Messages from the past; the petroglyphs of El Hierro Island (original) (raw)
Related papers
2020
Rock Iberian-Guanche inscriptions have been found in all Canary Islands including La Palma: they consist of incise (with few exceptions) lineal scripts which have been done by using the Iberian semi-syllabary that was used in Iberia and France during the 1st millennium BC until few centuries AD .This confirms First Canarian Inhabitants navigation among Islands. In this paper we analyze three of these rock inscriptions found in westernmost La Palma Island: hypotheses of transcription and translation show that they are short funerary and religious text, like of those found widespread through easternmost Lanzarote, Fuerteventura and also Tenerife Islands. They frequently name “Aka” (dead), “Ama” (mother godness) and “Bake” (peace), and methodology is mostly based in phonology and semantics similarities between Basque language and prehistoric Iberian-Tartessian semi-syllabary transcriptions. These Iberian-Guanche scripts are widespread in La Palma usually together with spiral and circul...
Tindaya volcano is a sacred Guanche (or Majo)* mountain, Canary Islands, Spain. This mountain was probably a religious / pilgrimage place for Guanche /Majo people. Many of its rocks are covered by lineal and figurative motifs with incised or picketed (carved) technology the most abundant reported are podomorphs, which in the Atlantic European façade usually point towards either the summer solstice sunset or the sunset yearly arch at these latitudes (Northwest direction). Podomorphs are generally admixed with other motifs in the rock panel. Among these motifs are the so called Ibero-Guanche incised Lineal Megalithic Scripts or pre-Guanche-Iberian signs. These are similar to those found in other Canary Islands, Algerian Sahara Desert or Iberia, some of them scripted in dolmens themselves (5-3,000 years BC). This finding at Tindaya volcano supports a very early Fuerteventura Island, longer before than Punic or Roman influence, if any; podomorphs todays Bronze Age chronology in Iberia supports ancient peopling in Fuerteventura and other Canary Islands. In the present paper we analyse these incise Iberian-Guanche (or earlier) writing and put forward a mainly religious/ funeral meaning in the context of the Paleolithic/Neolithic widespread Religion of the Mother. The Saharo-Canarian cultural circle may have been the origin of Eurafrican and Mediterranean Lineal scripts, like Runes, Iberian Tartessian, Etruscan, Lepontic, Minoan Lineal A and others. Particularly Iberian-Guanche scripts and their probable precursor Linela Megalithic signs also present in Sahara supports that Saharan people migration when desertification started about 10,000 BC was origin of this culture. *Majos= Lanzarote and Fuerteventura Islands inhabitants.
Int J Modern Genet, 2021
Lineal Megalithic/Paleolithic Lineal signs/lines may have a variety of purposes or representations. Some authors have proposed they represent sky, planets and stars and their movements, space/time representations or others, including letters/syllables or symbols/events. Some are painted, other incised; the latter are relatively more common in Megalithic scripts. Man is "writing" or creating handmade figures on stones /rocks and other supports, which sometimes have intentionally been polished since Paleolithic times: at least 70,000 years BP (Blombos Cave, South Africa). Megalithic script is named because it is associated to megalithic structures, although not exclusively. Von Petzinger 40,000 years old "symbols" and/or writing are extended worldwide in Paleolithic caves and other rocks. Man connection was worldwide in Paleolithic times. Canary Islands incise or picketed lineal writing exists with a transcribed and translated meaning collection of signs (Ibero-Guanche or Latin inscriptions and Lybic ones). Also, other African/European/Mediterranean lineal scripts there exist and examples are given in the present paper. Fuerteventura Island contains in addition many small or bigger stones and rocks with these Paleolithic/Megalithic incised lines all over its territory. About timing in which these stones that were incised by man, we are only referring to a kind of stone crafting. However, we do not discard that they were made by man several thousand years BP. Some Paleolithic/Megalithic scripts are mixed with clear Iberian semi-syllabary signs in Fuerteventura and other Canary Islands. They may reflect the evolution of more ancient Megalithic scripts to lineal writings like those detailed in the present paper and others. Finally, writing concept should be redefined whenever more precise data and dating be available.
To paraphrase Claude Lévi-Strauss, stones ‘are good to think’. By virtue of their place of origin, durability, colour, reflectivity, and malleability, stones can be potent materializations of the social relationships, moral values, and political landscape of human individuals and groups. This paper considers the raw material, form, visual imagery, and biography of a particular stone object – an engraved slate plaque from a Late Neolithic burial in Portugal – and considers how the plaque’s materiality structured – and was structured by – social and cultural life in the Neolithic. Although the focus will be on a singular object, we draw comparisons with other engraved plaques from Neolithic Iberia, with other objects with similar iconography, and with the material culture of the Iberian Peninsula both prior to and after the production of the engraved stone plaques.
