies are solicited.” (Molaro and Bernardini 2023:11) One mark does not fit their theory, therefore, it may have disappeared in the interim in a supernova? This strikes me as really stretching to make your point.

The stone next to the diagram of the chisel marks.

“The asterisms are quite complete showing all the bright stars. Notable missing are 𝛾 and 𝜅 Ori. However, the location is in the most exposed part of the stone and the mark could have been possibly deleted by stone erosion.” (Molaro and Bernardini 2023:11) Even more convenient, not only has a supernova since made one star disappear that was carved onto the stone, but erosion has removed a couple of important stars that should be there.

“The deviations from real positions are of about one degree which are comparable with the size of the marks in the stone. For comparison, in the catalogue of Ptolemaios the error distributions is of 27 and 23 arcmin in longitude and latitude respectively, which is only about a factor 2–3 better than those on the stone. This requires a careful preparation and patient persistence in the execution. As such, the reproduction is not symbolic but faithful, showing an effort in providing the true stellar positions in the sky.” (Molaro and Bernardini 2023:11-12)

 "The hill fort of Rupinpiccolo was in use from about 1800/1650 BCE. Several data suggest to link the stones to the early building phase of the hill fort during the Bronze Age, even if we cannot completely rule out a Roman origin based on the similarity of the disks with roughed-out blocks of tomb stones. Even for the latest photohistoric chronology (400BCE), the disk stone would represent one of the oldest cartography of the sky." (Molaro and Bernardini 2023:12) If it really was a chart of stellar positions in the  sky.

Now, all of this may, in fact, be true, but I am not convinced. These stone disks may be ancient star charts with all of this archeoastronomical data recorded on them. The authors pointed out a likeness of these stone disks to covers for Roman Era shaft tombs, and we know the Romans recognized many of the same asterism as we do. “However, after the work of Bernardini et al. (2022), round stone artefacts of similar shape and dimensions were identified in the collection of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Aquileia. Probably they are roughed-out blocks for lids for circular tombstones. Since the exact archaeological context of the stones from Rupinpiccolo cannot be determined with precision, the possibility of Roman origin cannot be ruled out.” (Molaro and Bernardini 2023:2) I truly do not know any of this with any real certainty, and I submit, the Molaro and Bernardini may be a little too eager in their interpretations. At least they admit to a certain amount of speculation. After their paper was released popular press stories popped up which address this whole question as the proven truth. Which takes me back to the Rorsach Blots – we see what we want to see.

NOTE 1: I have ommitted some of the secondary citations from the quotations. The one listed is cited in the caption of the second illustration, but I did not consult it directly.

NOTE 2: Images used are from the Primary Reference paper.  by Molaro and Bernardini.

PRIMARY REFERENCE:

Molaro, Paolo, and Frederico Bernardini, 2023, Possible stellar asterisms carved on a protohistoric stone, 6 November 2023, Astronomical Notes (Astron Nachr), DOI:10.1002/asna.20220108. Accessed online 25 December 2023.

SECONDARY REFERENCE:

Bernardini, F., Vinci, G., Macovaz, V., Baucon, A., De Min, A., Furlani, S., and Smolic, S., 2022, Doc Praehist, XLIX, 2.

NAWARLA GABARNMANG - A REMARKABLE ROCK ART SITE IN ARNHEM LAND:

The following account is about the discovery of a magnificent rock shelter in Arnhem Land, Australia, with an overwhelming amount of beautiful rock art. Of course, this ‘discovery’ only means that Western culture has finally seen it, the original inhabitants of the country always knew of it. Now that we have seen it, however, we can share its beauty with the world.

The northern Entrance of Nawarla Gabarnmang. Photograph by Bruno David, published in Antiquity, 2013.

“In June 2006, RLW and pilot Chris Morgan sighted an unusually large rockshelter during a routine aerial survey on the Arnhem Land plateau. They landed the helicopter and on walking into the open, double-ended shelter, found themselves in a stunning gallery with hundreds of rock paintings.

Nawarla Gabarnmang. Online image, public domain.

