Visit to the Petroglyphs site

Yesterday we spent several hours at the Jeffers site located just to the west of Comfrey, Minnesota. The Interpretive Staff were working with a busload of children from the Dawson/Boyd school district. We walked the two mile trail that goes through the tall grass prairie and up to quartzire ridge where the primary glyphs are located. It was nearing mid day so the rock drawings are not as evident as in the shadowy time of early morning and near sunset time. The glyphs pictures here were in the same shape as when the pictures were taken in 1996.

The Staff shared information new to me. Apparently some Native Elders are quite concerned that the glyphs and their designs not be used for commercial purposes. The offense is in that the glyphs have spiritual meaning for Native peoples and so the site is to be respected in the same way as a church, synagogue or mosque. Although I am not using them here in a commercial manner, some people may have question about their use in this web log. Here is my rationale.

In my study of world religions, the art and productions of those religions are common knowledge and are used to understand religious history and practice more fully.It is my observation that buildings and artistic creations are in the public realm and are open for observation, study and reflection. Hence, pictures are included on this site. Persons who may be offended need to be in touch with me.

More petroglyph photos added

After several months of inactivity, attention is returning to the Jeffers site in that a visit will be paid there later in the week. Additional information will be gathered and will eventually be reflected here.

One of the new pictures shows a surrounding field as it appeared in 1996. This is the year when the glyph photos were taken. Since the pictures were taken additional work has been done on the natural prairie area surrounding the site.

We will be giving special attention to the names of people who have lived on that acreage since it first came into ownership by white settlers. If anyone has more information on this, please send it to Delton.

Stonehenge and Jeffers Petroglyphs

The June 2008 edition of The National Geographic features its cover page article entitled "It the Stones Could Speak: Searching for the Meaning of Stonehenge" pages 34-59. The writer is Caroline Alexander and the Photographer is Ken Geiger.

Estimating the time of the creation of Stonehenge to be about 4,500 years ago makes it a near contemporary with the Petroglyph's at Jeffers. The same question cluster about each site. What did the creators have in mind? As the article says "we know little about who these early Britons were, how they were organized, or what language they spoke." More is known in England than in Minnesota about the possible creators because of bones and some artifacts. The various stages of construction at Stonehenge are described in the article. Unearthing Neolithic villages, especially at Durrington Walls, reveals a bit of the life style. The importance of summer and winter solstice observances is understood by the style of the standing stones of Stonehenge.

I read the article with a poignant sense of regret that we know so little of the creators of the Petroglyph's. There are no grand myths of dramatic events out here on the prairie. At this stage we have not learned enough from the geographic setting to project the movement of people following the retreat of the glaciers. To this point, our imaginations are not yet engaged with this challenge - this reaching into the crevices of the mind to mark out the traces of ancient times that continue to be shaped in us by the geography, the weather, the skies above.

Petroglyphs and Security

The computer and software industry is increasingly turning its attention to security issues. Michael Chertoff, Homeland Security Secretary, recently said that "The potential consequences of a cyber attack are very real and every bit as concerning as the potential of a physical attack on the order of what we saw on September 11". Redmond Developer May 1, 2008

Awareness of this reality has called my mind to the security issues that were faced by those artisans who did the petroglyph's thousands of year ago. Animals, infections, weather, climate, stupity, and angry people would seem have been among the real threats. Strange as it may seem, apparently there was no threat to the messages they were inscribing on the rock. Even more remarkable is the obvious conclusion that over thousands of years no one has gone to the trouble of destroying the rock surface. Either it was just too much work or the point of doing the destruction was not in vogue.

Today business ventures, governments, media, religions, the military and the arts depend on electronic communication using the silicon in computer chips. The silicon has been mined from the earth surface and formed into machines that work using electricity to manipulate numbers and symbols in order to transmit meaning. Rock has been fabricated to enable meaning to fly through space. In earlier times the earth bound rock could not be poached or stolen by enemies so the messages were quite secure.

I believe this fact of life makes it all the more urgent to translate the meaning of petroglyph symbols. We may urgently need ideas that our ancestors had discovered and carved into the quartzite rock for the benefit of coming generations.

