Mapping out the Life Story of the Raptor maiden on the Perforated Stone of Terceira Island





 

I have not traveled in a long time due to the impact it creates on the planet, yet somehow I find myself on the rim of the caldera over looking the town of Ribeirinha on Terceira Island. I promise I rented a wonderful mountain bike and used it for most personal travel. Most of the rest of my transportation on the island was provided by my wonderful colleague Maria Brito. I hope she had as much fun as I had. 
  On this particular day I was asked to focus my attention on the site with the perforated stone. I was dropped off by Brito for the afternoon to explore the change in the shadows in the stone as the sun set. It was a beautiful day among the cows. 





  Initially, I was thinking that the stone may have been designed to be upright; a portal looking out to the sunset, but I changed my mind quickly after visiting the site. I am in total agreement with Brito that the stone is carved to be set in this position. 


The first form I saw when approaching the perpetrated stone was the form of large hands grasping an egg shape. This is a common characteristic of this layered material. The large hands often start the conversation. They often cradle the main subject. The human hand has many bones and muscles that articulate in a particular manner. If hands are not well articulated by the artist the viewer can quickly pick up the discomfort. In this case the hands work well even when foreshortened. These artist seldom disappoint when it comes to draftsmanship and 
anatomy.


 Although there are trees, snakes, wolves etc layered into the design, for this blog, I am focusing on the birds and eggs as the large hands indicate.  In the previous blog, I was following a trail of eggs, and here, I will continue on that same trail.


 

The hands provide a scale. I have high lighted one of the many hands presented. The hands provide scale  for the viewer as different birds and eggs are presented. Some of the eggs also share a view of the embryo in side. Please ignore the snake embryo for now😟. 


  

In the image above of the same perforated stone from a slightly different perspective, the hand starts to read as very large bird talons. 


 Here at the top of the caldera we find the maiden tending to her menagerie of birds and eggs. The number of different birds seem endless. There is hours/days of entertainment for the bird lover that wants to explore the enormous list of birds, nest and eggs. The engraved illustrations are accurate making hunting for extinct species a possibility. As I work on bird land, I am no expert on birds, although I try. There are nesting sites around which variety of birds cluster around different size eggs. The design also presents human hands coming from both L and R . There is also a very large bird head on the right. The effort to provide opportunity for scale with the human hand supports the human hand as a standardization for most analysis.






I have been working super hard to try to get folks to actually look at the stone as a reference source for the ice age human history and before! I have added another technique to my efforts. I am employing transparent color flats to help highlight the information. It seems to be a little easier on the eyes but a little more laborious to produce. In some cases it is worth the additional work if it will help folks see the beautiful illustrations from our predecessors. 
   It is life changing experience to sit here among these stones knowing that at one time an ancient human was raising large birds and training them for flight. The focus on birds and the amount of birds indicates a birds and eggs culture. In the image above, using transparent color flats, I have highlighted a gentle female holding birds as they mature from eggs, to fledglings, to adults. You can also pick up other animals as they part take in the bird's daily life. You will see predators such as dogs, foxes, cats, and snakes worked into the design as they hunt birds and eggs. 



  Above the girls ear, her red tinted braid curls up behind her ear. The braid can quickly turn into a snake. The bird forms shift in species and size as they deal with the invading snakes.  In the image below the trail of eggs and some of the different birds with varying beaks an be noted. 





I was moved by the quality of the art. It is a thrill to see.  Below, the story of the raptor maiden continues. you can see her hands guiding the head of a large hatchling towards the morsal of food held in the other hand. The raptor maiden may be using eggs of other birds to feed the growing raptor hatchling. 



I am going to stop here for this blog and continue the story of the Raptor Maiden and bird land in the next publication. I look forward to working with the transparencies to better highlight the lifetime and achievements of the Raptor Maiden. I have included more photographs and studies from this site. There is a lifetime of study here.  So for the moment I leave you with more images from around the perforated stone. Thank you so much for looking





💓

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Maine Totem Stone

Image
  I live in the state of Maine. I spent time painting water scenes along Maine's rocky  coast. With good eyes one can easily spot arrowheads lying about, some with almost perfect symmetry. These symmetrical points are associated with the Red paint people. They are beautiful and easy to identify.        In the image above, carefully observe the napping patterns on the surface of the stone. You can get familiar with the surface of a worked stone. This period began some say, as early as 10,000 to 7000 years ago. You want to get familiar with napped surface and edges to be able to identify them in the future.        One day while painting on the beach, I began to notice other tool shapes as well, like curved scrapers, serrated edges, awls, adzes and chisels.  After getting comfortable identifying many tools, I began to notice animal forms napped into the stone that were associated with the function of each tool. For example, here (below) is a drill with the image of a bird head that mi
Read more

The T-pillars of Maine

Image
The T-Pillars of Maine.    I want to take a moment to thank everyone who has joined this endeavor of bringing back to light a form of communication that was used by humans and pre-humans to document their history. I am still processing my visit to the Archeology Dept. I was taken seriously and treated kindly. I was understood as to why I wanted to approach this timeline in reverse, meaning, from the earliest forward. Looking at Erectus first, hopefully removes all the tribal reactions. We all come from Erectus, and during the Erectus reign, Lithic literature was already clearly underway. This means we already had the design mapped out before there were Neanderthals. We also agreed that a co-writer would be a good next step. This may be where I can lift a corner in this academic armor.  Another offering from the university is an interest in fish hooks. When I heard the professor mention fish hooks I immediately responded, "I can do fish hooks!". I have actually been looking ha
Read more

From the Ice of Canada, to Maine, to Ethiopia, Lithic Literature Tells the Story.

Image
  From the ice of Canada, to the coast of Maine, to Ethiopia, Lithic Literature tells the story. I am trying to bring it to the attention of the University Of Maine @ Orono that this material is worth acknowledging. With a new discovery from the ice melt of Canada, and another stone adze manufacturing site in Ethiopia, it is a good time to see how the adze found on the little granite mountain in Maine compares. There will be some repetitive information in subject matter as we start mapping the similarities, but the  images from the newly found stones are super. Please help me out here and pay more attention to the original stone than any writing or highlighting. These artist were amazing and the design is highly complex. The styles and techniques vary as do styles and fads that move through society today. There is a new reference to buckles and reins that will be covered in this article, which is super exciting. There is so much material that the fast highlighting is just a way for me
Read more