Lives of stone, lives of people: re-viewing the engraved plaques of Copper Age Iberia (2004)
For over a century prehistorians have approached the engraved stone plaques of the Iberian late Neolithic and Copper Age (3000–2500 BC) from a monolithic and idealist perspective, viewing the plaques as representations of the Mother Goddess. Most have not addressed the plaques’ variability, their method of manufacture, the organization of their production, or their biographies. This article presents new interpretations of the Iberian plaques based on the first comprehensive on-line catalogue of the plaques – the Engraved Stone Plaque Registry and Inquiry Tool (ESPRIT) (Lillios 2004) – which holds records for over 1100 plaques, each unique, from over 200 sites in Portugal and Spain. Analyses of the plaques’ raw material, style, chaîne opératoire, and distribution over space suggest that different plaque types had different functions and meanings, which shifted over time. Two plaque types: the Classic plaques and the Biomorphic Simple plaques are considered in this article. In their diverse forms, the Iberian plaques appear to have been durable records of regional and local group identities and could have contributed toward legitimating and perpetuating an ideology of inherited social difference in the Iberian late Neolithic and Copper Age.
Images in their time: new insights into the Galician petroglyphs
Image, Memory and Monumentality. Archaeological engagements with the material world: a celebration of the academic achievements of Professor Richard Bradley, 2012
Richard Bradley’s research on Iberian open-air rock art has proved essential in understanding its relationship with prehistoric landscapes. However, there remain a number of constraints and issues surrounding the interpretation of open-air rock art which are considered here. A consensus about the chronology of this phenomenon (which places it in the local Bronze Age) has been challenged, with some researchers claiming an Iron Age date for many petroglyphs. This is subject to critical scrutiny and here rejected. Matters are not helped by the absence of a comprehensive catalogue of the open-air rock art, and the fact that most sites have never been studied in depth. An opportunity is also taken to review the interpretation of Galician rock art as an open or hardly-restricted phenomenon, drawing attention to physical constraints that existed on its observation. Another controversial issue among specialists has been the precise relationship between Galician rock art and the domestic sphere, leading to a presentation of dichotomous ‘sacred’ versus ‘domestic’ areas. While contemporary settlements might be difficult to detect, this dichotomous image is shown to be erroneous, with human activity being demonstrated in the surroundings of many petroglyphs.
2018
The Canary island of La Palma (ancient Benahoare) is one the richest island territory of the world in rock art manifestations (Martín Rodríguez and Pais Pais, 1996); there are dozens of petroglyph stations in a territory of only 700 km2. These groups of petroglyphs, carved in a delicate way by picking or lining techniques, often are representations of geometric forms (spirals, concentric circles, meanders, etc.) of great beauty. If their number were not enough to illustrate the importance that they had for the former aboriginal settlers of the island, the situation and orientation of some of them would confirm the ritual significance that these artistic manifestations must have had for them. Across the island, important rock art stations such as "El Verde" (discovered in 1982 and named originally "El Cementerio", Pais Pais and Herrera García, 2007) can be found. A beautiful phenomenon of light and shadow can be observed there, illuminating the petroglyphs on site...
International Journal of Modern Anthropology, 2019
Latin" rock scripts were discovered 30 years ago in Lanzarote and Fuerteventura Islands (Canary Islands). However, they are an incised linear writing which lacks Q, H, P and T frequent Latin letters and translation into Latin has not been possible. A transcription and a translation hypothesis was proposed long ago because scripts were almost identical to those of the Iberian semi-syllabary which was used in Iberia and France during first millennium BC; "Latin" scripts were named "Iberian-Guanche" and were mostly religious and funerary. This type of lineal incise writing is present in all seven Canary Islands and they may have been unnoticed because all other islands except Lanzarote and Fuerteventura are humid and covered by vegetation. This type of linear writings are, like Iberian, similar to Runes (Atlantic and Central Europe),Old Italian scripts (Raetian, Venetic, Lepontic, Etruscan) and Sitovo and Gradeshnistsa scripts (Bulgaria, 5 th millennium BC). Language behind Iberian-Guanche scripts might be related to both Berber and Old Basque languages. People who wrote "Iberian-Guanche" inscriptions seem to be Canary Island inhabitants and not visitors. Genes (people) of present and past Canary Islanders are difficult only to assign to North Africa because gene flow between North Africa and Iberia existed in prehistoric times and it is difficult to distinguish Iberian and North African with Canarian gene profiles. Genetics by itself is not sufficient for relating people or specific for geography, this is firmly demonstrated for mitochondrial genes. Linguistics, Culture, and Archaeology are necessary to interpret population genetics data. Extant pyramids in North Africa, Western Sahara and possibly Tenerife, existence of prehistoric artifacts and rock calendars ("Quesera"/Cheeseborad lunisolar calendar at Lanzarote and others at Gran Canaria Island) and presence of Cart-Ruts on Lanzarote volcano tops, may indicate an older date for Canarian prehistory than that of Punic/Roman presence. Finally Canarian prehistoric findings have been long neglected and forgotten but a common Iberian-Guanche rock writing culture existed in Canary Islands.