Nothing is Sacred, and Nothing is Safe

From U.S. News/NBC

Theft of sacred rock drawings stuns California tribe, federal officials
November 19, 2012

By Kari Huus, NBC News

 

Thieves apparently armed with power saws, ladders, generators and other heavy equipment gouged out ancient petroglyphs etched into the volcanic stone landscape in eastern California, removing six and damaging dozens of the carvings, which are sacred to the Paiute tribe, according to a tribal member and government archaeologist.

"This is by far the worst example of vandalism in my career in my field office," said Greg Haverstock, archaeologist for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Bishop, Calif., about 150 miles due east of San Jose. "I think it’s akin to someone going and cutting pieces out of the Wailing Wall."

The Bishop office of the federal bureau oversees 750,000 acres of public lands in the Eastern Sierra mountain range, near the California-Nevada border. On what is called the Volcanic Tablelands, there are hundreds of rock art sites that date back more than 3,000 years, and tens of thousands of archaeological sites, Haverstock said.

Some of the carvings are recognizable representations of hunters, big horn sheep, lizards and deer. Others are geometric designs and other symbols, with meanings that have been lost to history. The Paiute see the carvings as a window into the souls of their ancestors.

"These petroglyphs — in our language, rock writings — are held sacred to the people here," said Raymond Andrews, a Paiute who serves as the tribal historical preservation officer for the Bishop area. "Our ancestors etched messages in them, so they are sacred... People go and pray to them and try to seek guidance."

The remote area is largely open to tourists, but Andrews said the bureau will close off the roads to rock-writing sites from time to time to ensure privacy for Paiute ceremonial functions. The damage was discovered Oct. 31 by a volunteer in the Bishop stewardship program, who periodically visits the site and reports any change or problem.

The thieves left scars along a 650-foot cliff band, according to Haverstock, with petroglyph panels as large as 20-by-40-by-6 inches extracted, and many of the carvings in between apparently damaged by the equipment. Some slabs of stone were sawed off 15 feet above the ground.

"We’ve had a few (petroglyphs) taken in the past — sawed away — but not on such a massive scale like this," said Andrews. "Usually it’s been like one. Or there’s like someone who wants to add a little more to the petroglyphs, not knowing they are desecrating them."

Haverstock said that there is an illicit market for any archaeological relic, and the rock carvings are no exception, but he said the dollar value is only in the $500-$1,500 range per piece.

The bureau has offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to arrests in the theft of the artifacts, which is a felony.

Even if the missing carvings are recovered, there’s no way to adequately repair the irreplaceable, so the bureau may use the damaged site to highlight the importance of historic preservation, Haverstock said.

"Like (other) indigenous groups, we believe in karma," said Andrews. "Something is going to happen. We can try to investigate, but some things are out of our hands."

"Shardik" Come to Life?

Does anyone besides me remember this novel about a giant bear that people in the novel are convinced is either God or a very important messenger from God?  Shardik!

Without even finishing this article, that name instantly came to mind...

Article at Past Horizons
Sunday, March 18, 2012 

By: Hanne Jakobsen, ScienceNordic

Artefacts are usually displayed in museums but sometimes there are some that just can’t be put on exhibition – as is the case with one that is hidden deep in the Russian forests.

A partial shot of some of the 1,000 petroglyphs!

It was known that there were rock carvings on some islands in Lake Kanozero, and Jan Magne Gjerde, project manager at the Tromsø University Museum, went out there to document them as part of his doctoral work however, when he and his colleagues had completed their work, the number of known petroglyphs had risen from 200 to over 1,000.

“I still get chills up my spine when I talk about it because it was such an emotional experience finding these carvings,” says Gjerde. “No matter how much I explore over the next 50 years, chances are close to zero that I’ll ever find anything comparable.”

Join a 5,000-year-old bear hunt

In the summer of 2005, Gjerde drove more than 5,300 kilometres east to Lake Kanozero. Together with Russian colleagues he discovered what he calls some of the world’s oldest animated cartoons.
“Petroglyphs are found at four sites in the area − on three islands and on a stone block on the lakeshore. The oldest ones date to between 5,000 and 6,000 years old,” explains Gjerde. The main site is on the island of Kanozero.

According to Gjerde, these aren’t like the petroglyphs they are used to seeing, depicting one moose or one deer. These are fantastic cartoons presenting entire episodes. For example the one they found at the main site, which depicts a bear hunt.

He describes in detail a hunter who is heading uphill on skis and tracking a bear. The ski tracks are just as one would expect for someone going up a slope with a good distance between the strides. The hunter then gets his feet together, skis down a slope, stops, removes his skis, takes four steps – and plunges his spear into the bear.

“This is the oldest example of a cartoon petroglyph we know of, at least in Northern Europe, so it was utterly thrilling to get the chance to be part of this discovery,” he says.

Testifying to a rich society

Gjerde and his colleagues camped in a tent on Kanozero for ten days while documenting the discoveries. Time flies when you suddenly have to make ten times as many drawings as you expected.

They marked off the figures in chalk and then traced this onto plastic sheets, which could be brought back home and properly photographed and documented.

Rest of article.

A Red Pebble With A Secret???

Let's see - it's red (ochre); it's got grooved marks on it (at least 23), it was found in a part of Africa (in a cave) well known for early occupation by homo sapiens -- and yet the scientists can't figure out what this is? 

Riaan Rifkin

It's a woman's count calendar.  This one is the oldest found yet, about 100,000 years old. Well, that's my take on it!

Stone Age Pebble Holds Mysterious Meaning

The colorful pebble bearing a sequence of lines dates back 100,000 years and may be the first evidence of abstract art.
By Jennifer Viegas
Thu Feb 23, 2012

A colorful pebble bearing a sequence of linear incisions may be the world's oldest engraving.

