Posted on 10/06/2015 6:17:04 AM PDT by Red Badger
Bronze Age rock carving depicts a Mediterranean style boat.
Above: A graphic representation of the Auga dos Cebros petroglyph, showing the obvious boat feature at the bottom. This image is a screenshot of the same as depicted in the YouTube video (see below).
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A unique petroglyph discovered near the Atlantic coast of northern Spain has provided evidence that contacts between ancient Atlantic cultures and contemporaneous cultures of the Mediterranean were earlier and perhaps more intense than previously thought.
The rock art panel, located in the Costa dos Castros region and known as Auga dos Cebros, depicts a boat with a structure, including a combination of oars and sails, that match the general design and concept of seafaring vessels of Mediterranean cultures roughly 4,000 years ago. The typical Atlantic equivalent boats of the time were known to feature primarily oar-propelled boats without sails, with a different overall form.
When first encountered, the petroglyph piqued the interest of researcher Javier Costas Goberna, who first began searching for comparable evidence and renderings in the archaeological record throughout Europe. Coming up empty, he turned his attention to researching the Mediterranean regions. His search here proved fruitful, discovering evidence of very similarly designed vessels as evidenced by a variety of archaeological finds. In fact, fellow researcher María Ruiz-Gálvez Priego identified the Auga dos Cebros boat as being remarkably similar to Aegean model vessels of approximately 2000 B.C., particularly as they were depicted on ancient Cretan stamps. Like the Auga dos Cebros boat, those vessels featured outwardly-opened bows and sterns, masts and rigging that held sails as the primary means of propulsion, and lines that are interpreted to represent oars and/or oarsmen for secondary, additional propulsion.
Combined with the fact that the Auga dos Cebros petroglyph represents the only such depiction of this type of seafaring vessel in the Atlantic/European region characteristic to the Bronze Age time period, the researchers posit that the Auga dos Cebros boat likely traveled from a Mediterranean point of origin, suggesting contact or trade with Atlantic cultures as much as 4,000 years ago.
More about this important discovery, including images, can be found in the Dig Ventures article by Maiya Pina-Dacier.
VIDEO AT Link.........................
The ancient Cretans were way ahead of their time. Postal service hadn’t been invented yet, but they were already making stamps...to be ready.
I’ve always wondered about the cave drawings of animals and such found in various places in Europe, especially the Lascaux cave drawings in France.
They always have very exact depictions of animals, detailed and anatomically correct and sometimes colored exactly as the animals actually appeared. But depictions of HUMANS alongside the same drawings are depicted as stick figures, with little or no details.
Archaeologists have almost always stated that these drawings are religious in nature and may have been the early man’s way of getting some sort of power over the animals derived from the depiction of the animals to aid them in their hunting.
After considering these things for a long while, I decided that the archaeologists are all wrong.
Who would have had the time to paint these detailed drawings on the cave walls? Not the men who would be out all day hunting for survival of their families.
Who would have had any interest in decorating the caves? Certainly not the men, since they only slept there.
The answer was the WOMEN!
They used the pigments from berries and plants plus ochre and other colors from the minerals found around the caves. They have a natural eye for details, and could have lots of time on their hands for such intellectual expressions. The women would have decorated their living quarters while the men were away on the hunt.
But what about the ‘stick figures’ used for the humans? How did that work?
Anybody who has had any experience with sports or military planning of attacks should recognize the drawings immediately. Like the X’s and O’s on the coach’s blackboard, or the general’s map of the battlefield with his men versus the enemy on it, they are actual plans for the hunt.
The men come back from the hunt and see the animal drawings on the wall, then ‘add’ their own stick figures, representing themselves as hunters, going after the bison or stags on the wall. They were either retelling their exploits of the day as to how they brought down the huge animal, or they were planning their attack for tomorrow’s and future hunts.
There is also another possible explanation. The animals depicted are ‘shopping lists’ from the women to the men saying, “Bring back a bison for dinner!” as she points to the bison on the wall, and the stick figures are the cavemen, which she would point to, then to the cavemen, saying this is how you are supposed to do it!
Brilliant! I love this kind of analysis. And it seems quite reasonable.
Go even further east and compare the boat to pictures found in the desert east of the Nile.
I noticed the figurehead on the ship had an appearance of a dragon or animal.
