Cave paintings
Proto Japanese Shipwrights in Rabbit Eye Cove
He knew he probably would not be able to fall asleep. Cam was tired but not able to doze off – he could blame it on the mules snuffling in the dark,
nudging one another in the loose ramuda too close to camp. It wasn’t the mules; ever since his childhood, the young man could not sleep in the field.
The weather was good and he was lying atop his sleeping bag staring up at the stars and listening to the mesquite crackling and sparking in the dieing
cook fire. No meditation technique or mind tricks would work so he just resigned himself to relaxing his body if not his mind until first light when
they would all get up and move around, when Fernando and Chuy would pack the whole thing back to the ranch and he would fly out on the chopper.
In the last year he had spent 21 days in the San Franciscos shooting the famous cave paintings for the enhancement process; a part of a large body of
work to determine the paintings age, their meanings, who painted them. It was a challenge – the painters came to this part of Baja California to make
uncountable drawings and paintings over thousands of years. Twenty one days against an army of artists over 7,000 years is really something one would
never care to measure. Cam had the tools but they had time on their side.
In less than an hour he would hear the whop, whop, whop of the bird coming in with his assistant Mike Collins, Juan Perez of the Mexican Natural
History department in La Paz, Cappy Trent, the pilot. Three days ago he was in La Paz with Juan at the INAH office and wondered, throughout the
meetings, when, if ever, Mexico would make the proper investments in their treasure trove of antiquities like the cave paintings of Baja Sur. It was
painfully obvious that Juan and others were not prepared to study the many sites – they were barely able to help protect them from vandals and
looters. Many of the sites were accessible only by pack mule and INAH and others at least had the foresight to make pacts with the local ranchers to
conduct guided eco trips into the mountains and thus keep the sites inspected and secure.
Cam’s work product, if he was lucky, would add to the evidence at hand about the origin of the painters, about the figures etched and painted on the
stone and those reports would be in protected files in Mexico’s antiquities divisions. Kodak’s enhancement techniques ran the gamut from simple Corel
Draw for some of the etchings to DStretch, Biro and seven or eight new ones that Cam would have to consult the lab techs on. He just spent two days
shooting all the lights and angles with digital and SLR equipment and would be flying back to L.A. with hundreds of shots to enhance, age, catalogue
and study for meaning, symbolism, composition, artist group and more.
But first a quick but necessary day trip in the chopper down the canyons, across the flats to Laguna Ojo de Liebre. The object was to find water holes
along the route, look for signs of occupation along the shores of the lagoon – Cam was hoping to find lots of whalebone. If his shore hopping theory
was to hold, there would be whalebone there to use for shelter and parts for their skin boats. Here he was, in a vast desert wasteland, looking for
evidence of work by whaleboat shipwrights. In his wildest dreams he would be flying back to La Paz with evidence of a whalebone with a hole in it; not
just a worm hole but a man-made hole fashioned thousands of years ago to accommodate a lashing thong or peg. Boatmen need repair parts and new parts
for newly fashioned animal skin boats. Where better to find walrus and whale and sharks, seals and sea lions than Laguna Scammons as it would have
been 7,000 years ago.
Cappy let the rotors shut down and they all gathered near the fire for coffee and epañadas. Cam handed each of them google earth map sections of the
route.
Cam said “I sure as hell don’t want to walk down there looking for trails and water but I think if they camped at Guerrero Negro, for the fresh water,
the walk up here would take them two days or a little more, walking about 5 or 6 miles an hour. Since the age of the painting we’ve done so far runs
all the way from 7,500 YBP and about 2,200 years, that means the paintings were done by many groups of travelers over a very long period – they must
have passed the route on, generation after generation. They probably had maps – there would be signs, paths, direction markers of all kinds. The whole
route thing just has to be studied buy I’m not yet ready to spend a lot of Kodak dough on my wild assed theory.
I’m just asking that everybody involved keep an open mind. The boat voyages by a couple of hundred people shore-hopping through the Aleutians would
have afforded the seamen food in the sea and along the shore almost without end, without going hungry one single day – they had shoals of salmon that
must have stretched for miles, they had bear and sea otters, clams and mussels. They had fresh water and few enemies. I’m just saying the people from
what is now Japan had the wherewithal and the opportunity. For those who doubt my theory I want them to answer my big question ‘If the painters walked
down, why did they wait until they got this far down to paint such important icons? Why are there no specimens of figures anything like this all along
the route they would have traveled about 100 miles per generation like the other walkdowns?’
I’m saying these were religious pilgrimages to a unique and far off place where they traveled and painted and worshiped on perhaps hundreds of voyages
over five millennia. One thing is for sure, the Californios were walkdowns and came much too late to even add to the cave figures. The painters were
religious tourists. Want proof; just look around you and tell me people could survive here, while leaving no evidence they were here, for five
millennia.”
Cappy took the big Bell low and slow down through the canyons but the speed was still too quick for nothing more than a glance at what might have been
animal paths in the canyon bottoms. Cam asked the pilot to do a couple of go arounds and he did get some good shots of greenery that might have been
evidence of seeps or springs. Once down on the flats there was not a speck of green; the Viscaino desert was a vast, flat, ugly unforgiving place. At
Rabbit Eye Cove Cam showed Cappy where to put down and they found a flat, dry place not far from the long shallow inlet.
They could only get permission to visit the reserve in non whale months and this late September day was beginning to heat up. After a little over an
hour Cam gave the signal to Cappy and he called them all in. They each had a piece of whalebone, none with holes, one with a big chunk out of it. Cam
took a tiny sample, photographed them and had them replaced where they had been found.
Juan said “The lancheros in Guerrero Negro used to pick up all the whalebones and turtle shells they could find to sell to the tourists in the shops
in town. They made them stop but that’s why there are so few even way out here at the end of the lagoon.”
Cam added “Maybe you can help me with the authorities and we can arrange a proper dig out here – need about a dozen people for two weeks. Tell them it
would be very controlled. I think it’s worth a shot. INAH could run the dig, Kodak and others could help. Think what that would mean if we found
worked boat parts aged out at 5 or 6 millennia YBP. I can’t remember when whale season is but I don’t think we could camp out here in the summer.
Better we stay in town.”
All in all, an average day for science – no Eureka moments but some real live sniffing around the edges of what is possible one tiny step at a time.
Cam snapped on his seat belt, yawned and was asleep before the pilot turned to follow Highway one a little ways back toward La Paz.
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