The object, which will be described in the April issue of the Journal of Archaeology, dates back approximately 100,000 years ago and could also be the world’s oldest known abstract art. It was recovered from Klasies River Cave in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa.

“Associated human remains indicate that the engraved piece was certainly made by Homo sapiens,” co-author Riaan Rifkin of the University of Witwatersrand’s Institute for Human Evolution told Discovery News.

Rifkin and colleagues Francesco d’Errico and Renata Garcia Moreno performed extensive non-invasive analyses of the object. Methods like X-ray fluorescence and microscopic analysis enabled the researchers to examine every minute detail of the ochre pebble, which appears to have split off from a once larger piece.

The scientists conclude that humans intentionally made the sub-parallel linear incisions on the Middle Stone Age pebble.

“Upon engraving the piece with a sharp lithic implement, it is likely to have produced a markedly bright and dark red-maroon powder,” Rifkin said. “The design may therefore have been strikingly visible shortly after it was produced.”

Ochre is a mineral-rich, naturally tinted clay that primarily consists of hydrated iron oxide. Ochre was among the earliest pigments used by humans and possibly other hominids for artistic purposes. Some even refer to it as the caveman's "crayon."

The Klasies River object measures close to 3 inches in length and contains a series of seven “deep broad engraved lines and several, about 16 or so, narrower and somewhat shallower linear features,” Rifkin said. “The fragment is a remnant of a formerly semi-circular ochre pebble that likely contained a much more extensive engraved design on its surface.”

Of particular interest now is whether or not the engraver made the design with symbolic intent. Use of symbols and meaningful images is thought to have been a significant breakthrough in human development. Language, math and countless other studies are tied to this basic skill, in addition to improved communication. To this day, art permits communication of identity and other things among diverse cultures.

Both linear and crosshatch engraved patterns may have been common thousands of years ago. Similar designs appear on engraved ochres from Blombos Cave, also in South Africa, and on ostrich eggshell fragments found in the Diepkloof Rock Shelter in the Western Cape Province. Some of these, and other, similar objects may even predate the Klasies River pebble, but studies on them are ongoing.

“The employment of red ochre for symbolic purposes likely played an important role in mediating increasingly complex social relations that emerged during the Middle Stone Age,” Rifkin explained.

Christopher Henshilwood, a researcher at the University of Witwatersrand, did not work on this study, but he has examined other very early probable engravings. For example, he studied abstract markings of another piece of ochre dating to around 70,000 years ago.

In that case, the engraving consisted of a more complex geometric pattern that looks like the letter “X” repeated in a connected series.

The possible meaning of these lines remains a mystery, “but they are symbols that I think could have been interpreted by those people as having meaning that would have been understood by others,” Henshilwood said.

At present, Rifkin and his team are studying 30,000-year old cave art from Africa. So far, they have determined that the abstract images depict a zebra, a rhino, and a half human, half cat therianthorpe.

Qurta, Egypt Rock Carvings Expand Our Knowledge of Ancient Man

From the Vancouver Sun
Long-forgotten Canadian find shakes up understanding of ancient humans
By Randy Boswell, Postmedia News
November 18, 2011

A Canadian archeologist is being credited — nearly 50 years after the fact — with discovering a prehistoric petroglyph site in southern Egypt that is now being described as a "Lascaux-on-the-Nile" because of its similarity in age and style to France's world-famous, cave-wall gallery of Stone Age cattle, deer and horses.

The inscribed Egyptian images of extinct wild oxen, hippopotami, fish, gazelle and other animals — now firmly dated to a time in the late Pleistocene era at least 15,000 years ago — are being hailed as the oldest rock art in North Africa and as a pivotal discovery in the evolution of artistic behaviour by ancient humans.

Prehistoric petroglyph site in southern Egypt discovered by Canadian archeologist Philip Smith in a 1962-63 expedition.
Photograph by: Handout, Yale University

It has taken nearly a half-century for experts to obtain a reliable age for the animal figures, which number close to 200 and are found etched into a sandstone cliff high above the banks of the Nile River at Qurta, about 600 kilometres southeast of Cairo.

That's where the young Canadian scientist Philip Smith — a University of Toronto archeologist from Fortune, N.L. — was working in 1962 and 1963 as part of a federally sponsored series of "rescue" digs aimed at preserving traces of ancient Egyptian settlements before their potential destruction from the building of the Aswan Dam.

Smith, who went on to a distinguished 40-year career at the University of Montreal, was probing an archeological site from thousands of years before the Egyptian pyramids were built when he "accidentally" discovered the carvings at Qurta.

Now 84 and long retired from archeological field work, Smith told Postmedia News on Thursday that he remembers scrambling up the cliffs to take a photograph of a dig site on the plain below when he suddenly spied scores of animals carved into the rocks.

"They were everywhere on the rock," Smith said. "But we weren't able to date it directly. At that time there was no way of dating art on the cliffs themselves."

He recalls, though, that he "speculated that it was certainly pre-pharaohnic — before the pharaohs — and probably pre-neolithic, before the introduction of agriculture. But, of course, I wasn't able to go much further back than that."

A lengthy article about the work of the Canadian Prehistoric Expedition in Egypt appeared in a 1965 issue of the Canadian Geographical Journal, forerunner of today's Canadian Geographic. Descriptions and pictures of the prehistoric rock art at Qurta were published at the time, but Smith was never able to pin down a solid date for when the carvings were made — and conventional wisdom about the evolution of art in the ancient world held that paleolithic Europe was almost certainly the seedbed of advanced human creativity.

