Conny Waters – AncientPages.com – Archaeologists working within the Colombian Amazon have been documenting tens of 1000’s of rock artwork motifs and collaborating with Indigenous elders and ritual specialists to interpret their meanings. These ochre work, discovered at quite a few websites, depict native wildlife similar to jaguars and anacondas—animals that play important roles in creation tales—and scenes of individuals remodeling into animals. Some artworks are estimated to be over 11,000 years outdated.
Credit score: College of Exeter
Researchers from the College of Exeter and companion establishments in South America have expanded their crew by involving extra native consultants to look at these panels and file their interpretations. By integrating Indigenous views with different analysis sources, they’ve concluded that the artwork represents ritual specialists participating with religious realms, physique transformations, and the merging of human and non-human worlds. This interpretation contrasts with a literal depiction of the setting or species encountered by historical peoples.
These findings are detailed in “A World of Data’: Rock Artwork, Ritual, and Indigenous Perception at Serranía De La Lindosa within the Colombian Amazon,” revealed in a particular concern of Advances in Rock Artwork Research.
“Indigenous descendants of the unique artists have not too long ago defined to us that the rock artwork motifs right here don’t merely ‘replicate’ what the artists noticed within the ‘actual’ world,” says Professor Jamie Hampson, lead creator and archaeologist within the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, for the College of Exeter, Cornwall.
“In addition they encode and manifest vital details about how animistic and perspectivistic Indigenous communities constructed, engaged with, and perpetuated their ritualised, socio-cultural worlds. As Ulderico, a Matapí ritual specialist, advised us in entrance of one of many painted panels in September 2022, ‘it’s important to have a look at [the motifs] from the shamanic viewpoint’.”
Credit score: College of Exeter
Archaeologists on the College of Exeter have studied the demographic shift in South America for six years by way of the ERC-funded LASTJOURNEY undertaking. Between 2021-23, they and 10 Indigenous elders visited six panels at Cerro Azul in Serranía De La Lindosa. The elders’ testimonies, spoken in Spanish or Indigenous languages like Desana, Tukano, and Nukak, have been recorded and translated. They centered on therianthropic transformations similar to avian/human, sloth/human, lizard/human, and snake/fowl/human figures.
See additionally: Puzzling Extinct Giants Depicted On 12,000-Year-Old Rock Paintings In The Colombian Amazon Rainforest Baffle Scientists
“So listed here are the animals which are there, they exist in that mountain vary that was previously and nonetheless is, however it’s within the religious world… These are males with two arms, they’re giants that exist in that religious maloca (home)… there may be an animal, a panther lion that has two heads, one head right here and the opposite right here, as an alternative of a tail it has a head, they’re from the religious world,” Tukano-speaker Ismael Sierra mentioned pointing to work at a website known as La Fuga.
Victor Caycedo, a Desana elder, who accompanied the crew to the websites in 2022 and 2023, advised the researchers that the work have been themselves created by spirits. Pointing to motifs excessive up the rock face, he requested rhetorically: “How would you paint up there? How would you do it? They didn’t do it with a ladder…they didn’t do it with some large gadgets that have been put there… Why? As a result of the natives within the outdated days lived spiritually… They have been a spirit…”
“Animals inhabiting and symbolizing liminal areas – those that transfer between earth, water, and sky, similar to anacondas, jaguars, bats, and herons – and actions similar to fishing have been additionally picked out by the elders as imbued with specific significance, notably round shamanistic transformation.
Credit score: College of Exeter
Certainly, one elder described jaguars as representing shamanic information, as if the animal has turn into an avatar. In addition they pressured the significance of preserving the images or danger severing the hyperlink between Indigenous folks and their ancestors and traditions,” the researchers write of their press release.
These efforts to incorporate native communities have been supported by the creation of a diploma that may help sustainable cultural heritage tourism within the area.
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“It’s the first time that the views of Indigenous elders on their ancestors’ rock artwork have been absolutely integrated into analysis on this a part of the Amazon,” Dr Hampson mentioned. “In so doing, it allows us to not merely have a look at the artwork from an outsiders’ perspective and guess; we all know why particular motifs have been painted, and what they imply. It allows us to grasp that this can be a sacred, ritualistic artwork created inside the framework of an animistic cosmology in sacred locations within the panorama. It additionally emphasizes how Indigenous perception methods and myths should be taken severely.
“I’ve labored with rock artwork and Indigenous teams on each continent – and by no means have we been lucky sufficient to have such a direct match between Indigenous testimony and particular rock artwork motifs.”
Written by Conny Waters – AncientPages.com Employees Author
