A Venezuelan archaeological team has discovered 20 rock art pieces dating back thousands of years in the Canaima National Park in the southeast of the country. While archaeologists have found similar petroglyphs elsewhere in South America, the newly discovered art “represents a new, previously unknown culture,” José Miguel Pérez-Gómez, an archaeologist and researcher at Simón Bolívar University in Caracas who led the team, told Live Science in an email.
Some of these patterns, which the researchers call “pictographs,” were painted red and depicted geometric motifs such as lines of dots, rows of Xs, star-shaped patterns, and straight lines that connect to form various patterns. There are also simple pictures of leaves and images of people. Some images, called petroglyphs, are carved into the rock and also display various geometric motifs.
It’s unclear why people created this art. “It’s almost impossible to get into the minds of people who have lived this long. [тисяч] “Many years ago,” Pérez-Gómez said, “but certainly these signs had ritual significance.” Different images may have related to birth, illness, the restoration of nature or a good hunt, for example. The sites where the petroglyphs were created “probably had significance and importance to the landscape, just as churches are important to people today,” Pérez-Gómez added.
It’s not known exactly how old the petroglyph is – a similar petroglyph in Brazil dates back about 4,000 years – but Pérez-Gómez believes the examples in Venezuela may be older.
Canaima National Park is a vast park the size of Belgium, encompassing forests and mountainous terrain. One of its most famous features is Angel Falls, the world’s highest landfall. According to Pérez-Gómez, the park may have been “ground zero” where this mysterious culture first developed and then spread to such distant places as the Amazon River, the Guyanas and even southern Colombia, where petroglyphs similar to those recently discovered in Venezuela have been found.
Perez-Gomez said that pottery and stone tool remains have been found at 20 rock art sites and that these may have been used by the people who created the rock art, but more research is needed to say for sure. He also noted that more rock art could be found in Canaima National Park as research continues.
The research was presented at the New Worlds of New Ideas prehistoric archaeology congress, held in Valcamonica, Italy, from June 26 to 29. An article discussing one of the rock art sites appears in the November 2023 issue of Rock Art Research.
Source: Port Altele
