Ancient Messages In Stone: Norwegian Stone Age Petroglyphs Provided Information – Not Art

MessageToEagle.com – Six to seven thousand years ago Stone Age people in Norway created a number of rock drawings that depict animals, but the rock carvings were not indented to be admired as art.  Scientists who have studied a series of Norwegian Stone Age petroglyphs now suggest the ancient drawings provided vital information. These petroglyphs were ancient messages in stone.

Gamnes, is an area in Norway located between the outlet of a river and the mouth of a fjord that opens onto the Barents Sea. This region is particularly rich with rock art. Here, archaeologists have discovered petroglyphs of reindeer and moose, in herds and alone, with and without young animals.

In general, animals depicted in rock carvings are shown moving in all different directions. But in Gamnes, most of the reindeer have been drawn with their muzzles pointed in the same way.

“The reindeer are following the fjord inland. This may mean that the artist was trying to depict a migration route,” says Anja Roth Niemi, who is project manager for archaeological excavations for the University Museum in Tromsø, UiT – The Arctic University of Norway.

Niemi believes the drawings showed where the animals were located and how they moved around in the area. In short, these were vital messages from one hunter to another.

“Today, reindeer migrate with their calves in the autumn and move from the coast inland. It may have been like that in the Stone Age, too,” she says.

So far, scientists have tallied 48 figures, some of them incomplete, but they expect even more will become apparent when the lichen that covers the rock is removed.

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The selection of subjects is not that varied, which is unusual. Petroglyphs from the same period in Alta, also in northern Norway, depict boats, bear, fish and hunting scenes.

Here there are only reindeer and moose. Why would Stone Age people draw only these animals here?

For now there is no definite answer, but scientists have their theories. They think this site was a central location because many of these petroglyphs were visible from several directions. Sea levels were higher then, and when the hunters cruised by in boats they could hardly fail to spot the drawings on the coast.

“The rock art would have been very visible to people who traveled by. It seems like this was an important landmark on the journey,” says Niemi.

She thinks the lack of variety in the images says something about the importance the place had for the people who used it. Bones from the many Stone Age settlements in the area suggest that residents of coastal areas hunted reindeer. And inland, moose were important.

Perhaps the drawings were a kind of databank. This may have been a place where hunters exchanged information on animal behavior.

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