Posted on 11/16/2014 9:42:34 AM PST by SunkenCiv
Dozens of rock art sites in southern New Mexico, recently documented for the first time, are revealing unexpected botanical clues that archaeologists say may help unlock the meaning of the ancient abstract paintings.
Over a swath of the Chihuahuan Desert stretching from Carlsbad to Las Cruces, at least 24 rock art panels have been found bearing the same distinctive pictographs: repeated series of triangles painted in combinations of red, yellow, and black.
And at each of these sites, archaeologists have noticed similarities not just on the rock, but in the ground.
Hallucinogenic plants were found growing beneath the triangle designs, including a particularly potent species of wild tobacco and the potentially deadly psychedelic known as datura.
Researchers believe that the plants may be a kind of living artifact, left there nearly a thousand years ago by shamans who smoked the leaves of the plants in preparation for their painting...
The region that Loendorf and his colleagues have been exploring was once home to the Jornada Mogollon, a culture of foraging farmers similar to the early Ancestral Puebloans, who occupied the territory from about the 5th to the 15th centuries.
Among the marks the Jornadans left on the land were sophisticated and colorful pictographs, ranging from recognizable plant, animal, and human forms to more abstract patterns.
They also crafted painted pottery in signature styles of red, brown, and black, known today as El Paso phase ceramics, which vary by era and design...
The triangle motifs first showed up at about 20 sites that the team surveyed at Fort Bliss, Loendorf said.
But it was during their second survey — of the lands around Carlsbad — that they noticed tobacco and datura growing under similar pictographs found there.
(Excerpt) Read more at westerndigs.org ...
In other words... You don’t understand the cave paintings until you’re stoned on whatever the painter was stoned on.
Makes sense.
Van Gogh was prescribed digitalis for his epilepsy and he was addicted to absinthe.
whatever happened to poster art....
Then the Toltec cartel started moving in.
Are any of them spinning around shouting “Warning! Danger!”
>
WHOAAA!!! Dude, check it out!!!
;’)
I just visited Chaco over Labor weekend and saw a bunch of petroglyphs. It really is an amazing place, but the one thing I just keep thinking is, why would they build “here”? There is no water, very few trees, nothing...Maybe it was the Jimson seeds...
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