Pictures Taken By you...

[North Star]

From a series I photographed a year ago:

[Pompey Bum]

Gorgeous, North. I keep dry flowers, too, although my wife tells me they are haunted and usually throws them out after some time. Great pictures, though.

Here's a petroglyph from another site (this one in New Mexico). I have many other (and much better) pictures from the site, but for some reason this is the only one that wants to upload. The petroglyph area was on a stony hill, about a quarter of a mile from the probable residential area. The hill may have been a sacred place to see visions and spirits and to capture them on the stones (but again, who knows?). Too bad I can't show you the others, but hey, best to let the spirits have it their way.

Attachment 9571

EDIT: Oh well, that looks even worse here than in the original. Here are a couple more from the first site:

Some images that may show South American influence:

Attachment 9572

And a weird image that may represent a "far north" depiction of Tlaloc, the Aztec rain god. It is on the ceiling of a low cave, just over a natural stone table. You have to wonder what exactly folks were doing to the poor guy who was lying on table in ancient times, staring up into the rain god's face. It's not a PC thing to talk about, but there is some evidence in some of the surrounding places for some fairly nasty practices.

Attachment 9573

Petroglyph, I had to look it up! Is that a special interest of yours?

Yes. We Americans tend to ignore our antiquity. That's a mixed blessing because it helps in a way to protect the sites. Many are hardly formally protected at all, but on the other hand most are remote and not very famous. Better in some ways to keep it that way.

By the way, DW, you should go back and check out the two images I added to my post above.

[YesNo]

I liked the second one of the rose (?) the best, North Star.

I remember seeing petroglyphs once in South Mountain Park in Phoenix some years ago, Pompey Bum. I've often wondered how they know these are old and not made recently.

The dead bird was an interesting subject for a photo and it does stand out, Iain Sparrow. I signed in to Photobucket and will see if I can post some photos in the future.

The picture of the Amish child and mother stands out for me because of the contrasting color or the blue seat the mother is sitting on and the color in her face, tonywalt.

[Dreamwoven]

These are amazing, North Star. The last one looks to be in black and white, and the middle one, is it a mushroom?

[Pompey Bum]

I remember seeing petroglyphs once in South Mountain Park in Phoenix some years ago, Pompey Bum. I've often wondered how they know these are old and not made recently.

I'll try not to get too far off subject, YN, but there are various approaches. Paints were organic, so they can be radiocarbon dated. Unpainted petroglyphs can sometimes be dated by from patina materials, aided, in ideal cases, by environmental sampling. In a case that everyone is buzzing about right now, for example, carbonate encrusted on petroglyphs found on the shores of a dried lake in Nevada indicated that the area had been totally submerged after the carvings were made, and then exposed as the lake dried. Core samples from the lake placed that event at between 10,500 and 14,800 years ago. That's a stunningly old date (the European "Iceman" is only 5300 years old) and places the carvings in the Clovis or even pre-Clovis world of the first human settlement of the Americas. Cool that is.

[Iain Sparrow]

That's an oddly beautiful picture, Iain.

Thanks. That site is pretty close to the border, but it is remarkable to find Quetzalcoatl images (if that's what they are) so far north. And yup, Texas gets it share. Out of curiosity, was the book you read The Son by Philipp Meyer?

Thanks! What's really "odd" about it, it's in focus!
I have poor eyesight and refuse to wear glasses or contacts resulting in notoriously bad photographs. A shutterbug I am not. I googled 'The Son', and the book covers some of the same territory and appears to be a fictional account using a real historical backdrop. The book I read on the subject was, Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History. Yes I know, a very pretentious title for a history book!

If you're used to books about indigenous peoples in the New World with a narrative ending in feelings of remorse (as a person of European heritage should rightly feel), a sense of tragedy and guilt for what can plainly be considered genocide... Empire of the Summer Moon, is not going to deliver on such a warm and fuzzy 'feel bad' experience. I usually feel a great deal of sympathy for these Native American Tribes who found themselves in the way of progress (greed, racism, religious zealotry, Manifest Destiny, etc), and witnessed an end to their way of life, and often within three or four generations. No such feelings were forthcoming in Empire of the Summer Moon. I had a muted sense of tragedy and injustice/justice, that just about everyone had it coming either due to mutual brutality, or a shared naiveté. Where brutality and murder failed, disease and starvation picked up the slack. Best I can say about the Comanches, is they were a remarkably savage stone-aged culture that could have given Attila the Hun and his Horse Riders a run for their money. Some of the recounting by survivors, usually those who were kidnapped and subsequently ransomed off, are difficult to read. Pregnant white women being gang raped, young girls being raped then tortured, and finally murdered. Even the other surrounding Plains Indian Tribes feared and despised the Comanches, and often allied themselves with white settlers. On the whole, stuff they wouldn't dare teach in a US History class.
If you're up for an unflinching look at Western Expansion and frontier life on the Great Plains from about 1800-1880, I can highly recommend Empire of the Summer Moon.