Anthropological work with senior Elders Wamud Namok and Jimmy Kalarriya enabled the Jawoyn to learn the name of the site – Nawarla Gabarnmang (nawarla=‘place of ’, gabarnmang=‘hole in the rock’). The two men had visited the shelter when they were children, and been told it was an important site where people camped en route to ceremonies on Jawoyn country. They also identified the Jawoyn clan Buyhmi as the relevant traditional owners of the site. When Buyhmi traditional owner and Elder Margaret Katherine was taken to the site, she cried out to her ancestors and wept for a place and family she had never known.” (David et al. 2011)

Jawoyn elder Margaret Katherine. Pinterest image.

This is doubtless the result of decades of Western culture’s attempts to eradicate indigenous practices and beliefs. Now that these policies have changed the aboriginal people are recovering portions of their cultural heritage that have lain dormant.

The roof, supported my many rock pillars provided a nicely sheltered place for people to stop at for a period of time. “Originally the rock pillars were not widely spaced. They were typically about one metre apart. We know this because this is how they are found in other parts of the site that people did not frequent. We can also see where missing pillars once stood, for their very tops remain adhered to the ceiling and their bases have survived on the floor in those parts of the site where the pillars are now more widely spaced. In some areas, pillars are now eight metres apart where once they stood side by side.” (David 2018)

View inside Nawarla Gabarnmang. Photograph Jean Jacques Delannoy.

This site has been in use for a very long time. “Fifty thousand years ago, Aboriginal people started to camp at the site, first at the edge and then gradually further within. Living amid the pillars was not possible at first, for they were too closely spaced. But sometime between 35,000 and 23,000 years ago – the exact timing is uncertain as more research is required – individual pillars began to be toppled. This required planned, structured dismantling, for the weight of the roof would not allow the rock pillars to be simply pushed aside. First, the pillars’ top layer was flaked away or, in some cases, vertically sectioned and removed as a block, all with stone tools, creating a space between pillar and ceiling. That space then allowed the pillars to be pushed aside and dismantled piece by piece. The overlying ceiling now lacked local support, so individual layers of ceiling rock began to collapse. Where pillars had gone, the ceiling level was now higher than in surrounding areas. The individual toppled pillar fragments and ceiling slabs were flaked into typically forty-centimetre-long pieces and carried away to the shelter’s outer edges, so that today hundreds if not thousands of regularly shaped tabular blocks abound at the rock-shelter’s northern and southern entrances. A few of those tabular pieces were left on the shelter floor and moved around. They each show signs of use, sometimes from the grinding of ochre to make paints in shades of white, red, pink, yellow and black. Others were used as anvils to rest higher-quality stone for the flaking of stone tools. It is these tabular pieces remaining on the shelter floor that local Aboriginal Elders refer to as “pillows,” demarcating where in the past people rested. The extant pillar walls and ceiling rock surfaces are heavily decorated with paintings, so much so that in some places more than thirty layers of paint have been identified, motif over motif in a time sequence that represents centuries of changing styles. And how are we to think of the accumulated slabs at the shelter’s northern and southern entrances: rejected debris to clear the site or a cache of useable tools and furniture? In some cases, slabs were overlaid in multiple tiers to make stools for artists to stand on when painting the ceiling.” (David 2018) So this location was not only painted, but first it was physically modified to fit the populations preconceptions and then decorated. This did not, of course, happen in a frenzy of deconstruction and decoration, but it seems they did have what amounts to a plan over a long period of time.

Barramundi fish on the ceiling of Nawarla Gabarnmang. Online image, public domain.

“Nawarla Gabarnmang is a spectacular site, one of the world’s great archaeological rock-shelters. Yet it is more than this. The stone workings – the systematic dismantling of the pillars, the removal of blocks to create more open spaces, their strategic disposal at both site entrances and the decoration of the remaining pillar walls and ceiling – all speak not of a natural cave but of an engineered and furnished architectural space.” (David 2018) Having finally created the space that they were satisfied with, the people then proceeded to decorate it with magnificent paintings.

Barramundi fish on the ceiling of Nawarla Gabarnmang. Online image, public domain.