Years passed. Then decades. No further study of the Qurta animal engravings was carried out, and even knowledge of their whereabouts was lost to a younger generation of scientists.

Then, about five years ago, Belgian archeologists working on paleolithic sites in Egypt found evidence of prehistoric rock art at a different site and began a broader study that turned up the Canadian research at Qurta from the early 1960s.

That led to the latest research on the Qurta carvings, to be published in the December edition of the journal Antiquity by a team of scientists from Belgium and the U.S.

They used a process called "optically stimulated luminescence" to test the wind-blown sediments accumulated on the etchings to determine the last time the most deeply buried grains of sand were exposed to sunlight.

Their study pegs the creation of the artwork at between 15,000 and 19,000 years ago. That places the Egyptian carvings in roughly the same timeframe as the famous cave paintings of animals at Lascaux and other Ice Age sites in Europe.

"The paleolithic rock art at Qurta reveals that the well-known cave art of the late Pleistocene in Europe was not an isolated phenomenon," study co-author John Coleman Darnell, a Yale University professor of Egyptology, states in a summary of the study. "Qurta puts North Africa firmly in the world of the earliest surviving artistic tradition, and shows that tradition to have been geographically more widespread than heretofore imagined."

The paper to be published in Antiquity suggests the fresh understanding of the Egyptian artwork first identified by Smith could force a major rethinking of the origins of art and the connections between Stone Age people in Europe and North Africa.

"Whereas it would be premature to speculate on any implications of this in terms of long-distance influence and intercultural contacts," the authors conclude, "it is clear that the Pleistocene age of the Qurta petroglyphs — as demonstrated by the present study — along with their degree of sophistication, similar to that of European Ice Age art, introduce a new set of challenges to archeological thought."

Smith, whose other work at ancient aboriginal digs in the U.S. and at paleolithic sites in Spain and France continues to generate interest among today's archeologists, said he's equally pleased his Egyptian find is still yielding new insights today.

"It is," he said, "very gratifying."

(c) Postmedia New

A Sacred Place Discovered in Northern Portugal

Archaeologists uncover prehistoric mysteries in Northern Portugal
17/9/2011

Recent archaeological investigations have uncovered a number of prehistoric sites and artefacts, including rock art and engravings at Laje da Churra in the Serra de Santa Luzia near Viana do Castelo in northern Portugal.

An archaeologist working for ENARDAS, which is coordinating the project, told Lusa News Agency that the flat stone discovered around 40 years ago in Carreço parish, is today one of the most important artefacts with engravings.

“We are talking about a flat stone, from which our investigation has identified 1,200 engraving motifs, when initially only around 10 were identified. And the stone is broken, which gives us an idea of the size it could have been in pre-history,” said Ana Bettencourt.

She estimates that the site where the stone was discovered could have been used as a sacred place from as early as 3,000 or 4,000 B.C.

“We don’t know exactly when the place became sacred or symbolic, for people. But it was used by various communities until the Iron Age,” she said.

Aside from the flat stone and engravings of horses, weapons and boats have also been unearthed at the site.
 

Laje da Churra is one of 10 sites of interest that have been identified since May by archaeologists working in the Serra de Santa Luzia on a project promoted by specialists from Minho University due to last until 2013.

The aim of this project is to study pre-historic remains from between 5,000 and 1,000 BC “making an inventory and studying” places with burial rock art and metal deposits.

Prehistoric Star Map in Wales

From stonepages.com

26 November 2010
A prehistoric star map carved on a Welsh capstone?


Cap stone at Trefael. From The Megalithic Portal.

 A recent excavation programme at a standing stone known as Trefael, near Newport (south-west Wales) has revealed that what originally was a portal dolmen in later times was transformed in a standing stone, probably used as a ritual marker to guide communities through a scared landscape.

This solitary stone has over 75 cupmarks gouged onto its upper surface. Following the complete exposure of the capstone through excavation, it is now considered by several astronomers that the distribution of the cupmarks may represent a section of the night sky that includes the star constellations of Cassiopeia, Orion, Sirius and of course the North Star.

Until recently, little was known about this stone. About 40 years ago archaeologists had speculated that it may have once formed a capstone which would have covered a small burial chamber. In order to prove or disprove this, a geophysical survey was undertaken, the results of which revealed the remains of a kidney-shaped anomaly, possibly the remnants of the cairn that would have once surrounded the chamber, with an entrance to the east.

Following this exciting discovery, a targeted excavation confirmed the site to be a portal dolmen, revealing also a significant cairn deposit within the eastern and northern sections of the trench. Uniquely, a clear vertical cut was found in section, running parallel with the dip of the former capstone suggesting that the cairn had been excavated into and the capstone set and packed within the existing cairn, probably used as a standing stone during the Early Bronze Age (c. 2000-1700 cal. BCE) when Western Britain was introduced to a new set of burial-ritual monuments.

Finds were not unexpectedly meagre and included medieval and post-medieval pottery sherds and two Mesolithic shale beads; identical to those found at the nearby Mesolithic coastal settlement of Nab Head.
Further investigations planned for Summer 2011 will include palaeo-environmental sampling in order to assess the later prehistoric landscape setting, a contour survey of the monument and further excavation to the rear of the stone.

Edited from George Nash PR

*****************************************************

More on Trefael, Wales:

Portal dolmen may lie hidden in South West Wales
October, 02 2010

More photos and locational map

Ancient Australian Cave Art Found

wo reports, one from May 31, 2010, and one from today, with a great photo:

From monstersandcritics.com
Painting believed to be Australia's oldest Aboriginal rock art
May 31, 2010, 7:56 GMT
Sydney - An Aboriginal painting of two giant emu-like birds could be Australia's oldest rock art, archaeologists said Monday.