Weather 5000 Years Ago

The Middle Holocene Period was 5000 to 7000 years in the past. Studies are being done to determine what was happening to global weather at that time. In the US Dr. David Leigh of the University of Georgia is quoted in the March 26, 1999 edition of Science Daily saying that some data leads to the conclusion that the in the the US a region from the Southwest through the Dakotas was likely warm and wet. Much of what is now called Canada was yet covered with an ice sheet in this period. We are beginning to see something of the the circumstances that produced weather in the region of the Jeffers Petroglyph's.

Bryan Fagan in "The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations" (Bloomsbury Press 2008) says that the oceans actually are the weather makers for the earth. Currents that move warm and cool water about produce events such as El Ninos or La Ninas. 800 to 1300 AD was the Medieval Warm Period. That era is recent in time. Civilizations in the Pacific, South America, China, Africa, India, and the Arctic illustrate the dynamic powers of the weather to provide for creation and demise of civilizations.

The principles developed in Dr. Leigh's work can be used to consider possibilities for earlier times. Civilizations grew and waned in rhythm with weather that produced people friendly circumstances and also brought droughts that banished people from regions.

Mid continent North America is insulated from the sea by thousands of miles of land but the weather knows no such boundaries. What is learned about the US Southwest can very likely begin to fill in the blanks as regards weather in mid continent. Ocean currents may well help us to understand better the people who developed the Petroglyphs.

Glyphs and Public Diplomacy

Among the possible intentions for creating glyphs may have been group identity issues at stake. Sending a message about "us" and "our way of life" in a certain geographic region must have been a challenging task 5000 years ago.

Today that process of sending messages about "us" is known as Public Diplomacy. The term came into use during the Cold War when the US government unveiled the Edward R. Murrow Center for Public Diplomacy in 1965. International information programs were being developed and it was deemed necessary to move beyond "propaganda".

Public Diplomacy intends to shape the minds of people who observe "us" so that they will be cooperative as we seek out goals in the world. The words Public Diplomacy have an official ring to them. Nicholas Cull of the Annenberg School of International Relations at the U of Southern California spells out the history of Public Diplomacy in the March 2008 issue of The Annals. The task of Public Diplomacy is to create and disseminate ideas that can be spread from person to person in a social network using available technology.

I am suggesting that the Jeffer's Petroglyphs were Public Diplomacy of the time. Available technology was being used by skilled craftspeople to send messages that carried meaning important to the people of the time and beyond. We today are in the position of stretching our mental capacity to grasp what is being made available on the quartzite rocks. Do the messages have anything at all to do with the present human situation? Are ecological issues being addressed? Is management of violence a subject matter? What can artists discover that will enhance the arts of today? What can religions learn that will enhance the spiritual global community? My guess is that glyphs are more than interesting artifacts. Rather, they can open us to needed information from previous human experience.

Jacinth

The role of stones in religious observance is illustrated by the place of Jacinth (Hyacinth) in Hindu, Judaism, Christian and Magik practice. Jacinth has been prized since antiquity due to its brilliance and variations of color. Apparently used in armor and weaponry as well personal attire, the stone is noted in Hindu writings as well as in the Bible (Exodus and Revelation) and various astrological and horoscope related writings.

Jacinth is a golden or brown form of natural Zircon. ZrSi04 It is a mixture of Silicon and Zirconium. It is most commonly found in Srilanka, Thailand, Norway, Brazil, Australia, Russia, China, India, and the US.

The role of stones in ancient religions gives support to the notion that Petrolyph's served as a form of religious expression along with their other cultural functions. Artistic use of the colors and relative permanence of stone artifacts speaks of the working of the human mind in giving pleasure and meaning to existence.

Little Cottonwood River Virtual Tour

The landscape in which the Jeffers Petroglyphs are located can be understood best by actually visiting the site. The next best method is a virtual tour.

Go to http://mrbdc.mnsu.edu/major/midminn/subshed/lcotwd/lc_2.html

The viewer will discover a comprehensive picture of the site and the surrounding territory in terms of the drainage basin of the Little Cottonwood River which flows into the Minnesota River, then to the Mississippi River and ultimately the ocean.

A True Home Run

Baseball immediately comes to mind when the words "Home Run" appear. However, there is no such thing as a "true" home run in the game. Either it is a home run or it is not a home run.