“The glorious murals of the Nawarla Gabarnmang cave are vivid testimony to the cultural heritage community, social cohesion, and spirituality of the early Aboriginal settlers of Australia, who managed to create enormous beauty in a hostile environment of blistering heat and parched land, some 23,000 years before the erection of the Egyptian Pyramids or the Stonehenge Stone Circle.” (Visual Arts Cork)

This space has been painted, and repainted for millennia, but one piece of fallen stone has given a date that is truly impressive. This one dated piece “consists of a charcoal drawing made on a piece of rock, some 3 centimetres by 3 centimetres that fell from the roof during prehistory. The drawing itself comprises 2 crossed lines: one is straight, while part of the other is slightly curved. The area formed by the curved part has been filled in with a heavier (thus darker) application of charcoal, but the rest of the drawing is faded beyond recognition. The stone fragment is aged between 28,000 and 45,600 years old, while the charcoal drawing is dated to 26,000 BCE. The drawing is broadly contemporaneous with the Fumane Cave paintings in Italy (c.35,000 BCE) and the Chauvet Cave paintings in France (c.30,000 BCE), both painted during the era of Aurignacian in Europe. Despite its advanced age, Gabarnmang's charcoal drawing is unlikely to be northern Australia')s most ancient art. This honour is likely to go to the cupule art or hand stencils of the Kimberley region, which are believed to date to at least 30,000 possibly 40,000 BCE.” (Visual Arts Cork)

Palimpsest at Nawarla Gabarnmang. Online image, public domain.

The studies indicated that people have occupied Nawarla Gabarnmang for a very long period of time indeed. “Initial results at Nawarla Gabarnmang have revealed secure evidence of people some 45,000 years ago. Ongoing excavations are aimed at tracking the >45,000 year old levels, dating the rock art and further investigating the site’s geomorphology (including anthropogenic  modifications to the ceiling and pillars).” (David 2011)

So, at roughly the same period of prehistory that humans were painting the natural caves of Europe, the people of Arnhem Land, Australia, were, in effect, creating their own cave before painting it extensively.

NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

David, Bruno et al., 2011, Nawarla Gabarnmang, a 45,180±910 cal BP Site in Jawoyn Country, Southwest Arnhem Land Plateau, Australian Archaeology, No. 73 (December 2011), pp. 73-77. Accessed online 31 December 2023.

David, Bruno et al., 2018, Nawarla Gabarnmang, 25 September 2018, Landscape Australia, https://landscapeaustralia.com/articles/nawarla-gabarnmang/. Accessed online 31 December 2023.

Gunn, Robert et al., 2017, The past 500 years of rock art at Nawarla Gabarnmang, central-western Arnhem Land, pp. 303-328, from The Archaeology of Rock Art in Western Arnhem Land, Australia, edited by Bruno David, Paul Tacon, Jean-Jacques Delannoy, and Jean-Michel Geneste, Australian National University Press, Canberra, Australia.

Visual Arts Cork, Nawarla Gabarnmang Charcoal Drawing (26,000 BCE), http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/prehistoric/nawarla-gabarnmang.htm. Accessed online 31 December 2023.

MUSIC AT ROCK ART SITES:

This is a compilation of previous columns from RockArtBlog about sound and music at rock art sites. 

ROCK ART AND SOUND EFFECTS, 24 February 2010:

Black Salon, Grotte de Niaux, Ariege, France. From Rault, 2000, p. 18.

One small but interesting subset in the study of rock art concerns the acoustics of rock art sites. According to some researchers it is possible to find interesting acoustics at many rock art sites. In locales where the rock art is on cliffs they believe that the form of the cliffs often provides for a stronger echo than other nearby sections of cliff. Measurements of the strength of echoes from various surfaces in painted European caves suggest that this can indeed be the case. In 2000 Lucy Rault wrote in “Musical Instruments: Craftsmanship and Tradition from Prehistory to the Present,” that “comparable investigations at Niaux have similarly demonstrated that in this cave places with particularly strong echoes also have images associated with them, some if these, significantly, mark places where sounds linger for several seconds. We can therefore conclude that the choice of locations for wall figures seems to have been made largely on the basis of their acoustical value. Sometimes whole walls remain empty where the corresponding space, however vast it may be, produces no echo. On the other hand, places favorable for echoes are marked and painted, even if their location made such decoration difficult to accomplish.” (Rault 2000:22).