The red ochre painting found in the far north of the continent could date back 40,000 years to the earliest days of its settlement.

Archaeologist Ben Gunn said Genyornis, the species depicted in the painting, became extinct 40,000 years ago.

'The details on this painting indicate that it was done by someone who knew that animal very well,' Gunn told the national broadcaster ABC. 'Either the painting is 40,000 years old, which is when science thinks Genyornis disappeared, or alternatively, the Genyornis lived a lot longer than science has been able to establish.'

Gunn said that near where the Genyornis depictions were found in Arnhem Land were paintings of other extinct animals, including the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger; the giant echidna; and giant kangaroo.

Technical difficulties and uncertainties make dating Australia's early rock art difficult, but Wes Miller, head of the Jawoyn Association, said the discovery confirmed his tribe had lived in the area for tens of thousands of years.

'It verifies that the Jawoyn people were living in this country for a very, very long time,' Miller said. 'People say it, but once again, this is clearly a demonstration of how long Jawoyn people have been in this country and other indigenous groups. It's great from that point of view. It's pretty exciting stuff.'

Here is today's update:

From australiangeographic.com.au
Bird rock art could be world's oldest
By: Emma Young | June-3-2010

A rock painting that appears to be of a bird that went extinct about 40,000 years ago has been discovered in northern Australia.

A ROCK PAINTING THAT appears to be of a bird that went extinct about 40,000 years ago has been discovered in northern Australia. If confirmed, this would be the oldest rock art anywhere in the world, pre-dating the famous Chauvet cave in southern France by some 7,000 years.

The red ochre painting was found in southwest Arnhem Land by a member of the Jawoyn Association, which represents the local traditional owners of the land. When Robert Gunn, an archaeologist brought in to document rock art in the area, saw the painting he immediately thought it looked like Genyornis, an emu-like, big-beaked, thick-legged bird that went extinct along with other Australian megafauna between 40,000 and 50,000 years ago.

"But I bit my tongue, and sent it off to a recognised authority, palaeontologist Peter Murray in Darwin, to see what he thought. When he confirmed that it probably was Genyornis, it was pretty exciting," Robert says.

Robert thinks there are two possible interpretations: either this is among the oldest rock paintings in the world, or Genyornis went extinct later than anybody thinks.

Age old question
But there's no good archaeological or palaeontological evidence that Genyornis survived longer than about 40,000 years ago, says Bruno David, an archaeologist and rock art specialist at Monash University in Melbourne, who has seen photos of the painting and who has worked in the region. "If this is Genyornis, then it has to be more than 40,000 years old," he says.

Robert is now planning to record the site in much more detail, and next year Bruno and his team will excavate the area thoroughly. A rock fall created the exposed face on which the painting was made. By studying buried samples from beneath the fallen rock, the team should be able to work out the age of the rock face. If it is older than 40,000 years, this won't prove that the painting is that old, but it will support the idea that it could be.

Some rock art specialists strongly suspect that the painting is younger. The oldest pigment found on a rock anywhere in Australia is 28,000 years old, but the image is so covered with dust and other rocky accretions, it's impossible to know what it looked like.

The Genyornis site is a shallow shelter and most such paintings in Australia are thought to be less than about 5,000 years old; older ones are thought to have been eroded away by weather. The Chauvet artworks, in contrast, are deep inside a cave that was sealed for more than 20,000 years. However, some of the sandstone in Arnhem Land does have the advantage of being extremely hard and durable.

Cautious optimism

Bruno says it's important to be cautious. The features of the painted bird match the features of the extinct Genyornis very closely, but this might be a coincidence, he says. "It's possible that at some time in the past, people were painting animals that didn't necessarily match living species - or that the bird wasn't a physical bird, but an animal that was part of the local, ancestral Jawoyn Dreaming beliefs," he says. And if this is the case, the painting could have been made at any time in the past.

But either way it's exciting, he says. "If it's Genyornis, then it's of extreme significance. If not, it's very significant because it tells us something about the way people understood their landscapes."

The Writing on the Cave Wall

A group of 26 symbols crops up at Stone Age sites throughout the world – are these the origin of the written word?  Link to larger graphic of the marks catalogued from around the world - Europe, Asia, Africa and North and South America.


From Newscientist.com
The writing on the cave wall
17 February 2010 by Kate Ravilious
Magazine issue 2748

THE first intrepid explorers to brave the 7-metre crawl through a perilously narrow tunnel leading to the Chauvet caves in southern France were rewarded with magnificent artwork to rival any modern composition. Stretching a full 3 metres in height, the paintings depict a troupe of majestic horses in deep colours, above a pair of boisterous rhinos in the midst of a fight. To the left, they found the beautiful rendering of a herd of prehistoric cows. "The horse heads just seem to leap out of the wall towards you," says Jean Clottes, former director of scientific research at the caves and one of the few people to see the paintings with his own eyes.

When faced with such spectacular beauty, who could blame the visiting anthropologists for largely ignoring the modest semicircles, lines and zigzags also marked on the walls? Yet dismissing them has proved to be something of a mistake. The latest research has shown that, far from being doodles, the marks are in fact highly symbolic, forming a written "code" that was familiar to all of the prehistoric tribes around France and possibly beyond. Indeed, these unprepossessing shapes may be just as remarkable as the paintings of trotting horses and tussling rhinos, providing a snapshot into humankind's first steps towards symbolism and writing.

