When we travel, I send postcards to friends and family, although in recent years it is getting increasingly difficult. Postcards are cheap and very nice, and tell the receiver where we were and that we were thinking about them. The problem is buying a stamp, nobody knows how much it costs. A much bigger problem is to find a post-box that will send your postcard out of the country; last summer in Denmark we drove 60 km to find such a post-box! From Antarctica it took 14 months to arrive yo my daughter. I am not into deltiology (collecting post-cards) but I do enjoy re-reading a book to find an old post-card from a sister or a friend from a long time ago.
When I stand in front of ROCK ART, I have the same feeling as if receiving a postcard from a long time ago; somebody was here and left me this to find 2000 or 5000 years later!
Over the last decade on our travels around the world we have seen quite a lot of rock art or petroglyphs, I thought it interesting to see how similar, yet different it is; but very, very old.
In 2011 Hawai’i, on Big Island in the Volcano National Park at the southern part of the Kilauea Volcano, believed to be the home of Pele, the unpredictable goddess of fire, daughter of mother Earth and father the Sky; when she gets (easily) angry she lets lava flow with destructive force. It is an active volcano to this day.
The landscape
The Puʻuloa Petroglyphs, translated from Hawaiian it means the "Hill-of Long- Life". It is sacred to the people of Hawai’i. There are more than 23,000 petroglyphs pecked into hardened lava and dated to 1200-1450 AD. Remember people arrived in Hawai’i around 800-900 AD.
Most images are abstract (84%) cycles or dots; the local tribes placed the umbilical cord in a circle to ensure the newborn baby a long life. The first Hawai’ian people did not have a written language; their history is imbedded in their story telling, songs, dances and of course in their rock art.
In 2016 northern Namibia, Twyfelfontein (meaning ‘the doubtful spring’) created by the San Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert, nomads, who have used the spring for more than 4000 years. They speak a language with clicks and call they site /Ui- //aes, meaning the ‘jumping water hole’. Here are more than 2000 images on 235 sandstone surfaces located along the Huab dry River.
The landscape
Interviews with present-day San Bushmen who live some 800km away from Twyfelfontein has revealed that they consider it a sacred site left to them by their ancestors and the creator of the earth. Only the elders are allowed to come near the rock signs, it is a taboo for children to play here. It means bad luck if you destroy the signs.
The interesting thing is that these tribes are genetically one of the oldest or earliest people based on the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA, one of the ancestral tribes or our genetical Adam and Eva. This convinces me that creating rock art is something very basic for humans, we want to leave a mark for ourselves and our family; to show our surroundings.
Some of the panels are believed to be a school with animals and their foot prints showing the children what to look for when hunting. We arrived around 2 o’clock in the afternoon with heat of 46’C; there was a shade for the jeeps, but no cover on the path leading up to the rock art.
Most of our group gave up and came back because it was too hot; the battery in my black camera stopped to work, it was so hot I could not touch it; luckily, I had a spare simple camera. I was proud to make the walk and take the photos, but felt very bad coming out of the heat.
I find the images of animals very realistic and made by artists who knew their models and were able to create them.
2017 USA, Utah Capitol Reef National Park along the Freemont River; petroglyphs created by the Fremont and Ancestral Puebloan people lived here between 600-1300 A.D.
The landscape
2017 USA, Utah, the Newspaper Rock Monument on the way to the Needles of Canyonland National Part. The first carvings here were made around 2,000 years ago, left by people from the Archaic, Anasazi, Fremont, Navajo, Anglo, and Pueblo cultures.
The landscape
In Navajo, the rock is called "Tse' Hone'" which means ‘a rock that tells a story’. There are more than 650 images on the rock. The images are carved into the desert varnish on the rock like in the Negev.
2017 Jordan, Wadi Rum with more than 25,000 petroglyphs, 20,000 inscriptions, and 154 archaeological sites it is UNESCO Heritage site.
The landscape
Our Jordanian guide only showed us two panels; but this may be something to come back to see in greater details.
2018 French Polynesia we saw rock art on several different islands. The people here are of the same cultural circle as the people of Hawai’i.
On the small coral atoll of Maupiti of the Society Islands. We drove around the island on the beach road by bicycle, it took a couple hours. We were told about ancient images: it took us a while to find it.
For the locals the turtle is a sign of fertility and wisdom.
The Landscape
Nuku Hiva of the Island group of the Marquesas, in the Hakahui Valley along the King’s road.
The smiling Tiki helps women get pregnant.
Hiva Ova of the Island group of the Marquesas at Puama’u, with their famous tiki statues; a temple site with the largest stone carving found outside of Easter Island, called Takaii, 2.67 m tall. From UNSCO they have demanded that the tikis be covered against the weather, so they built roofs.
The landscape
Is this a dog? or like our Polynesian guide claim - it is a lama; supporting the idea that Polynesians arrived in south America before Europeans did.
2021 Kirgizstan, Cholpon-Ata on the northern beach of Lake Isik-Kol, along the Silk Road, also called the Stone Garden. The boulders were brought down by the water of melting snow and ice from the mountains further to the north.
The landscape
The rock art here was created over the period of 1500 BC to 400 AD.
The oldest rock art was made by the Sintashta nomadic tribes; but since the 8th century BC, Scythian tribes replaced them and continued the carving of images.
Look how similar to the Negev rock art.
In summary: Rock art to me is an expression of a universal human culture, a continuous story, they documented their daily life and history, it is a way of communication that I can relate to even today. I may not know why they did it, but I find it irrelevant.
It is a postcard sent to me from ancient times, art that has been here since forever and belong to the area in which it is located.
יפה מאוד ומענין.בקירגיסטן הינו וראינו.