Bison, Grotte du Portel, Ariege,France. From: Rault, 2000, p.23.

Given the strong echoes and reverberation found in these sites in the painted caves of Europe, we have to ask ourselves what were they echoing? The most obvious guess would be the sound of the animal depicted on the wall. The call of this creature might be imitated by spiritual leaders or vocally talented members of the clan. Another possibility could be the eerie moaning sound of a bullroarer. Regarding this, John Pfeiffer wrote in 1982 (p. 180) that “oval bone and ivory objects with abstract designs carved on them and a hole at one end make a high whining hum when whirled from a string, suggesting that the sound of a bullroarer moved people in the upper Paleolithic as well as in modern times” (Pfeiffer’s “high whining hum” would have come from a smaller bullroarer on a short string, a larger model on a longer string could give a much lower roaring sound). Especially in the case of a painted bison or other animal whose vocalizations are grunting, roaring, or rumbling sounds, hearing the sound of a bullroarer echoing and reverberating through the chamber would have been startling to say the least.

Halo Shelter, Val Verde County, TX., Photo: Peter Faris, 2004.

Another effect that can often be found in caves and rock shelters is the phenomenon of the whisper channel. When the walls are of the correct shape they will often pass the frequencies of a soft voice smoothly to the other end of the chamber in such a way that they are inaudible to people standing in between. I observed this effect in a rock shelter at Val Verde county in west Texas, where I could hear a soft conversation of people standing about 20 feet away at the other end of the shelter but individuals standing between us could not discern their comments.

A number of years ago, during a visit to the Grand Gallery of Horseshoe Canyon, in Canyonlands, Utah, one visitor had lugged a tape recorder and microphone all the way from the canyon rim to the panel and had set up his sound equipment while he walked back and forth along the rock art panels tapping the surface of the rock with a little hammer made of deer or elk antler. I thought at the time that this was a pretty silly practice, but I now see that it actually may have had some validity. Although I could not really see back then what the value would be in having that sort of information available, it is now obvious that it might add to the overall metadata of cultural knowledge of the people involved, and would allow evaluations based upon a broader knowledge of their cultural concerns, and this would benefit everyone interested in the prehistory of humanity.

REFERENCES:

Pfeiffer, John E., 1982, The Creative Exlosion: An Inquiry into the Origins of Art and Religion, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York.

Rault, Lucy, 2000, Musical Instruments: Traditions and Craftsmanship from Prehistory to the Present, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York.

MUSIC AT ROCK ART SITES, 28 March 2010:

On February 24, 2010, I posted a column titled “Rock Art and Sound Effects”. In that posting I discussed the possibility that sound effects may have enhanced the experience of viewers of painted panels in European caves. Also, that many rock art panels are located in places that display unusual echo effects. Another possible manifestation of sound at rock art sites would be music. This could be music played in the presence of rock art, and could also be music as a theme of the imagery in the rock art.

Trois freres sanctuary, sketched by Abbe Breuel, Musee de l'Homme.

One example of music as a theme of rock art is found in the sanctuary at Le Trois Freres, sketched by the Abbe Breuel. Often considered a shaman figure, this therianthropic character seems to be dancing on human legs but possesses a bison head, horns and forelimbs. Additionally, this enigmatic figure is obviously carrying a bow and appears to be pursuing a group of bison. This has led to previous classifications of this scene as a portrayal of hunting magic.

Les Trois Freres, closeup of lower right. Drawn by Abbe Breuil, 1912.

In Musical Instruments, Craftsmanship and Tradition from Prehistory to the Present, Lucy Rault, suggested that this figure was, in fact, playing music on a musical bow. She described the technique of playing the instrument as “the player places the string between his lips and strikes it with a thin stick. Modifying the volume by altering the position of his lips, and of the tongue within the mouth cavity the musician creates different harmonics to produce a tune” (2000: 151). Rault included a photo of a Dan musician from the Ivory Coast and pointed out the position of the bow relative to the mouth as representative of the figure playing the bow as an instrument.