Until now, the accepted view has been that our ancestors underwent a "creative explosion" around 30,000 to 40,000 years ago, when they suddenly began to think abstractly and create rock art. This idea is supported by the plethora of stunning cave paintings, like those at Chauvet, which started to proliferate across Europe around this time. Writing, on the other hand, appeared to come much later, with the earliest records of a pictographic writing system dating back to just 5000 years ago.

Few researchers, though, had given any serious thought to the relatively small and inconspicuous marks around the cave paintings. The evidence of humanity's early creativity, they thought, was clearly in the elaborate drawings.

While some scholars like Clottes had recorded the presence of cave signs at individual sites, Genevieve von Petzinger, then a student at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, was surprised to find that no one had brought all these records together to compare signs from different caves. And so, under the supervision of April Nowell, also at the University of Victoria, she devised an ambitious masters project. She compiled a comprehensive database of all recorded cave signs from 146 sites in France, covering 25,000 years of prehistory from 35,000 to 10,000 years ago.

What emerged was startling: 26 signs, all drawn in the same style, appeared again and again at numerous sites (see illustration). Admittedly, some of the symbols are pretty basic, like straight lines, circles and triangles, but the fact that many of the more complex designs also appeared in several places hinted to von Petzinger and Nowell that they were meaningful - perhaps even the seeds of written communication. [Sheer coincidence that the English alphabet contains 26 letters?]

Von Petzinger caused quite a stir when she presented her preliminary findings last April at the Paleoanthropology Society Meeting in Chicago. She and Nowell have recently submitted a paper to the journal Antiquity and they are currently preparing another paper for the Journal of Human Evolution. The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC plans to include the symbols in a forthcoming exhibition on human evolution.


"This work is really exciting," says Iain Davidson, an Australian rock art specialist at the University of New England in New South Wales. "We can see that these people had a similar convention for representing something."

Suspecting that this was just the beginning of what the symbols could tell us about prehistoric culture, von Petzinger and Nowell's next move was to track where and when they emerged. The line turned out to be the most popular, being present at 70 per cent of the sites and appearing across all time periods, from 30,000 to 10,000 years ago.

The next most prolific signs were the open angle symbol and the dots, both appearing at 42 per cent of the sites throughout this period. The vast majority of the remaining symbols are each present in around one-fifth of the French caves, the exceptions being the cordiform (roughly a love-heart shape), reniform (kidney shape), scalariform (ladder shape) and spiral, which all turned up in just a handful of sites. "The spiral only appears in two out of the 146 sites throughout the entire time period, which really surprised me as it is a common motif in many later cultures," says von Petzinger.

The Rhone valley and the Dordogne and Lot regions in the south seem to have been the original sites for the symbols in France: most signs seem to appear in these regions before spreading across the rest of the country. Notable exceptions include the zigzag, which first appeared in Provence and is a relative latecomer, debuting around 20,000 years ago.

No signs ever emerged in northern France, though. "For large periods of time the north was uninhabitable because of ice sheets coming and going, so there was less opportunity for culture to develop independently up there," says von Petzinger.

The Ice Age may have hindered the cultural revolution in the north, but elsewhere it could have been instrumental in furthering it. "People were forced to move south and congregate in 'refugia' during the last glacial maximum, 18,000 to 21,000 years ago, and it is at this time when we start to see an explosion in rock art," says Nowell. "One possibility is that they were using the signs to demarcate their territories."

Yet while long winters spent in caves might have induced people to spend time painting wonder walls, there are reasons to think the symbols originated much earlier on. One of the most intriguing facts to emerge from von Petzinger's work is that more than three-quarters of the symbols were present in the very earliest sites, from over 30,000 years ago.

"I was really surprised to discover this," says von Petzinger. If the creative explosion occurred 30,000 to 40,000 years ago, she would have expected to see evidence of symbols being invented and discarded at this early stage, with a long period of time passing before a recognisable system emerged. Instead, it appears that by 30,000 years ago a set of symbols was already well established.

Rewriting prehistory

That suggests we might need to rethink our ideas about prehistoric people, von Petzinger says. "This incredible diversity and continuity of use suggests that the symbolic revolution may have occurred before the arrival of the first modern humans in Europe." If she is right, it would push back the date of the creative explosion by tens of thousands of years.

The idea would seem to fit with a few tantalising finds that have emerged from Africa and the Middle East over recent years. At Blombos cave on South Africa's southern Cape, for example, archaeologists have recently discovered pieces of haematite (an iron oxide used to make red pigment) engraved with abstract designs that are at least 75,000 years old (Science, vol 323, p 569). Meanwhile, at the Skhul rock shelter in Israel, there are shell beads considered by some to be personal ornaments and evidence for symbolic behaviour as far back as 100,000 years ago (Science, vol 312, p 1785).

Further evidence may well come from caves elsewhere in the world, and indeed a tentative look at the existing records suggests that many of von Petzinger's symbols crop up in other places (see map). The open angle symbol, for example, can be seen on the engravings at Blombos cave.

Does this suggest that these symbols travelled with prehistoric tribes as they migrated from Africa? [Assuming you accept as correctg the current theory that so-called modern man originated in and migrated out of Africa.] Von Petzinger and Nowell think so. Davidson, on the other hand, who has identified 18 of these symbols in Australia, is unconvinced that they have a common origin, maintaining that the creative explosion occurred independently in different parts of the globe around 40,000 years ago. Instead, he thinks the symbols reveal something about a change in the way people thought and viewed their world, which may have emerged around this time. "I believe that there was a cognitive change, which suddenly put art into people's heads," he says. [Just like the television show "Flashback" - it happened to everyone, everywhere, all at once - 40,000 years ago.  Yeah, right.]

