1,000-2000 BC Motif from a shelter cave in the Devil's River drainage of Texas
Arrow Head Springs Santa Barbara California Chumash Native American
Rock art of North America, which consists of pictographs constructed from circles,
spirals and lines, also seems to have its origins in dreams, and a significance in carrying
messages about origins and group identity across generations. Reaching from the Arctic
Circle to Tierra del Fuego there is tremendous variety in all aspects of indigenous art
from prehistory to the arrival of Europeans, differing region by region, era by era, and
often tribe by tribe. There are representations of flora and fauna, men and gods, earth
and sky; symbols of clan and tribe, religion and magic; formal designs from the primal to
the highly intricate. They appear in examples of basketry, weaving, pottery, sculpture,
painting, lapidary work, masks, drum-heads, weapons, apparel, beadwork, goldwork,
blankets, ponchos, and may other forms.
In the cave art of the European Palaeaolithic we may contemplate on the existence of
the bovine quality in art which is 35,000 years old, and may conclude that since then
there has really been no fundamental development in our imaginative and technical
abilities to represent natural forms that are close to us practically, emotionally, and
spiritually. Sometimes the whole body of an animal is contained in the shape of the rock.
It was the rock that revealed its animal 'spirit'.
Their common mental ground is specific material features, such as cracks and smooth,
rounded surfaces, which are used to enhance animal features in the mind of the artist.
Most of the paintings consist of collections of symbols arranged haphazardly on the
surface indicating that they were contributed at different times by several individuals.
Occasionally they occur as if welded by one person into an overall composition. For
example, the Chumash, who once inhabited the coast of southern California from Malibu
to Morrow Bay, created painted compositions in which dozens of interrelated shapes
were confined within a limited space. At Arrow Head Springs two rounded boulders with
painted panels mark a Chumash sacred site on a steep slope overlooking Santa
Barbara and the Channel Islands.
Although the animal forms of Palaeolithic art have a high aesthetic profile, they are
usually found together with abstract shapes, such as circles, spirals, and grids. These
shapes emerge in the trances of modern spiritualists, and people with certain sight
defects, where they are generated from particular regions of the brain. These findings
have led to the belief that the rock faces played a spiritual role in the social life of
prehistoric peoples. Beyond the rock face was their spirit world; the rock wall is a
spiritual place where shamans sought power in a personal interaction at an important
boundary between the living and material worlds. Trances have a practical purpose-
healing people who are sick. In other words, in making art against stone, a spiritual
healer was trying to understand what the brain makes us feel.