Musical bow, Dan, Ivory Coast. From Rault, 2000, p.151.

In another connection between music and cave painting bone flutes have been excavated from deposits within caves that also possess cave paintings. It is no great stretch to imagine those flutes being played in a context of ceremonials in front of painted panels within the cave, although we cannot by any means prove that both the flute playing and the painted panels were involved in the same performance.

Paleolithic bone flutes,Isturitz, from Rault, 2000, p.33.

Since we find the concept of music played in the context of rock art panels so interesting, we can probably assume that the prehistoric inhabitants of those regions would like the idea as well, and, since they had all the ingredients available – who knows?

REFERENCES:

Rault, Lucy, 2000, Musical Instruments, Craftsmanship and Tradition from Prehistory to the Present, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York.

MUSIC AT ROCK ART SITES (CONTINUED), 26 April 2010:

On March 28, 2010, I posted a column concerning evidence of the creation of music as a subject of a painted panel in the Sanctuary of the cave of Le Trois Freres. Additional evidence of Paleolithic music in connection with rock art is presented by the upper Aurignacian carved relief known as the “Venus of Laussel” cave in France. This famous female figure is shown holding what appears to be a bison horn in her right hand. The horn is marked with thirteen striations down the side.

"Venus of Laussel", stone relief carving, Laussel cave, France. p.41, Rault, Lucy, Musical Instruments, Craftsmanship and Tradition from Prehistory to the Present,2000.

This figure actually suggests two possible musical implications. One, the horn might be played trumpet fashion. In Musical Instruments, Craftsmanship and Tradition from Prehistory to the Present, Lucy Rault (2000) provided pictures of tribal people playing animal horns trumpet fashion. In playing a trumpet the sound is provided by vibration of the player’s lips blown into the mouthpiece, in these examples a hole drilled into the side of the horn down near the pointed end. Although the Venus of Laussel does not have the horn held to her mouth we must allow the possibility.

Side-blown Kudu horn, Chad. p.198, Rault, Lucy,Musical Instruments, Craftsmanship and Traditionfrom Prehistory to the Present, 2000.

Another possibility relates to the thirteen striations on the side of the horn. With these it is possible that the horn was played as a rhythm instrument known as a rasp. The Ute Indians of Colorado and Utah use a rasp called a morache for their annual Bear Dance in which a notched stick or bone (reportedly originally a bear jaw bone) is held against a resonator such as a basket, a drum, or a plank over a hole in the ground, and rubbed with a stick. The rubbing of the stick back and forth over the notches provides the vibration of the instrument. The sound was felt to reproduce the growling of the bear. Back in 1980 my wife and I attended the spring Bear Dance at Ignacio in the Ute Mountain Ute reservation in southwestern Colorado. The continuing low drone of the morache is immensely compelling and quickly begins to resonate in the mind of the listeners. Rault points out that with the striations marked on the side of the horn held by the “Venus of Laussel” it could have been played as a rasp, rubbed with a stick like the Ute morache and the conical form of the horn would also provide the resonating chamber. Perhaps this sound echoing within the cave would provide a roaring or growling sound to emulate one of the great animals painted on the cave walls.

 

Stalactites as lithophone, South Africa. p.25, Rault, Lucy,
Musical Instruments, Craftsmanship and Tradition
from Prehistory to the Present, 2000.

Another interesting possibility for music played within a cave is provided by the presence of stalactite and stalagmite formations which can be played as a percussion instrument. Such a formation used to make music is known as a lithophone, a stone instrument. Rault stated that in some of the painted caves of Europe evidence remains as signs of impact on such stalactite and stalagmite formations that would ring like a xylophone when struck with a wooden, bone, or perhaps an antler hammer.

As I stated in my previous column none of this is proof that there was ever any playing of music in company with rock art painted on the cave walls. We must, however, acknowledge that it could have been, and I prefer to assume that on ceremonial occasions music and other sound effects would have been included in at least some of the ceremonies.