According to Wiki:
History
Figurehead Hall at Marinmuseum, Karlskrona Sweden
Although earlier ships had often had some form of bow ornamentation (e.g. the Viking ships of ca. A.D. 800–1100), the general practice was introduced with the galleons of the 16th century, as the figurehead as such could not come to be until ships had an actual stemhead structure on which to place it.[1] The menacing appearance of toothy and bug-eyed figureheads on Viking ships also had the protective function of warding off evil spirits.[2] The Egyptians placed figures of holy birds on the prow while the Phoenicians used horses representing speed. The Ancient Greeks used boars’ heads to symbolise acute vision and ferocity while Roman boats often mounted a carving of a centurion representing valour in battle. In northern Europe, serpents, bulls, dolphins and dragons were customary and by the 13th Century, the swan was used representing grace and mobility.[3]
This would seem to indicate that the ship was from either a Phoenician civilization or a northern European one. The Phoenicians had settlements in Spain. The Vikings just visited...................8^)
Spot on conjecture! Thanks for sharing. You’ll love Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams; it streams on Netflix.
Some say that the people who ‘ended up’ as Phoenicians were the same people who founded Dynastic Egypt and left the pictures in the eastern desert on their way from Mesopotamia in to the Nile.
Phoenicians were a colonizing seafaring people. They founded Carthage and other settlements across the Mediterranean area. The coexisted with the Egyptians and the Israelite kings. King Hiram of Tyre was a Phoenician king who helped Solomon build the first temple in Jerusalem, furnishing wood, carpenters and stone masons as well as ships for hire to bring in imported goods. Jezebel was a Phoenician princess who married Ahab, the king of the Northern kingdom of Israel after the split from Judah-Benjamin. The Egyptians of the Old Testament were from various descendants of conquering peoples, but each new dynasty seemed to want to keep the Egyptian traditions alive, instead of implementing new ones. This practice muddied the history of Egypt for centuries, finally ending with Cleopatra who was a GREEK!....................
Sorry to burst your bubble. The men who hunted saw the living animals and made the great illustrations on how they ran. The women only got to see the butchered parts, the steaks. If the women painted them for a dinner menu, you would see roasts, chops, and steaks on the walls. The men with an eye for detail painted them. They kids made the stick figures.
Chauvanist!.................B^)
Were you pinged to this article ?
Interesting theory.
I’ve always suspected it was usually the shaman or the equivalent doing the paintings, Otherwise 80% of the rocks out west would be decorated. With as many people that lived in various continents over the millennia, if anyone who wanted to tried to do a rock drawing or three how many bare rocks would we see?
Pick a society. Greek, Roman, Viking, Spanish...how many people have lived there over he past 10,000 years? Millions? Hundreds of millions?
How many bare rocks would you see anywhere if everyone, over the past 10,000 years, just like we do today tried to decorate the walls?
I don’t see it. Similar to the Native American cultures, I think it was most likely the Shaman or Priest, whatever designation was used, who was responsible for rock art, whatever it’s quality.
The one exception I think may be places like the Egyptian tombs and such, those were more likely done by hired artists.
This one is similar to many in the American West. I would place it in the shaman category. This would probably be the location of the meeting, and this is the ancient equivalent of the historical markers on our highways. But much more revered at that time.
I was, and I thought I’d pinged the list, guess I missed. Thanks fmdj.
Thanks Red Badger.
Why must all cave and rock drawings always have some ‘religious significance’ attached to them? Will future archaeologists see our graffiti street artists as shaman or religious artists when digging up NYC ruins?
Mexican and other American Latino cultures have used murals an wall paintings for centuries, some with religious meaning, but by no means all.
Hobos of the American Depression era left marks for their brethren on the road to indicate danger or free meals or safe abode places.
Military men of all ages have left marks on local geography for references and as a way of saying “Kilroy was here” even in Roman times and before.
In the movie “Castaway” starring Tom Hanks, a true story of a guy lost on an island in the Pacific, he made an analemma on the cave wall using the sunlight shining thru a hole, to use as a calendar. Will some future archaeologist discover this cave long after the movie has been forgotten in the ashes of history and see some astronomical religious significance like Stonehenge?
There are many reasons why people have left their marks on caves and rocks over the millenia but I doubt that they all have any religious basis. I’d imagine a lot of them may just be for decoration......................
I used to wonder about the same thing but came to a different conclusion.
For me, it closely mimics the process used when I was being trained to hunt AFV, IFV and APC so many many moons ago.
The vehicles were always done in as much detail as functionally possible. The methods of attack were drawn in a much more minimalist style.
Imo, those cave paintings are hunting lessons for the young sons.
Quite possibly. They may be a guide to show the methods used.................
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