ManySheep

SandIsland3915click to enlarge

One of the things you notice about petroglyphs after you see a few of them is their sameness. This is not a bad thing, but there seems to have been an accepted way for their artists to portray the subject matter regardless of the geographical location. That has always seemed odd to me. Did they have an art school where young stone drawing artists were sent to learn the proper way to draw Bighorn Sheep and then returned home to their tribe to chronicle the information in the proscribed way ? The subjects are all approximately the same physical size on the rock, you never see close-ups of a Bighorn sheep’s head for instance or any variation for that matter, yet these images may be several hundred miles apart, a really significant distance when you consider they walked everywhere and a ten mile jaunt would be huge distance to travel for the average inhabitant to make unless they were relocating. It might be the origin of a guild system where the resident artist took a young apprentice under their tutelage and soundly drilled the basics into them so there wouldn’t be any variation and the information from the image would then be available to anyone seeing it. None of this three-legged sheep with one horn business to confuse the viewer. But even if this happened why didn’t different schools of art develop. That would be a natural condition. One guy who drew the legs a little longer than his teacher so that eventually you would have the long legged Bighorn school of art group and then a form of regional art, but this never seemed to have happened. I know that in Japan the art of Ukiyo-e or wood block printing was taught in this way, a guild system, and the young students were shown the proper way to draw just one line that would be the start of a face or hand, no deviation, do it exactly as shown or you ran the risk of getting your rice bowl broken and you heaved out into the street. Unfortunately I don’t have the answers but I think it’s high time we perfected this time travel thing so that we could go back and get some of these mysteries solved. Deep thoughts, I know, and its a Monday too. In the meantime, questions or not, I can enjoy the beauty of these ancient images for what they are, and share them with you.