REFERENCE:

Rault, Lucy, 2000, Musical Instruments, Craftsmanship and Tradition from Prehistory to the Present, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York.

HORSE PETROGLYPHS AS INDICATORS OF CULTURAL TRANSFORMATION – Part 4:

And now the fourth and final installment:

Recording team led by Jim Keyser and Mark Mitchell, Box Canyon Site, 5LA8464, Las Animas County, Colorado. Photograph Peter Faris, August 1999. Jim Keyser on the ladder.

The latter stages of the Narrative Mode of Plains Biographic Style art represent story-telling and the recording of deeds and events. One excellent example is 5LA8464, the Box Canyon Site.

Box Canyon Site, 5LA8464, Picketwire Canyon Lands, Bent County, Colorado. Photograph Peter Faris, August 1999. Tracing of the full panel. Recording team led by Jim Keyser and Mark Mitchell.

The recently discovered (1998 or 1999, recent as of when this was first written) Box Canyon Site (5LA8464) in the Picketwire Canyonlands of the Purgatoire River valley has a lightly engraved panel of Plains Biographic images. It consists of a single, large rectilinear-bodied anthropomorph with a complex composition lightly engraved over it with a number of equestrian figures, and elk, a bear, probable horses, and a probably tipi, and it displays narrative details that suggest decipherable meaning.

Box Canyon Site, 5LA8464, Picketwire Canyon Lands, Bent County, Colorado. Photograph Peter Faris, August 1999. Photograph and tracing of the right side of the panel.

Two equestrian figures on the right are surrounded by riderless horses that may represent horses captured on a horse raid. One of the equestrian figures wears Paynee-style cuffed moccasinns (Afton et al. 1997:18), and both horsemen on the right side of the panel wear long, trailing scalp locks that are also often identified as Pawnee (Afton et al. 1997:18). One of these horsemen fires a rifle toward the horseman on the left side of the panel. Additionally, these figures have zigzag reins which may symbolize lightning power. In Black Elk's 'Horse Dance', which re-enacted his vision, the horses were painted with lightning stripes and hail spots (Brown 1997:58). Lightning stripes were also a common theme on horses painted for war (Mails 1991:223). The two horses with riders on the right, the horse with an incomplete rider partly obscured by the large figure in the center, and the horse with a rider on the far left are equipped with decorated halters. Jim Keyser (1991:261, 1987:57-58) stated that "one of the most common pieces of horse gear depicted in Biographic Style art is a decorated halter." The decorated bridles at the Box Canyon Site were described by Keyser and Mark Mitchell (2001:202) as "wavy, dangling chains" and were compared to examples drawn on a pawnee decorated robe illustrated by John Ewers (1939:Pl.23).

Box Canyon Site, 5LA8464, Picketwire Canyon Lands, Bent County, Colorado. Photograph Peter Faris, August 1999. Detail of the left side of the panel, horse and rider in front of a tipi.

On the left side of the panel one figure on horseback in front of the tipi probably represents the defense of the village (this horse is incomplete). The figure has been struck by and arrow which sticks in its chest. This composition may, in fact, represent a Pawnee horse raid on another tribe's village. From the location and age of the panel it is likely that this resident tribe was Cheyenne or Arapaho, the primary residents of the area during the later historic period.

Box Canyon Site, 5LA8464, Picketwire Canyon Lands, Bent County, Colorado. Photograph Peter Faris, August 1999. Tracing of he left side of the panel, horse and rider in front of a tipi.

As stated above, the mode of portrayal (Iconic or Narrative) of horses in rock art suggests the stage of assimilation of the horse into the society that produced that rock art.

While scholars all agree that the horse had a tremendous effect upon the cultures of the tribes of the original peoples of the Great Plains, just what that effect was is still argued. One side maintains that the horse was merely a cause of intensification, a catalyst as it were, for traits that were already present among the tribes (Carlson 1998:39, Mails 1991:216, Roe 1955:179), while the other side sees the horse as the stimulus to the radical revolution that completely remade the cultures of the peoples of the Great Plains from pedestrian semi-horticulturists to the height of their lives as the Horse Tribes of the late 17th to late 19th centuries (Harrod 1987:9, Mayhall 1987:109).