[YesNo]

I'll try not to get too far off subject, YN, but there are various approaches. Paints were organic, so they can be radiocarbon dated. Unpainted petroglyphs can sometimes be dated by from patina materials, aided, in ideal cases, by environmental sampling. In a case that everyone is buzzing about right now, for example, carbonate encrusted on petroglyphs found on the shores of a dried lake in Nevada indicated that the area had been totally submerged after the carvings were made, and then exposed as the lake dried. Core samples from the lake placed that event at between 10,500 and 14,800 years ago. That's a stunningly old date (the European "Iceman" is only 5300 years old) and places the carvings in the Clovis or even pre-Clovis world of the first human settlement of the Americas. Cool that is.

Those look like ways to date the markings. Ten thousand years is pretty old. There are caves in France that are older.

Here's a picture of a place I stayed at once north of Green Bay, Wisconsin. I am posting this more to see if I can do it right. What I like about the picture are all the more or less horizontal lines: horizon, edge of the grass, shadows from trees and then the curvy stone path leading to the stairs and the shore.

[Pompey Bum]

Those look like ways to date the markings. Ten thousand years is pretty old. There are caves in France that are older.

Sure, European antiquity is much older than American antiquity. But most Americans seem to think that we don't have an antiquity, when we do, and a very widespread one. There is a Clovis site a few miles from where I am writing this (in Massachusetts). I doubt most folks even have a clue.

[Pompey Bum]

I googled 'The Son', and the book covers some of the same territory and appears to be a fictional account using a real historical backdrop. The book I read on the subject was, Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History. Yes I know, a very pretentious title for a history book!

Publishers give often elaborate secondary titles to popular history books. I think it's to grab prospective buyers by explaining a little more about the subject. Not everyone's going to look on the back. But Empire of the Sun has a great reputation. It was a Pulitzer Prize nominee, which still means something. I own a copy, but I haven't read it yet.

If you're used to books about indigenous peoples in the New World with a narrative ending in feelings of remorse (as a person of European heritage should rightly feel), a sense of tragedy and guilt for what can plainly be considered genocide... Empire of the Summer Moon, is not going to deliver on such a warm and fuzzy 'feel bad' experience. I usually feel a great deal of sympathy for these Native American Tribes who found themselves in the way of progress (greed, racism, religious zealotry, Manifest Destiny, etc), and witnessed an end to their way of life, and often within three or four generations. No such feelings were forthcoming in Empire of the Summer Moon. I had a muted sense of tragedy and injustice/justice, that just about everyone had it coming either due to mutual brutality, or a shared naiveté. Where brutality and murder failed, disease and starvation picked up the slack. Best I can say about the Comanches, is they were a remarkably savage stone-aged culture that could have given Attila the Hun and his Horse Riders a run for their money. Some of the recounting by survivors, usually those who were kidnapped and subsequently ransomed off, are difficult to read. Pregnant white women being gang raped, young girls being raped then tortured, and finally murdered. Even the other surrounding Plains Indian Tribes feared and despised the Comanches, and often allied themselves with white settlers. On the whole, stuff they wouldn't dare teach in a US History class.

Unfortunately too true! Somehow the descendants of the folks who displaced and contributed to the deaths of most of the indigenous people of North America need to suckle this myth about gentle victims who never wasted anything they killed. The last bit always cracks me up. I mean, some of the peoples thought wasting food was wrong, but some thought it was really rude to take everything from a kill. Some made a point of leaving some of the meat to rot because they wanted to show the gods that they weren't greedy. And the Paleoindians used to stampede bison off cliffs, go butcher the ones at the top of the heap, and never touch the ones squished underneath them.

And yes, the Comanche are notorious for things that seem very cruel to us today--torture, rape, and slavery among them. They were hardly the gentle victims the commissars of political correctness wants us to buy. Of course they were victims, just not very useful ones to them.

If you're up for an unflinching look at Western Expansion and frontier life on the Great Plains from about 1800-1880, I can highly recommend Empire of the Summer Moon.

Thanks. It's definitely on my list. My wife and I are looking for a property in the American West, and I've sort of been planning to read it (along with a few others) once we get there. I bet you would like The Son, by the way. The Comanche start out like something from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and end up being humanized without being sanitized. They were free, that is what Meyer seems to want to say about them. Of everyone in the narrative (which goes to the present time), only they were free. But it can be a jarring time getting there. Personally I wasn't overly bothered when the smallpox descended. Maybe that's a flaw in me, but I wasn't.

[Dreamwoven]

The book that changed my perception of how the west was won (or how the east was lost) was Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. I will try to borrow the Empire of the Summer Moon. Thanks for the tip.

[North Star]

[YesNo]

I have to admit that's a weird looking tree. The mushrooms don't make it look too healthy.

[Pompey Bum]

Interesting picture, North. Are you photographing up into a canopy or down at reflections in water? The ambiguity is a little unsettling.

[North Star]

I have to admit that's a weird looking tree. The mushrooms don't make it look too healthy.

And it's aligned horizontally, unlike most trees that pass their medical.

Interesting picture, North. Are you photographing up into a canopy or down at reflections in water? The ambiguity is a little unsettling.

Reflections on water - I can't see how that shadow and those (reflected) trees could otherwise be there.

[Pompey Bum]

That's what I thought, but the pale water gives it a sort of "dismal sky" effect. It's a haunting picture. You expect dark water spirits to rise from the center.