This "true home run" set of words was called to my attention as our DSL line was being repaired recently. After considerable detective work by several technicians it was discovered that we did not have a true home run. In other words, the wires connecting the outside world with our computer equipment were compromised. When the wires were consistently in order they became a "true home run."
Those wires enable the writing of these words.

This process helps me in understanding the place of petroglyph's and our efforts to decipher what is being said. At the moment we do not have a "true home run" for transmission of information.

So much is missing and we have no self evident way of completing the connection. The task of both science and religion is to persistently investigate the evidence that we do have and to imagine the evidence that we need to find. I do believe imagination has a place in an otherwise material world process. The mental equipment that humans have is filled with more programs and potential powers than we know. It appears that certain programs of the mind are turned on when situations arise that trigger a switch of some kind.

We are working on establishing a true home run in regard to the Jeffers Petroglyph's.

Blue Lines in the Snow

On an afternoon walk today I observed lines and numbers sprayed on the snow with blue paint. They mark the location of some underground utilities. The temperature is a few degrees above zero so the message is legible for the moment.

When temperatures rise the snow will melt and the blue paint will dissolve and be gone. Hopefully the people who need that diagram will have made use of it by then. We who live in Minnesota are accustomed to snow and ice. However, they are not a normal message transmission medium.

Ten thousand years ago this place was under a glacier according to geologists. When another glacier period comes everything including the Jeffers Petroglyph's will be scoured away and gone.

We live in the brief time when the petroglyph's are legible in what seems like
rather permanent quartzite. Actually the time is brief in the geological time frame.
This is our opportunity to read the messages and absorb the ideas from our ancestors.

Whether we can match their technological skill in preserving our messages for future
observation is yet to be proven. I would like to think that we will do better than blue paint on snow. It will certainly take some creative work.

Getting Beyond the Struggle for Existence

When the world is primitive, daytime struggle to find food and shelter coupled with a nightly struggle with fear leaves little time for leisure, reflective thought or artistic expression. The account of the end of the Roman Empire in Europe tells us that some fourteen hundred years ago, barbarians arrived and their violence led to the Middle Ages when disorder ruled, literature was destroyed, and social systems failed. It took some time for people to recover and again create social order and intellectual endeavor.

When viewing the Jeffers Petroglyphs it is possible to envision a life in which there was enough safety and leisure time to create artistic symbols that would have a continuing presence. A civilization of some kind would seem to be a safe assumption. We can say that the glyphs are set before us as human creations linking civilizations over millenia.

We find a window into society some 5000 years ago in mid continent when we observe these petroglyphs. An observer recently said that in looking at the picture at the upper right corner of this site, she feels as if she is looking at kind of map of the earth. The lichens can be imagined as continents. The turtle glyph can be thought of as representing a land mass. In Native traditions the turtle is of thought of as a symbol of the earth. Perhaps our minds can connect with people across vast reaches of time.

Funeral at Highwater Church Tomorrow

She lived going on the century mark. On a cold and snowy Monday the spouse of a cousin will be remembered at Highwater Church just a few miles from the Jeffers Petroglyphs.

She joins the host of people who have lived all or part of their lives on the quartzite ridge that hosted glaciers not so long ago. A few thousand years is not much in geological time. Going on a hundred years is remarkable for a person with a biological time clock.

Tomorrow the family will gather to give thanks for a life well lived. At a moment in time every person present will be aware of the brief scale to time that we humans inhabit. The religious ritual will offer dignity and comfort to those who live on for now.

My guess is that the near by petroglyphs were partially religious in nature. Perhaps they were part of a ritual that marked the lives of individuals and announced a sense of meaning that escapes the bounds of historical time.

Highwater Church will for an hour or so be inhabited by family and friends who live in time. In that hour of worship they will glimpse the infinite landscape of the universe. The Lord Gives. The Lord Takes. Blessed be the Name of the Lord.

Diving Into Time

The memorable phrase "diving into time" is used by Teillhard de Chardin in his book: The Vision of Time - 1966. He suggests that we can likely learn more from paying attention to time than we can from journeying into space.

I do not know if he is correct about space journey but I do know that we discover amazing new territory through the agents of geology and other scientific methods that enable us to view and analyze the traces of what has been in what is.