Farrington Springs, Bent County, CO. Photograph Peter Faris, May 2002. In this scene the horse on the right, the shield figure in the center and the bent over V-necked figure on the left, with a rifle between them, imply a narrative.

As is so often the case in such debates, there is truth in both positions. In the beginning the Indians accepted the horse as a wonderful convenience, and fit it into their lifestyle as it then existed. The horse began as a tool that allowed them to do many things better than before: when pulling a travois it could handle a much bigger load than any dog; for hunting buffalo it made the hunt more reliable by its ability to cover large distances and possessed the speed to run down the quarry; and in war it magnified the striking power of the warrior and vastly enlarged the area he could fight over. In the process the horse remade the cultures and societies of the peoples of the Great Plains.

Ford Mustang. Online photograph, public domain.

In the end, the effect of the horse on the people of the Great Plains can perhaps be likened to the effect of the automobile on the culture of 20th century America. At first, in a horse and buggy culture, the automobile was used as local transportation of questionable reliability. Indeed, its early designation of "horseless carriage" is a striking parallel to Indian names such as "elk dog" for the horse. The automobile went on to grow in importance until it became a major factor in molding societal and cultural change; look at the effect of the interstate highway system on the society of America and its urban landscape. The automobile, like the horse, was an improved means of transportation and could haul more goods and possessions, which greatly affected the economy. The automobile, like the horse, has revolutionized warfare; and the automobile, like the horse, has become an indicator of wealth. By the middle of the 20th century teenage boys dreamed of owning their first car the way that young Indian boys must have dreamed about owning horses and, like the early days of the automobile, conservative tribal elders had probably predicted that the horse was merely a passing fad.

NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.  

REFERENCES:

Afton, J., D. F. Halaas, and A. E. Masich, 1997, Cheyenne Dog Soldiers, a Ledgerbook History of Coups and Combat, Colorado Historical Society and University Press of Colorado, Denver.

Brown, Joseph E., 1997, Animals of the Soul, Element Books, Inc., Rockport Massachusetts.

Carlson, Paul H., 1998, The Plains Indians, Texas A & M Press, College Station, Texas.

Ewers, John C., 1939, Plains Indian Painting, A Description of an Aboriginal American Art, Stanford University Press, Palo Alto.

Harrod, Howard L., 1987, Renenewing the World, Plains Indian Religion and Morality, University of Arizona Press, Tucson.

Keyser James D.

1991, A Thing to Tie on the Halter: An Addition to the Plains Rock Art Lexicon, Plains Anthropologist, 36(136):261-267. 

1987, A Lexicon for Historic Plains Indian Rock Art: Increasing Interpretive Potential, Plains Anthropologist, 32(115):43-71.

Keyser, James D. and Mark Mitchell, 2001, Decorated Bridles: Horse Tack in Plains Biographic Rock Art, Plains Anthropologist, 46(176):195-210.

DID EINSTEIN REALLY INVENT GENERAL RELATIVITY? AN ANCIENT VERSION ON THE CLIFFS OF THE PICKETWIRE CANYONLANDS IN SOUTHEAST COLORADO - FOR APRIL 1, 2024:

Petroglyphs in the Purgatory Canyon (Picketwire), Bent County, Colorado, that some people believe resemble Archaic Northern African scripts. Photograph Peter Faris, June 1991.

Did Albert Einstein really come up with the Theory of Relativity (his famous E=MC²) first?

In the August 2015 issue of Scientific American magazine, Tony Rothman had an article asking “Was Einstein the First to Invent E=mc²?” Rothman pointed to a number of mathematicians that had played around with formulae approaching that over the years.

Petroglyphs in the Purgatory Canyon (Picketwire), Bent County, Colorado, that some people believe resemble Archaic Northern African scripts. Photograph Peter Faris, June 1991.

