 Well, first of all, thank you for inviting me here, very grateful. And I'm going to speak about small-scale, maybe a little funny experiment with anthropomorphic images, contemporary. Well, I will focus on rock features because I'm interested in them a lot and I'm interested in their roles in prehistoric landscapes. Well, what we know from historic record and ethnographical record that rock features or big stones, boulders usually have strong meaning. They have important roles for living communities in their religion, mythology, and so on. But we can ask why or we can ask since when the stones or the rocks had played these roles. So, since Paleolithic times, upper Paleolithic times, we can see that humans paid attention to rock surface as these two examples from the cave Altamira in northern Spain can show us here. And they combine the rock surface with their imagination or projection of animal shapes. Here's another case, another example from French cave called New York, also from the upper Paleolithic. Well, these two examples are from my country, Czech Republic, Bohemia and Moravia, and the picture on the on your left resembles very to human face and it's located on the edge of a big rock feature and it's well known by local communities, but there are no signs that this was made by humans, so it seems to originated naturally and the other face is located on the rock, sandstone rock. Also, it was not made by humans, but is widely recognized by contemporary humans living nearby. Sometimes rock features do not have a very clear resemblance to anthropomorphism or human shapes like this one. This comes from California and local tribe of Wintu people recognizes it as a back of bones, as you can see on the picture on your right, drawn by their shaman. But well, back to prehistoric landscapes in central Europe. When you have kind of men here or megalithic art, you can be sure that people paid attention to that stone, to that rock feature. But what about the stones that do not bear any traces of human modification? Can we also think about them as a part of the the landscape of prehistoric people? I think we can and I choose rock features because they are immovable and relatively speaking stable in their shapes or forms. But it depends on material and the local conditions, weather conditions and environmental conditions. Well, so I did a small-scale experimental study where I focused on processes by which the rock features can get our attention, attract our attention and to provoke our imagination or projection of our inner images to them. And I was curious if there can be some, let's say, patterns that can be shared within a community. So these are my more specific questions about my study. So I was curious if there are some parts of rock features that are the most attractive for human imagination or if there are some specific characteristics of rock surface that provokes our imagination most. Or I was interested also in various kinds of motifs that can appear when we are looking at the rock surface. And and so and so. Let's jump in. Okay. Okay. Sorry. I focused on two kinds of data because I asked people to draw what they can see on the rock surface. And so I have drawings, pictures of their inner images and they consist of, let's say, objects like human, animal and so. And these objects can be combined into motifs, like human being is sitting and holding a baby or something like that. And I tried to to search for patterns in the graphics of the pictures. And I also have interpretations because I asked people also to write some short commentaries about the meaning of their pictures. What do they think they draw? And this is one place that I was interested in. It's a place in the northern Bohemia and the big mountain range. And it's located on the southern slope of the mountain range dividing Bohemia and Germany and on a small promontory. And about 10 years ago some metal detector prospectors, Illigo, found Bronze Age X. Bronze, Bronze Age X. So me and my colleagues did some kind of a rescue survey with metal detectors and found other juicicles from Bronze Age, let's say late, final, late or final Bronze Age. They are almost the same shape. They were deposited nearby, that's all. We can find an X and juicicles. So it's possible that all the three artifacts were deposited at one moment. And also we found a piece of rock crystal of this size, which is very unique in our country. So we can, from the archaeological point of view, we can say this place was very important, at least in the late or final Bronze Age. But to get some, well, I should say simply, I was curious if people can see something in the shape of this rock or on its surface. So I took this photograph. This is the first one and this is the second one. Oh, sorry. And I can draw your attention to this part, this other part, which for me very resembles very well to human head, but it's white. And I asked people to draw, if I ask people if they see anything in these pictures, in these photographs. So I asked 100 respondents, 50 males, 50 females, and all the respondents draw something. Well, as you can see, three-quarters of my respondents were my students because I was teaching lectures on landscape symbolism, stuff like that. I asked also my friends and colleagues and most of the respondents were in their 20s because they were students. Well, you can see, let's say, fragrances of reactions, motives, objects and there is no big difference between males, females, well, but there was a big difference in various parts of the rock. As you can see on these graphs for the photograph A and photograph B, the whole surface of the rock was the most attractive for motifs for the inner images. Much more than the parts that I would like to see as the most attractive. Well, that's the same information. And here we can see some examples of the motifs and objects and mostly people would regard it as a two-dimensional object as they see photographs, print it on paper. But they were not on the side. Nobody was on the side except me and my colleagues. Well, here we can see that most of the objects were interpreted as human beings or some kind of non-human beings, sometimes resembling human beings, beings more, sometimes less. There also were some animals or natural motifs like rivers and so on. And yeah, here's a part that I was curious about and as you can see most of my respondents also see some kind of head in that. Be it human head or human head. And when I finished this experiment or my contact with the respondents, I took their drawings and put them above each other to search the patterns, graphic patterns. And here we can see the graphic patterns for the first photograph. There are 13 of them and the number one is the most frequent one of these. And about a third of the motifs can be divided into these patterns. Here you can see patterns for the second photograph and about 50% of them can be divided into some kind of a pattern. But there is a difference if you ask people what do they see and they tell you or if you ask them to draw what they see. And you can see in these graphs that for some patterns my respondents had different meanings, different interpretations. So I think it's important to engage both kinds of data. And to conclude briefly, so I found out that the rock surface also in our culture and for modern people has a strong capacity to provoke our projections or our imaginations, our inner images. Well, the relationship between the image as a symbol and its meaning is arbitrary. So that's why I think we should explore both drawings and the interpretations of the words. Well, it proved to me that we cannot expect everybody to see the same thing while in the rock, not the opposite, but nobody sees nothing there. And we may expect some kinds of patterns that can be shared among the community, but on the basis of their own experience. Well, that the people can agree on what they really see. But there has no... There doesn't need to be an authority to tell you what you shall see in the rock. And this one, I think, is very important, at least for me. Yeah. Well, by no means we cannot extrapolate these images into the past. It's impossible. It's just a picture of our thinking or our imagination contemporary. I do not want to relate these pictures to the past. And also the particular pictures or the precise numbers that are used in this presentation are not so important for me as these conclusions about the processes, how we can see the rock. Or how we can create our images because sometimes people draw... They had some image and they had to draw it. And sometimes they started to draw. But creatively, they changed their image as they were creating it. So it's not only about projection or quick, fast projection, but also about creativity. And, well, as my final words, I would like to say that let's test our assumptions or our question by some empirical study like this. Thank you for your attention.