Clottes, however, thinks they could be on to something. "Language and abstract thought were probably practised long before 35,000 years ago, since 'modern humans' are some 200,000 years old. We shouldn't be surprised by the sophistication of these people's thinking: they were our great-great-grandparents after all," he says.


But if people really did have a symbolic culture this far back, why don't we find more evidence pre-dating 40,000 years ago? "Perhaps the earlier symbols tended to be carved into perishable things such as wood and skins, which have now disintegrated," says von Petzinger. And even if they did paint in caves many of the rock surfaces will have eroded away by now.

Whenever these symbols did emerge, the acceptance of symbolic representation would have been a turning point for these cultures. For one thing, it would have been the first time they could permanently store information. "Symbols enabled people to share information beyond an individual lifespan. It was a watershed moment," says Nowell.

One huge question remains, of course: what did the symbols actually mean? With no Rosetta Stone to act as a key for translation, the best we can do is guess at their purpose. Clottes has a hunch that they were much more than everyday jottings, and could have had spiritual significance. "They may have been a way of relating to supernatural forces. Perhaps they had special symbols for special ceremonies, or they may have been associated with the telling of special myths," he says.

One intriguing aspect is their possible use in deception. "Once symbolic utterances are recognised, communication becomes more flexible," says Davidson. "One result is that ambiguity can be introduced for concealing truths."

With no key to interpret these symbols, though, we can't know whether ancient humans were giving false directions to rival tribes or simply bragging about their hunting prowess. Our ancestor's secrets remain safe - at least for now.
Doodler or da Vinci?

When our ancestors painted beautiful works of art, were they intending them to be viewed by others, or did they just paint for their own pleasure?

The Lascaux caves, in the Dordogne region of France, may have the answer. There you can see a painting of a red cow with a black head high on one of the walls. Up close the cow appears to be stretched from head to toe, but when viewed from the ground the cow regains normal proportions. This technique, known as anamorphosis, is highly advanced, and suggests the painter was considering his audience as he painted the cow.

Our ancestors probably took the quality of their work very seriously. Recent work by Suzanne Villeneuve, from the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, shows that the images painted with the most skill tend to occur in places where large numbers of people would have been able to see them, while poorer-quality images were more likely to be in smaller cubby holes. In most cases it seems that only the "Leonardos" of the day were allowed to paint the big spaces.
Kate Ravilious is a journalist based in York, UK

New Rock Art Discovered at Machu Picchu

From the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: UCA professor finds ancient rock painting in Peru BY DEBRA HALE-SHELTON Posted on Friday, April 17, 2009 (Photo: Special to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/REINALDO MORALES JR. Reinaldo "Dito" Morales Jr., an assistant professor of art history at the University of Central Arkansas, will formally announce his finding of an ancient painting at Peru's Machu Picchu at next week's annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Atlanta.) CONWAY - A University of Central Arkansas professor said Thursday that he has discovered an ancient rock painting at an Inca burial site in the Peruvian Andes and believes the work could be anywhere from 500 to 2,000 years old. Tens of thousands of tourists each year pass the nearly 50-foot rock at Machu Picchu, a site scientists have studied for nearly a century. But apparently no one has paid attention to the barely visible painting, said Reinaldo "Dito" Morales Jr., assistant professor of art history. Morales is to announce his finding formally April 24 at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Atlanta. Morales, 45, first saw the rock art in 2000 when he was a graduate student. At the time, he said, "I figured [that] this place is so famous, surely everyone knows about it." But after he later obtained funding to return to Peru in December 2008, he began digging into the area's art history. "I've been scouring every journal, book, any kind of publication that discusses Machu Picchu or the rock art there" and haven't found even a mention of this work, he said. The black painting - likely done with charcoal or the mineral manganese - is partly obscured by a calcium deposit, which Morales said could take hundreds of years or longer to form. No one really knows what the painting depicts or who created it. But when a drawing of it is su- perimposed upon a photograph Morales took, the painting appears to be "some kind of animal imagery," said James Farmer, an associate professor and chairman of the art history department at Virginia Commonwealth University, where Morales did his doctoral dissertation. Morales said, "I don't know if it's supposed to represent something or if it's just some sort of abstract geometrical marks. That's the question of the century for rock-art studies." Farmer, who has traveled to Peru since the discovery and saw the drawing, said, "Someone probably has seen this [painting in the past], but ... what is significant ... is that no one has ever really paid much attention to it if, in fact, they had seen it. ... Apparently, [Morales is] the first modern person who certainly noticed it and brought it to the attention of anybody. "It's very easy to miss," Farmer said. "Even knowing where it was, I had to go up there and look for it. It doesn't jump out at you. It's hard to locate, and it's hard to see." Art historians already knew of engravings at Machu Picchu. But Morales said, "This is the very first painting ever documented at Machu Picchu." Historians believe Pachacuti, the Incas' first emperor, built Machu Picchu as a royal winter retreat in the Andean mountains in about 1450. Morales and Farmer believe the work predates the Incas' presence at Machu Picchu, which translates to big mountain or big peak. Morales said he's convinced the image is not of Incan origin "because Incan art is typically dominated by rectilinear geometric patterns, whereas this painting is primarily curvilinear." Farmer said the painting "stylistically looks rather similar to other rock-art traditions ... that we know are much earlier. "Just in terms of what the image appears to represent, it just doesn't look very Inca," he added. "You could be talking about something that dates back to 5000 B.C.," Farmer said. "It is stylistically similar to some other things in the Andes" from that time. But some parts of the painting are in goodenough condition that it might be just 500 years old, he said. While it's probably not Inca in origin, the question of "whom we would assign origin to is going to be a much more difficult question to grapple with," Farmer said. "I think that would be sort of the first wave of research." Because Morales does not want to risk damaging the work, he has not even touched the painting. "It's not worth ruining, just for temporary satisfaction," he said. Carbon dating, which would involve scraping off a tiny piece of the work, would ruin that small portion and might not even work if there's not enough organic material to test, Morales said. The International Congress of Rock Art has accepted a paper Morales wrote about the discovery and will meet this summer in Brazil.