“Anyone who sits through a freshman electricity and magnetism course learns that charged objects carry electric fields, and that moving charges also create magnetic fields. Hence, moving charged particles carry electromagnetic fields. Late 19th-century natural philosophers believed that electromagnetism was more fundamental than Isaac Newton’s laws of motion and that the electromagnetic field itself should provide the origin of mass. In 1881 J. J. Thomson, later a discoverer of the electron, made the first attempt to demonstrate how this might come about by explicitly calculating the magnetic field generated by a moving charged sphere and showing that the field in turn induced a mass into the sphere itself.” (Rothman 2015) 

“When Englishman John Henry Poynting announced in 1884 a celebrated theorem on the conservation of energy for the electromagnetic field, other scientists quickly attempted to extend conservation laws to mass plus energy. Indeed, in 1900 the ubiquitous Henri Poincaré stated that if one required that the momentum of any particles present in an electromagnetic field plus the momentum of the field itself be conserved together, then Poynting’s theorem predicted that the field acts as a “fictitious fluid” with mass such that E = mc². Poincaré, however, failed to connect E with the mass of any real body.” (Rothman 2015)

Einstein's first version published on Nov. 25, 1915 (later refined to E=mc². From Green 2015, quoted in Isaacson 2015.

Albert Einstein finally cleared up the loose ends in 1915. "He produced in time for his final lecture on November 25 (1915) - entitled "The Field Equations for Gravitation" - a set of covariant equations that described the general theory of relativity. It was not nearly as vivid to the layperson as, say, E=mc². Yet using the condensed notations of tensors, in which sprawling mathematical complexities can be compressed into little subscripts, the crux of the final Einstein field equation is complex enough to be emblazoned on T-shirts worn by physics geeks. In one of its many variations , it can be written as: Rµν -1/2gµνR= -8 πGTµν. The left side of the equation - which is now known as the Einstein tensor and can be written simply as Gµν - describes how the geometry of spac time is warped and curved by massive objects. The right side describes the movement of matter in the gravitational field. The interplay between the two sides shows how objects curve spacetime and how, in turn, this curvature affects the motion of objects."(Greene 2015:43).” (Isaacson 2015)

Petroglyphs in the Purgatory Canyon (Picketwire), Bent County, Colorado, that some people believe resemble Archaic Northern African scripts, perhaps predating Einstein's famous equation. Photograph Peter Faris, June 1991.

A group of researchers have spent years investigating abstract inscriptions pecked into the rocks of southeast Colorado, particularly focusing on ones that appear to be lines of script that some of them liken to various northern Arabian scripts such as proto-Phoenician and others even earlier. Now, we all know that the ancient inhabitants of Arabia were quite sophisticated in mathematics. In the centuries before Christ inhabitants of the Fertile Crescent invented many of the mathematical techniques still used today.

Close-up of petroglyphs in the Purgatory Canyon (Picketwire), Bent County, Colorado. Photograph Peter Faris, June 1991. These had been enhanced on the cliff at least 40 years ago.

This brings me to the particular inscription from the Picketwire Canyonlands illustrated above. If this could be proven to be a variant of one of the northern Arabian scripts, when compared to Einstein’s formula it seems to show an uncanny resemblance. Could this be the work of an Archaic mathematical genius in southeastern Colorado? You be the judge on this First of April.

NOTE: I added the equivalency symbol (=) in the last illustration to help clarify the concept for April 1. These petroglyphs had been highlighted with aluminum paint by persons unknown some time back in the 1980s I believe (I am pretty sure I do know who but they have never admitted to anything). There had been a short fashion of highlighting petroglyphs with aluminum powder mixed with water that some students of rock art flirted with before they realized that it would change the chemistry of the patina. They believed that the next rain would wash everything away doing no damage. In my opinion someone new to the field misinterpreted that to mean aluminum paint.

REFERENCE:

Isaacson, Walter, 2015, How Einstein Reinvented Reality, September 2015, Scientific American, Volume 313, No. 3, pp. 38-45.

Rothman, Tony, 2015, Was Einstein the First to Invent E=mc²?, 18 August 2015, Scientific American, Volume 313, No. 3.

SECONDARY REFERENCE:

Greene, Brian, 2015, Einstein: Why He Matters, Scientific American, Volume 313, No. 3, Sept. 2015, pages 34 - 37,