 |
| IT WAS
ALMOST 1,000 FEET STRAIGHT down into the canyon. I glanced over the side of my
mule and blanched, constrictions in my throat. Leaning far back in my saddle I
grabbed the horn and pleaded with my mule, "Easy, boy, easy." Lurching and
slipping along a 45-degree trail I knew my fate was in his hands. Grabbing
violently for support and pitching sickeningly forward, I hung on for dear
life. We stumbled and slid the last ten feet, coming to rest, upright, in a
river bed. Such was my introduction to mule riding on a rugged trip into the
remote mountains of the Sierra de San Francisco in central Baja, Mexico. The purpose of our small expedition was to study and photograph the mysterious cave paintings found on the walls of isolated caves in the mountains of this region. These rock murals were first "discovered" by Jesuit missionaries in the 18th century, but even the local Indians had no knowledge of their origin. One myth says they were painted by "giant people" who came from the north. This might be explained by the fact that many of the murals were painted on rock faces from 10 to 30 feet above the ground. |
Anthropologists conclude that scaffolding was used to achieve these
results, but accurate dating as to the age of these beautiful murals is hard to
come by. It has proved difficult, if not impossible, to establish a definite dating of the cave paintings since local Indian mythology tells little. A wooden peg found in one site, obviously man-made, was carbon dated and proved to be over 500 years old. A most fascinating hypothesis was established by Harry Crosby and described in his excellent book The Cave Paintings of Baja California. In 1971 Crosby noticed a rather small painting on the roof of a slit cave in the Arroyo del Parral in the Sierra de San Francisco mountain ranges. The painting, in Crosby's words, "showed a circle with rays like a conventional sun symbol, quite close to a larger moon-like object." Crosby first assumed that the painting represented the sun and moon, or some other celestial objects. Later, however, Crosby became impressed with the work of a group of distinguished astronomers who had calculated that on July 5, 1054, there was a spectacular visual conjunction of a brilliant supernova |
(the
Crab Nebula) and the crescent moon. Other cave paintings found in Arizona
seemed to have similarly depicted this extraordinary astronomical occurrence.
Even Chinese of the Sung Dynasty recorded the event, and it is now generally
accepted by astronomers that what they saw was the birth of the Crab Nebula in
a giant supernova explosion' It is not too difficult to reason that what the
cave painter recorded in that remote cave in Baja may well have been the same
event - dating the painter's work as far back as 1,000 years. Our expedition assembled in Los Angeles and commenced south, traveling by van to the border crossing at Tijuana. Once south of this urban blight, the countryside turned pleasant. The road was good and verdant: fields of tomatoes, cauliflower's, cabbages and vineyards pleased and eased the eye from the bright sun. Only the Mexican propensity for abandoning worn-out cars scarred the view. Further south, and a day later, the country turned to the remarkable Vizcaino desert; ocotillos, cordons, boojum trees (cirios), prickly poppies and yellow daisies crowded the land and dazzled the eye. It has often been |
| 126 | THE EXPLORERS JOURNAL |