Ancient Inscription Discovered in Yemen

I'm not sure what to make of this. Is it a hoax? is it for real and, if so, what does it mean? Who - and when - drew this "castle" over ancient rock inscriptions? Ancient inscription discovered in Raima Homed, Sana’a Posted in: Local News Written By: Observer staffArticle Date: Jan 20, 2009 - 5:57:12 AM A castle-shaped inscription was recently discovered in Raima Homed, Sana’a by a team from the General Organization for Antiquities and Museums (GOAM). Minster of Culture Dr. Mohammed al-Maflehi told Saba news Agency that the antiquities team confirmed that this inscription is being regarded as the first of its kind to have been discovered. This statement is based on the clearness of the shape of the castle, the pre-Islamic handwriting ( Musnad), and the pictures of animals found behind it. The inscription was carved into a large rock in a mountain in front of the area where a team from the Department of Antiquities found the ancient monument in Hesn Ja’ar in Raima, Sana’a last week. Dr. al-Maflehi said the team will cover the area soon to define its importance and historical value.

Mysterious La Palma Stone

Story from Andina.com No estimate of age of these findings was given in the story - not even a hint. I found that rather odd. Also note the reference to tourists already showing up in the area because of publicity (?) given to these recent finds, and how the regional authorities are already geared up for an influx of tourists, busy training guides and setting up rest-stops and food vendors! Hmmmm... I guess I just have a suspicious mind. The "stone" is interesting - no way of telling from the photograph how big it actually is (no size was given in the story), but it looks large - and long. At first I thought it was a vertical carving, like on a cliff face (the story did mention caves), but after looking at it more closely I see mountains on the horizon with sky above, so this rock or stone is laying horizontally on the ground. All the easier to carve??? I see what looks like a grid of lines (for a board game?) (upper portion) and what look like cup holes (lower portion), in addition to a sort of zig-zag line that ends in what looks sort of like an angular figure-eight (center of stone, lower portion). Petroglyphs, ceramics, dwellings and cave art found in Amazonas, Peru Bagua Grande, Dec. 16 (ANDINA).- Petroglyphs, dwellings with vaulted niches, ceramics and cave art were discovered during cleaning works in Pachallama hill, located in the village of La Palma, in Jamalca-Utcubamba (Peru’s Amazonas), according to researchers who arrived in the zone. Elvis Chugna, archaeologist and member of the research group of the Sub-regional Directorate of Foreign Trade and Tourism of Bagua-Utcubamba, said that these findings have been confirmed by a recent expedition sent to this zone. He recalled that a first expedition group, integrated by local authorities and of the provincial municipality of Utcubamba, has recently reported this finding. Chugna indicated that the petroglyph includes a group of elements which designs can be viewed according to the sun’s position; in the morning, some geometric shapes can be seen, and at noon, and sunset others figures emerge. In the zone, several caves have been also found with ceramics, thermal waters, fossil mollusks, and impressive flora and fauna, besides of a great variety of orchids. In turn, Benedicto Perez Goicochea, coordinator of the area’s tourist circuit denominated Pachallama, said that due to this discovery, 124 tourists have already visited the zone who have been properly registered in a visitor book. He said that an accommodation is fitted out for tourists that arrive in this place, located three kilometers far from Pachallama hill. The food and security are in charge of peasant patrols of the zone. Pérez also indicated that community members are organized and they continue with the cleaning works. About five hectares have been cleared in the zone (covered of lush vegetation) finding evidences as the petroglyph, which is a stone with engravings and geometric designs that inhabitants denominate the mysterious stone of La Palma. Elkin Herrera, director of the Sub-regional Directorate of Foreign Trade and Tourism of Bagua-Utcubamba, said that a series of activities have been launched in La Palma village such as courses of orientation and training of people, who have been organized as tourist guides. (END) APV/JOT/GCJ/LVT

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One other note - there was only one other photograph of a find from this discovery - photograph two in the Andina article shows a partially re-assembled piece of pottery. Again, no age given. There were no photographs of the "cave art" or "vaulted niches" inside the caves. I understand that a newspaper has limited space to present a story - but why show a broken piece of pottery when you could show a cave painting instead? This all seems rather strange to me, and more than a bit suspicious.

Ancient Rock Art in Durham County, England

From BBC News online:

Ancient rock carvings discovered
More than 100 new examples of prehistoric art have been discovered carved into boulders and open bedrock throughout Northumberland and Durham.

The 5,000-year-old Neolithic carvings of circles, rings and hollowed cups, were uncovered by volunteers.

One of the most interesting discoveries was an elaborately carved panel on Barningham Moor, near Barnard Castle in County Durham. English Heritage now wants to extend the project to Cumbria.

Abstract art
Kate Wilson, inspector of ancient monuments at English Heritage, said: "We know virtually nothing about this art. That's the exciting part of this discovery.

"What we need to do now is to discover how this art relates to other prehistoric features in the landscape.

"We are talking about very simple and abstract art, using circles, lines and triangles. Mostly the designs are pecked into stone in the shape of simple cups and rings."

Archaeologists have discovered thousands of examples of prehistoric rock carvings in the area in recent years.

Many feature on a website backed by Newcastle University, which includes about 6,000 images.

Ms Wilson added: "We are sure there remains a lot that is still undiscovered in Cumbria."

