The stick figures of the type found for Gemini in the second image have been adapted by the ancient rock artist to the entire sky portrayal of the starry night of stars.
We are particularly pleased that the enabling source for this decipherment (where we first saw this particular rock art) was the blog of attorney John J. Ensminger at the Dog Law Reporter, Reflections on the Society of Dogs and Men, in Berkeley Anthropological Records and the Dogs of the West Coast Tribes, Thursday, April 12, 2012.
We must note that we do not know John Ensminger personally and he may not agree with our interpretation. Ensminger is right for sure that dogs, especially in their importance to hunting, were viewed as very important by the ancients, and hunting rituals may have found their way into descriptions of the stars. See the material at our previous posting for more about that.
The first image below is our decipherment of a drawing titled "Rock Painting, Thompson River Indians, B.C." in James A. Teit, A Rock Painting of the Thompson River Indians, British Columbia, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History [AMNH], 1896, Volume 8, Article 12, pp. 227-230, edited from notes of the collector by Franz Boas, abbr. Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist. The drawing is reproduced at Ensminger's blog.
The article is provided in full at AMNH, Department of Library Services,
American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West at 79th St., New York, NY 10024, USA. © American Museum of Natural History, 2011. The decipherment below is thus necessarily - to avoid copyright issues - our own complete and independent redrawing and subsequent re-interpretation of the original drawing, showing that the published interpretation given in Teit's article by Waxtko, an old woman living at Spence's Bridge, is to be relegated fully to the realm of the folk tales. Please consult the cited sources for the originals.
Skaitok Boulder, Spence's Bridge, British Columbia, Canada
Rock Art Deciphered as Astronomy, a Sky Map of the Stars via Figures
Image 1 of this Posting
(click on the graphic to see the image in larger size)
The above image shows virtually the same stars as the image below, with strong similarities in the basic system and in terms of some specific details.
Utah St. George Ivins Anasazi Ancestral Pueblo Rock Art
A Sky Map from Serpens Cauda to Aquila ca. 1000 B.C.
at the Emergence of the Early Basketmaker Era II
i.e. one circuit of the stars of the heavens
Image 2 of this Posting (the comparison image)
Image 2 of this Posting (the comparison image)
(click on the graphic to see the image in larger size)
THIS POSTING IS Posting Number 132 of
The Great Mound, Petroglyph and Painted Rock Art Journey of Native America
From John J. Ensminger's Dog Law Reporter to the Skaitok Boulder, Spence's Bridge, British Columbia: Rock Art as a Sky Map of the Stars Similar to Pictographs of the Anasazi in Utah
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