A Long Time Ago... with Genevieve von Petzinger
Hello there.
Welcome to A Long Time Ago… the fortnightly series where I ask a different guest to share with us a favourite Star Wars story and historical site. This started as a tie-in to my first piece of published writing, the article ART WARS for Star Wars Insider #226. The whole archive of my exploration of fourteen ancient art sites and every Star Wars story on my shelves can be found here.
Today, I hand over to Genevieve von Petzinger!
Genevieve is a Paleoanthropologist and rock art researcher specializing in prehistoric cave art and early proto-writing systems. As a National Geographic Explorer and TED Fellow, she is also passionate about science communication and enjoys sharing her work with Homo sapiens everywhere!
I found Genevieve through her TED talk while researching cave art for my novels, including her ideas about recurring geometric signs which are the subject of her book The First Signs.
Genevieve shared a great Cave Art 101 series while she was in the field in Jordan. And she’s on The Paleo Post Podcast with my quotable expert for my Insider article, George Nash!
This edition comes transcribed from a video call Genevieve and I had, so her answers have been edited by me.
In A Galaxy Far, Far Away…
Honestly, my favourite Star Wars stories are the first trilogy. They really are. I saw them for the first time as a kid, ‘cause I was born in the 70s and so I saw them in the 80s when these were the big movies! I think they resonated with me precisely because they are incredibly powerful stories. And then when I was an undergrad, I remember, I think it was an English professor I had, who introduced us to Joseph Campbell and The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
He used Star Wars as an example in that class. And I remember… The whole concept of this beautiful, big, very epic storyline follows the hero’s journey: the ordinary person thrown into extraordinary circumstances and there’s key figures along the way. The argument that he made in the class was that you could go to the other side of the planet to a traditional group who lived out in the jungle somewhere and had never even heard of Star Wars. They may not understand the lightsabers or some of the other bits but they would one-hundred percent be able to be like “Oh yeah, Yoda's the wise guy”. They would know who all those people were because they were so beautifully designed to connect with us at that very deep level. As the humans that we’ve become now – I don’t know about Neanderthals or not - the idea of storytelling has very deep roots. The place may change, some of the details may change, but there are underlying stories, surviving into modern times, which resonate with us at a very deep level.
There’s something about Star Wars, especially that first trilogy. Those are humanity’s story, and there’s a reason why people have connected with them over the entire planet for decades at this point. And it’ll probably continue to be an incredibly classic story into the future, precisely because the characters, the storylines, everything about it is exactly what we love at this very deep level.
They’ve done beautiful jobs with the things they’ve built out, the other storylines since. Rogue One was great. I’m loving the stuff they’re doing now as they expand out this universe. But, you know, [the originals] are the granddaddy stories. New stories are building on that mythology. And, especially with what I do, I think there are elements of those Star Wars stories sitting on the cave walls. Those are the stories they’d like too, and those have come down to us through the generations because they do resonate so deeply.
I was trying to decide which was my favourite of the three, but I like them all. They all have that piece [of the hero’s journey]. The idea of the call to adventure, the first one. The struggle part in the second when he’s trying to learn who he is and training with Yoda, all that kinda stuff. And then in the third one where there’s the arc and he comes into his own. Every single one of those has important elements. So, I was like, “Could I have three? We'll just take the whole trilogy.”
Also, fun fact: I don’t live very far from Cathedral Grove where they filmed the whole Ewok scene. I've walked through that forest a bunch of times. My grandmother lives not far from there. So that was fun too - I do remember hearing about it when they were filming that when I was a kid. Those huge trees really do exist!
In Puente Viesgo, Cantabria, Spain…
For historical sites, I was like, “Gee, now you’ve made it hard!” Obviously, I have so many favourite cave art sites. It’s a privilege – at this point, I’ve worked in over a hundred cave art sites on four continents. It’s wild. And, honestly, I'm very fond of every single one of them. Every cave I go into, I learn new things.
If I absolutely, gun to the head, had to pick one, it would probably be El Castillo in northern Spain, just because El Castillo had people making art in it probably for 50-60,000 thousand years. It’s a big cave system. It's up on the side of a mini mountain. I mean, I come from Canada where we have big mountains but it’s a ‘mountain’ by Spanish standards, with a beautiful view of the whole valley below and everything like that.
The people lived at the entrance and literally over tens of thousands of years, different groups of artists went in and left their mark. So there is, easily, five or six different cultures, all layered one atop the other in there. It’s a true palimpsest, right? There are caves in there where there are handprints that are probably 40,000 plus years old and there are other handprints that are 20-25,000 years old. It's wild seeing the many chapters of early history all unfolding on these same walls.
And I love the concept as well of, every time I go in there, I'm always like, “What did the people think?” Can you imagine being a stone age person and walking into this cave for the first time? Sites would be abandoned and then new people would come, so it’s probably not that people consistently lived there for 60,000 years. Keep in mind too, we’re pretty sure Neanderthals made the earliest layers of art. So, imagine being the first Homo sapien to walk into that cave, and there’s already this ancient art on the walls. What would they have thought? I love that. Because of course, they didn’t have all of our… in a way, I mean it’s not boring, but you know, we take the mystery out of things a bit with the science.
We're like “Oh you know, here’s the geological structure that it’s on.” And we’re analysing paint pigments and these are all important things but we know, when we see it, what it is, right? Even if there’s a piece of awe there as well, scientifically we know, we can explain everything. Whereas, if you can put yourself in the shoes of somebody with a torch walking into that cave say 35-40,000 years ago, and there’s all these hands, these ancient hand marks on the wall already. What would they have thought? And they would’ve already looked old, because some of those may have been 20,000 years old when the people walked in. It’s hard for us to even imagine that kind of time depth. And they certainly didn’t necessarily have a concept of time like that. But they would’ve known it was ancient, and it wasn’t theirs. I’m sure they would’ve wondered who these ancestors were who made it.
For me, I’m always interested in the story side. I do hard science but I also do very much have the soul of… I do see magic in the world and I love that. And for me those are those moments where I get to think about our ancestors not just as archaeological units or numbers but also imagining them as people and what their thoughts were and how they would’ve seen and understood the world.
And then, if you go really deep into the cave and you drop down a level, there is the most extraordinary chamber which is probably pretty close to the actual heart of the mountain. And there’s this incredible chamber. You have to sort of fling a leg over a stalagmite and slide down this calcite thing - it was pretty dangerous! We didn’t have ropes. We just did it anyway, just sort of slid down, probably like twenty feet and then you have to crawl under these things with all the spikes coming down so there’s a lot of good drama. It’s all very dramatic and fun.
And then after you do this whole winding through the site, you get to this inner chamber. The walls actually have quartz in them. It’s just absolutely phenomenal, it’s like this incredible glitter chamber. And then the floor in there… they’ve actually carved into the floor and there’s this whole… almost looks like a scene.
There’s so few things in Palaeolithic art that look like scenes that are connected, it’s more like floating individual things and this one really looks like a scene. Honestly, it almost looks like there’s a tent and a horse and maybe snow or rain or something. There’s a lot going on there, it’s wild.
[This art on] the floor of this chamber in the heart of the mountain, deep inside, I believe it was made around 17,000 years ago and so, if I had to guess, I'd say it’s one of our better bets for a story. Maybe an origin story, maybe a piece of mythology, but there’s something just fascinating going on there. So that site’s just really interesting for the sheer number of layered stories from different ancestors that are all in one place. It has a pretty special feel. I always enjoy going in there.
Thank you so much Genevieve!
These posts come out every other Sunday so subscribe today to discover the next guest and their picks!
Cheers,
Harvey