Rock Art and Stone Sculptures Discovered in India

A somewhat vague article - wish there were some photographs! From The Siasat Daily Rich rock-art sites found in Telangana Friday, 25 April 2008 Hyderabad, April 25: THE Department of Archaeology & Museums has discovered rock-art sites in Warangal and Mahabubnagar districts, priceless stone sculptures in Warangal and a Buddhist settlement in Visakhapatnam. Disclosing to newsmen the discoveries made last month, Director P Chenna Reddy said rock-art sites were found in the reserve forest area near Narsapur and Bandala hamlets in Thadwai mandal of Warangal district and near the Akkamahadevi caves in the Srisialam hill ranges of Mahabubnanagr district by the technical staff of the department. The rock paintings in red, ochre and white pigments depict various types of animals such as such as antelopes and peacocks, human figures representing hunting and dancing, and geometrical designs. The paintings near the Akkamahadevi caves are being ascribed to late Mesolithic times, that is, approximately 3000 BC based on the various animals drawn and style of execution. The rock shelters at Narsapur and Bandal are being associated with Dolmenoid cist chamber burials which helped the department date these painting to Megalithic times (1000 BC onwards). Reddy said more surveys had been planned in the region. Priceless stone sculptures depicting Parswantha, Mahishsuramardani and Brahma with his consort Saraswati seated on a swan are being shifted to the district museum,Warangal. The Archaeology Department has also unearthed a Buddhist settlement in Peddauppalam village in Rayavaram mandal of Visakhapatnam district. An idol of a seated Buddha has been recovered from the site where the department is planning further excavations after obtaining permission from the Archaeological Survey of India, New Delhi. ************************************************************************************ No ages given for the stone sculptures.

15,000 Years Old Egyptian Rock Carvings

I just love it when a story like this hits the press. I can just hear the gnashing of teeth and groaning of the "experts" who continue to discount diffusion or - Goddess dread the thought - a coherent, comprehensive and sophisticated trade network around the world that dates back to circa 13,000 BCE where ideas were transmitted as much as goods (and people, too). Oh National Geographic, say it ain't so! LOL! If nothing else, I guess the "experts" will now realize where the goddess Hathor (Hat-hert) came from, heh? Nah!

Egypt's Oldest Known Art Identified, Is 15,000 Years Old
Dan Morrison in Cairo, Egypt for National Geographic News
July 11, 2007

Rock face drawings and etchings recently rediscovered in southern Egypt are similar in age and style to the iconic Stone Age cave paintings in Lascaux, France, and Altamira, Spain, archaeologists say.

"It is not at all an exaggeration to call it 'Lascaux on the Nile,'" said expedition leader Dirk Huyge, curator of the Egyptian Collection at the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels, Belgium. "The style is riveting," added Salima Ikram of the American University in Cairo, who was part of Huyge's team.

The art is "unlike anything seen elsewhere in Egypt," he said.

The engravings—estimated to be about 15,000 years old—were chiseled into several sandstone cliff faces at the village of Qurta, about 400 miles (640 kilometers) south of Cairo (Egypt map).

Of the more than 160 figures found so far, most depict wild bulls. The biggest is nearly six feet (two meters) wide.

The drawings "push Egyptian art, religion, and culture back to a much earlier time," Ikram said.

The team's findings will be published in the September issue of the British quarterly journal Antiquity.

Before Its Time

The Qurta art has now twice been uncovered by modern researchers.

Some of the engravings were first found in 1962 by a group from the University of Toronto, Canada.

The leader of that expedition, Philip Smith, made the then novel suggestion that the figures were from the Paleolithic age—the Stone Age period from about 2.5 million years ago to about 10,000 years ago—in a 1964 article in Archaeology magazine.

"The Paleolithic experts told them, It's absolutely crazy—Europe is the cradle of art," Huyge, the leader of the new expedition, said. "And they backed off the idea.

"They must have accepted the fact that that nobody wanted to believe them, but they were right."

Discoveries of Paleolithic art in southern Africa and Australia since then have paved the way for the scientific community to accept what Smith first diffidently suggested, Huyge said.

Neither Smith, who has retired, nor his assistant on that expedition, Morgan Tamplin, now a professor emeritus at Trent University in Canada, could be reached for comment.

Thinking Alike

Huyge's March 2007 expedition strengthened the findings that Smith had discarded. The team found several additional panels of artwork over a 1-mile-long (1.66-kilometer-long) stretch of 230-foot-tall (70-meter-tall) sandstone cliffs.

There is "little doubt" the engravings are 15,000-years-old, Huyge said. They depict a now extinct species of wild cow whose horns have been recovered from Paleolithic settlements nearby.

The drawings would be examined for lichens and organic grime called "varnish rind" that could be carbon dated or subjected to another process known as uranium series dating, Huyge added. Because the rocks are inorganic, they cannot be dated directly using these methods.

In the meantime, the finding has raised a big question: How were people in Western Europe and southern Egypt producing almost identical artwork at the same time?

While the caves at Lascaux are best known for their painted images of bulls and cows, that artwork is actually outnumbered by stone engravings. And the Lascaux engravings are virtually identical to those in Qurta, Huyge pointed out.

"I'm not suggesting that the art in the caves of Lascaux was made by Egyptians or that [European] people were in Egypt," he said.

"The art is so similar that it reflects a similar mentality, a similar stage of development," he added. "When people are confronted with similar conditions, this will automatically lead to a similar kind of thinking, a similar creativity."

Now the archaeologists are on the hunt for additional—and potentially older—artwork.

"The rock art must be part of an evolution," Huyge said. "There must be older art in Egypt, if we can find it. I think open-air sites like Qurta will be found all over North Africa."