Friday, November 28, 2014

Kumeyaay-Tipai Unique Rock Art Element - A Yellow Fish [?]. A Desert Centipede[?] San Diego Rock Art. Kumeyaay Rock Art. Tipai Rock Art.

As a group of El Centro BLM site stewards and SDRAA members continue to walk the deserts and mountains of East San Diego and Imperial Counties, we continue to be amazed by the diversity of Tipay/Kumeyaay rock art that we are finding.  While this panel was discovered many years ago while on a simple walk, it has not been seen since and is unregistered.  No photographs of this panel existed until a few days ago.  This flash photograph belies the darkness of the shelter.  You have to crawl in on your back and then try to sit up to see the yellow art.  The space is very tight, making focusing a problem.  The original discoverer called this picture a "Yellow Fish" and it's hard to argue with what appear to be rib bones.  The round head is not compatible, so we are left with yet one more mystery that literal interpretations of La Rumorosa style rock art are fraught with limitations.  I had one Tipai friend look at the photograph below and he responded immediately - its a desert centipede!  Thanks, Frank, I had completely forgotten they existed.  Frank is more in touch with the land, obviously.
 
 Most art panels probably have spiritual meanings which were known to the artist and, perhaps, to their contemporaries.  It is not known outside of Tipai culture if anyone alive today understands the meaning of these paintings.  From what little we do know,  the artist was having a spiritual connection during or before executing the painting, something we can all aspire to.  Perhaps it is this sacredness that we all seek - to live in harmony with the spiritual world.  From what Tipai friends have told me, at least in the past, there was the unifying principle of the world, that all things possessed a spiritual nature.  In other words, all things were sacred. 
 
This principle of animism has been discussed by many investigators in the literature including Polly Schaafsma  [AIRA Volume 21 #3] and, more recently, by Doug Peacock.  According to Peacock, in his recent text, In the Shadow of the Sabertooth,  our dichotomy of a spiritual and physical world has allowed the Europeans/White Americas to propagate all kinds of rapacious behavior.  As whites, we have mostly tried to dominate the world and it's peoples and change everything to be compatible with our world vision.  We did not live in acceptance and harmony with nature.  Rarely, does the power structure of mankind behave or act on spiritual principles.  Clearly this strategy has had it's temporal advantages. 
 
We Westerners have been in the Americas for 500 years.  The Native Americans lived alongside nature for closer to 15,000 years [accepting a pre-Clovis culture].  We had/have lessons to learn from these people, but we did not listen.  Now, many scientists believe it is too late to stop the inevitable  climate cycle change that has already been set in play.  It has happened many times before, in just blinks of past geologic time.  It opened and closed the door to the Americas only thousands of years ago.  If it is too late, maybe next time, the survivors will get it right?
 
Photograph copyright Don Liponi 2014 - see you on the trail.  Click on photograph to enlarge.

 
 
 
 

Monday, November 10, 2014

Tipai-Kumeyaay Rock Art Site - A Little Known Baja, California Site Along the Road to Mexicali, East of La Rumorosa.


As I had done many times before, I was driving down the long grade of Quota Road 2 in Baja California.   This time my friend finally convinced me to stop and look.  There are many reasons not to stop:  It is a short steep climb;  There is graffiti visible on the rocks, though most of it is not on the pictographs;  Once you start driving down the grade, there is no turning back towards the direction of Tecate for many miles;  You must pass through two military check points as part of the drive.  Beyond these usual reasons not to stop, today it was getting dark - we would have to use flash and we couldn't see what we shooting at.  Finally, there was no time to preview the area using D stretch to find pictographs.   If we did this we would be climbing down the boulders in the dark.  While struggling up the trail I though of one more reason: there probably wasn't anything good up there anyway. 
 
Big thanks to hiking partner and fellow SDRAA member Rick Colman, because he made me go up the ravine anyway.  Now that I have recovered I am so glad that I went.  Here are a few images of the well defined anthropomorphs and some other unusual designs amidst perhaps one hundred morteros and basins.  Even today the area is abundant in Mesquite trees.  Many of the overhangs are rich in soot.  The yellow "flying" man or shaman shown below was barely visible under a thick layer of soot and located within a few feet of the highly mortared rock, also shown below.  While the point of this trip had been to visit another area, this site turned out to be the jewel of the trip. 
 
Rather than make up excuses not to do this hike, we are now anxious to return in the daylight and see all that we were bound to have missed.  If you are looking for opportunities to expand your interest in rock art, consider joining the San Diego Rock Art Association.  Our meetings, service opportunities, field trips and networking will help you.  Please see our link on the first page of this Blog. 
 
All photographs are copyright Don Liponi, 2014.  Click on photo to enlarge or to watch as slide show.  Dstretch courtesy of Jon Harman.
 
See you on the trail!