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An archeological staff in Venezuela has found 20 rock artwork websites that date again hundreds of years in Canaima Nationwide Park, within the southeastern a part of the nation.
Whereas archaeologists have discovered comparable rock artwork designs elsewhere in South America, the newfound artwork “represents a brand new tradition beforehand unknown,” José Miguel Pérez-Gómez, an archaeologist and researcher at Simón Bolívar College in Caracas who’s main the staff, instructed Dwell Science in an e mail.
A few of these designs, which researchers name “pictograms,” have been drawn in pink and depict geometric motifs resembling traces of dots, rows of X’s, star-shaped patterns and straight traces that join collectively to type a wide range of designs. There are additionally easy depictions of leaves and stick determine drawings of individuals. Moreover, a few of the photographs, known as petroglyphs, have been incised into the rock and likewise present a wide range of geometric motifs.
It is unclear why folks created this artwork. “It’s nearly inconceivable to get into the minds of individuals residing so many [thousands of] years in the past” Pérez-Gómez mentioned, however “undoubtedly these indicators had a ritual that means.” For example, the completely different depictions could also be associated to start, ailments, the renewal of nature or good looking. The locations the place the rock artwork was created “likely had a that means and an significance throughout the panorama, simply because the church buildings have a that means for folks at present,” Pérez-Gómez added.
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Whereas it is unknown precisely how outdated the rock artwork is, comparable rock artwork in Brazil has been dated to round 4,000 years in the past. Nonetheless Pérez-Gómez thinks that the examples in Venezuela could also be older.
Canaima Nationwide Park is a large park, concerning the dimension of Belgium, that encompasses forests and mountainous terrain. Considered one of its most well-known options is Angel Falls, the tallest waterfall on land in the world. The park could have been the “floor zero” the place this mysterious tradition first developed, Pérez-Gómez mentioned, earlier than later dispersing to locations as distant because the Amazon river, the Guianas and even southern Colombia, which have rock artwork much like the newly discovered examples in Venezuela.
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The stays of ceramics and stone instruments have been additionally discovered on the 20 rock artwork websites and should have been utilized by the individuals who created the rock artwork, nonetheless extra analysis must be completed to say so for certain, Pérez-Gómez mentioned. Moreover, extra rock artwork websites are more likely to be present in Canaima Nationwide Park as analysis continues, he famous.
The analysis was offered on the “New Worlds New Concepts” prehistoric archaeological congress held in Valcamonica, Italy from June 26 to 29. A paper that mentioned one of many rock artwork websites was revealed in November 2023 within the journal Rock Artwork Analysis.
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