Hi, my name is Shanan Martineau, I am the daughter of LaVan Martineau. I have been wanting to get a website going on my father since his passing in February of 2000. I feel that all his studies and pictures he has accumulated throughout his life time should not be put in storage and forgotten. I thought with this website, the public can get an idea of what my father was like through excerpts from his autobiography and also add some of his work in the near future of different panels. He was working on a "Rocks Begin To Speak" follow up book but he knew that it wouldn't get finished so he sold off the chapters he had finished to interested parties. I haven't decided fully on what will all be add on this website yet so if anyone has some input I am open to ideas. Or if you have any questions or inquiries please write and let me know. I am going to start off this page with some of my fathers writings about his passion for his studies in petroglyphs.
This was written in 1990 by LaVan: Since my Rocks Begin to Speak book came out a vocal minority continues to insist that Indian rock writing is not a system of communication understood by many different tribes as essentially a universal type picture writing, "art" is their favorite word and one of their favorite themes is that it could only basically be understood by the person writing it or to his students. Many of the misconceptions that they present I once had myself. It's only natural for many people to come up with preconceived ideas or to be oriented in that direction through education, church, society etc. One thing that I really want to stress here is that all my preconceived ideas went down the drain when I began to use the science of cryptanalysis in my work of deciphering. The findings that I came up with using cryptanalysis is that rock writing is based on the sign language and is essentially universal (not 100% but essentially) this goes back to what the foremost scholars and ethnographers up until the beginning of this century understood and presented, scholars such as Mallery. Therefore cryptanalysis helped in discovering the dusty invaluable history books ignored by most rock art scholars since the death of Mallery and the Indians themselves who still had a good understanding of them. Therefore the ideas I present are not Martineau ideas but only ideas rediscovered and substantial by Martineau via cryptanalysis and forgotten history books. Many of these forgotten and ignored statements by earlier scholars are presented in my Rocks Begin to Speak book. My book can be referred in regards to early references on the universality of picture writing and also on the science of cryptanalysis and it's principles and how I began this work. It took the first 17 years to rediscover and substantiate the findings of these early scholars and in the subsequent 17 years, since my book came out, these findings have only been strengthened and I still stand by the basic findings presented in my 1973 book.
My first book took 17 years of study to compile and even then it wasn't my intent to publish just then, I did not seek out a publisher. I wrote that book at their request. It has been another 17 years of full time, research and field work. I could have become rich writing many books on panel interpretation since that time as I am now able to read thousands of panels but as this would have cut into my valuable time in attempting to finish reading the entire system I didn't pursue this. My first goal is deciphering, publishing is only secondary. The work is now down hill with perhaps 75% of the symbols deciphered. I'm still not fully ready to publish a complete technical dictionary just yet. Without more groundwork and basics most people would be hampered even with a complete symbol dictionary. This was brought to my attention by the many who had studied the Rocks Begin to Speak and who only memorized the symbols like you would an alphabet without fully understanding the extensions and applications in different contexts.
To some my work will be more than they want to hear however this will be done with the soft words of science, evidence and common horse sense. To many this evidence will erase the thousands of unanswered questions that can be created by one lie or misconception. It is often human nature to pull the strong down to the level of the weakest. Any scientific work cannot concede to this unscientific leveling so it is hoped that this work upgrades the knowledge of the reader to a level closer to the truth. This isn't always easy for the reader when some of his peers still maintain the inherited attitude that once put down and destroyed so much of Indian culture. If truth is to win out prejudice then misunderstanding must be stood up to and cannot be ignored. Truth is often more fascinating than fiction because of the realization that it is real. Therefore let us not leave it to science to rob a great story of it's mystery but instead let us use the appropriate science to solve this great mystery. The purpose structure and messages of Indian rock writing.