There is a remarkable refreshment of the mind in exploring the past. There are new horizons, new climates, and new creatures in the wonderland that comes into view.

In setting out to view the past we unexpectedly discover the future. What can be called a stream of time connects seamlessly the past and the future. In the philosophy presented by Tielhard, the light in which we travel converges toward the future.

Human interest in the future is one explanation for petroglyphs and other artistic creations that we today discover. Orientation toward the future would appear to be a characteristic basic to the human organism. In the words of Teilhard, the ruins, fossils, glyphs whisper to us an essential word regarding construction of the future.

Wild Roses in Full Bloom

On Tuesday, June 21, 1838 an exploration party led by Joseph N Nicollet was a few miles to the north of the Jeffers Petroglyph's site. They were following the Cottonwood River heading toward the Pipestone quarries to the west. The Little Cottonwood River is very close to the petroglyph's site. On this June day thickets of wild roses were in bloom in the region. A southeast wind was blowing with a clear sky and the air was perfumed by the wild roses.

The explorers noted a plateau area toward which they were moving. Looking to the south they would have seen over a valley to another plateau where the petroglyph's could be found. But they were not aware of the site and did not take that route.

As they continued they noted an elevation about 1/3 mile long and 60 feet above the green plain of the prairie and near the river. It was just about 8 years before that Indian people came there to watch herds of buffalo arrive in the area. The place was called "Indian Lookout Mount". It was near present day Lamberton, Minnesota.

Nicollet says that the Cottonwood River at that time was a clear flowing stream with sand bottom. The prairie was undisturbed by cultivation, railroads, roads, communities or any other permanent sign of human presence. Indian people led a nomadic life much in harmony with the natural scene.

I include this information to give evidence of the nature of the Minnesota prairie and the grandeur of the scene greeting Nicollet's team. The information comes from the Journals of Joseph Nicollet translated from the French and edited by Edmund C. Bray and Martha Coleman Bray. This 1976 publication by the Minnesota Historical Society is entitled "Joseph N. Nicollet on the Plains and Prairies: The Expeditions of 1838-39 With Journals, Letters, and Notes on the Dakota Indians."

Personality of glyph artists

One thing we can claim to know about the people who did the Jeffers Petroglyphs is that they had a genetic predisposition toward social domination. The basis for this opinion lies in contemporary studies of neuroendocrine mechanisms.

William Anderson and Cliff Summers of the University of South Dakota present a paper in the November, 2007 issue of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences arguing that stress coping strategies and social dominance are based in neurochemical biological foundations.

All we have to observe are the glyphs themselves at Jeffers and other sites. The fact that glyphs were created tells us that the creators not only were dealing with meaning in life but that they had personality traits enabling them to think wider than the tribe or family. In thinking beyond their own immediate interests they display what would be called "leadership" in any society - ancient or contemporary.

Worthy question include: "Can we claim close kinship with the glyph people? Is it possible that ideas expressed in the glyphs are available to assist us in solving human problems in our time?
Can the array of present world religions be enhanced by ideas from another era that we access only through glyph symbols?"

Petroglyphs on the Prairie

The Red Rock Prairie is near to the Petroglyph site. The tallgrass prairie that once covered vast areas has been reduced drastically with one tenth of one percent of Minnesota's original prairies remaining. The Red Rock ridge prairie area is one the survivors. Outcrops of Sioux Quartzite prevented the land from being plowed and planted to crops.

An endangered species, prairie bush clover, is found at Red Rock Prairie. Prairie bush clover can be identified by its grayish-silver sheen and its pale pink or cream colored flowers that bloom in mid-July. Several other endangered plant species continue to exist and thrive at this prairie.

Restoration of the Red Rock Prairie was completed in 2007. The Nature Conservatory has taken the lead in the restoration process. Further information is on the Nature Conservatory website.

The prairie landscape is of a piece with the petroglyphs in that the the artist creators were influenced by the entire natural scene. Understanding the meaning of the glyphs and their creators involves coming to know and appreciate the ecosystem in which they operated some 5 to 9 thousand years ago. Since no recorded explanations are provided we are putting together the scene and will gradually enter the mindset of the people of the time. The glyphs call us to the task. Fortunately nature provides us with the makings of an unfolding tale.