Petroglyph

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For the company that makes computer games, see Petroglyph (game studio).

Petroglyphs on Newspaper Rock State Historic Monument, southern Utah, USA

Petroglyphs are images incised in rock, usually by prehistoric, especially Neolithic, peoples. They were an important form of pre-writing symbols, used in communication from approximately 10,000 B.C. to modern times, depending on culture and location. The word comes from the Greek words petros meaning "stone" and glyphein meaning "to carve" (it was originally coined in French as pétroglyphe). The term 'petroglyph' should not be confused with pictograph, which is an image drawn or painted on a rock face.

1 History
2 Meaning
3 List of petroglyph sites
4 See also
5 External links
6 Further reading

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History

Composite image of petroglyphs from Scandinavia (Häljesta, Västmanland in Sweden). Nordic Bronze Age. The glyphs are painted to make them more visible. It is not known whether they were originally painted

A petroglyph of a caravan of bighorn sheep near Moab, Utah, USA; a common theme in glyphs from the desert southwest

The oldest petroglyphs are dated to approximately the Neolithic and late Upper Paleolithic boundary, about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Around 7,000 to 9,000 years ago, other writing systems such as pictographs and ideograms began to appear. Petroglyphs were still common though, and some less advanced societies continued using them much longer, even until contact with Western culture was made in the 20th century. Petroglyphs have been found in all parts of the globe except Antarctica with highest concentrations in parts of Africa, Scandinavia, Siberia, southwestern North America and Australia.

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Meaning

These images probably had deep cultural and religious significance for the societies that created them; in many cases this significance remains for their descendants. Many petroglyphs are thought to represent some kind of not-yet-fully understood symbolic or ritual language. Later glyphs from the Nordic Bronze Age in Scandinavia seem to refer to some form of territorial boundary between tribes, in addition to possible religious meanings. It also appears that local or regional dialects from similar or neighboring peoples exist. The Siberian inscriptions almost look like some early form of runes, although there is not thought to be any relationship between them. They are not yet well understood.

The West Virginia glyphs are worth noting for the controversy that erupted over them in the 1980s. Barry Fell, a retired professor of marine biology at Harvard University, published an article in 1983, describing how he had deciphered petroglyphs in several places in southern West Virginia to have been written in Ogam, an Irish Celtic script dating back to the 6th to 8th century AD, and that they were in fact a detailed description of the nativity of Christ. Fell is noted as promoting a theory of North America as having been visited by Irish, Iberian, Libyan, and Egyptian explorers "some 2,000 to 2,500 years ago".

In fact, Fell's methods involved an almost arbitrary grouping of markings, an interpretation of them as the only consonants of Ogam, and the addition of vowels and horizontal stem lines where he saw fit. This allowed him to decide which of three consonants each glyph should represent. Fell's work was subsequently debunked by linguists and archaeologists from several countries, to which Fell responded by accusing them of being "too damn lazy" to read his writings, and of being "ignorant".

Some researchers have noticed the resemblance of different styles of petroglyphs across different continents; while it is expected that all people would be inspired by their surroundings, it is harder to explain the common styles. This could be mere coincidence, or an indication that certain groups of people migrated widely from some initial common area.

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List of petroglyph sites

Petroglyphs can be found at:

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Asia-Pacific

Rock carving on Cheung Chau Island, Hong Kong. This 3000-year-old rock carving was reported by geologists in 1970. It consists of two groups of similarly carved lines surrounding small depressions