Down Canyons and Up Cliffs, Pursuing Southwest’s Ancient Art
In his mid-60s, Ekkehart Malotki, a retired linguistics professor, willingly dangled from a rope tied to a car that was backed to the edge of a cliff. A half-dozen times, he descended with his rope, photographed the cliff face and climbed back up.
He rappels into canyons, pushes his camera gear in inner tubes across rivers, and clambers up cliffs. And everywhere he looks, he sees a landscape stamped with rock art.
He has taken thousands of photographs, and he keeps his secret G.P.S.
coordinates in files that line his office walls
designs called phosphenes, which are as fundamental to art as time is to
language. He said the same 15 abstract geometric constants appear globally in
art created as early as 300,000 years ago
They are grids, zigzags and patterns of dots
earliest rock art was linked with human survival
I hope to also influence people to respect it
clipped from: www.nytimes.com 
