Stunning aerial shots of India's prehistoric art [Image copyright BBC Marathi]
Posted on 10/01/2018 4:59:19 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
The rock carvings -- known as petroglyphs -- have been discovered in their thousands atop hillocks in the Konkan region of western Maharashtra. Mostly discovered in the Ratnagiri and Rajapur areas, a majority of the images etched on the rocky, flat hilltops remained unnoticed for thousands of years... animals, birds, human figures and geometrical designs are all depicted. The way the petroglyphs have been drawn, and their similarity to those found in other parts of the world, have led experts to believe that they were created in prehistoric times and are possibly among the oldest ever discovered. "Our first deduction from examining these petroglyphs is that they were created around 10,000BC," the director of the Maharashtra state archaeology department, Tejas Garge, told the BBC. The credit for their discovery goes to a group of explorers led by Sudhir Risbood and Manoj Marathe, who began searching for the images in earnest after observing a few in the area. Many were found in village temples and played a part in local folklore... Mr Garge says the images appear to have been created by a hunter-gatherer community which was not familiar with agriculture. "We have not found any pictures of farming activities. But the images depict hunted animals and there's detailing of animal forms. So this man knew about animals and sea creatures. That indicates he was dependent on hunting for food." ... "Most of the petroglyphs show familiar animals. There are images of sharks and whales as well as amphibians like turtles," Mr Garge adds. But this begs the question of why some of the petroglyphs depict animals like rhinoceroses and hippos which aren't found in India. Did the people who created them migrate to India from Africa? Or were these animals once found in India?
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Stunning aerial shots of India's prehistoric art [Image copyright BBC Marathi]
Thanks Red Badger.
Antediluvian bump
These are the search results from "prehistoric" in topic titles, I suspect there are many others, older than 2014:
Best petroglyphs I ever saw
Or perhaps Gronk came to the realization that using a sharp stick to steal veggies was heck of a lot easier than using the sharp stick to to dig furrows, plant and wait. Thus allowing the hunter-gatherers to concentrate on BBQ's and discover beer making. Sounds legit.
Beware ! Honey Badgers next 10 miles.
Mushroom, mushroom...
They are nice, and don't appear to have any unknown or imaginary critters. By contrast, people were doing this type of thing in 3-D perhaps thousands of years earlier, at Gobekli Tepe.
I know he's closing in on the end of his career, but I didn't realize he was that old. ;^)
I don't buy the idea that shapes only visible from the sky were being made by hunter-gatherers. Any kind of non-survival-oriented tasks were probably enabled by settled ag, and nothing else. That's not to say they didn't hunt, but ag permits fairly long periods of waiting around, while hunting and gathering is basically continual.
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