![\"Animal](\"https:\/\/images.newscientist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/03112322\/SEI_206701257.jpg?width=1200\")
<\/div>Animal etchings into rocks along the Orinoco river in South America<\/p>\n
Philip Riris et al.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n
Prehistoric engravings of giant snakes along South America\u2019s Orinoco river are among the largest examples of rock art we know of anywhere in the world, with some stretching for more than 40 metres.<\/p>\n
The Orinoco is one of the world\u2019s largest rivers, flowing through Venezuela and along its border with Colombia. \u201cThere\u2019s an outstanding record of rock art along the Orinoco, especially on the Venezuelan side,\u201d says Jos\u00e9 Oliver<\/a> at University College London. \u201cUsually, they are paintings found in rock shelters.\u201d<\/p>\n Engravings are common in many open-air sites along the river, he says, but not all of them have been officially recorded.<\/p>\n Since 2015, Oliver and his colleagues have taken several trips to areas along the Colombian and Venezuelan margins of the river to build a better picture of its rock engravings.<\/p>\n \u201cIt wasn\u2019t difficult to encounter new sites,\u201d says team member Philip Riris<\/a> at Bournemouth University in the UK. \u201cEvery time you go round a corner, there was always more.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Of the 157 rock art sites that the team has managed to visit, 13 were made up of engravings that were at least 4 metres tall. \u201cAnything that size is monumental in our view,\u201d says Riris. \u201cThat means they\u2019re often visible from quite far away, maybe 500 metres to a kilometre.\u201d<\/p>\n Most of the engravings depict people, mammals, birds, centipedes, scrolls and geometric shapes, but snakes were among the largest motifs, with the biggest measuring 42 metres across. In the mythology of the Indigenous Orinoco people, anacondas and boa constrictors are primordial creators, so are held in high regard, says Riris.<\/p>\n The prominence of the rock art along the river suggests that the ancient carvings may have been a territorial marker to signal that a certain group lives there, but not necessarily a warning to stay away. \u201cThe engravings may not be exclusionary, but rather an inclusionary practice that was shared among the communities,\u201d says Riris.<\/p>\n Ceramics unearthed in the region and dated to 2000 years ago have similar motifs to the ones on the engravings, which suggests that the rock art was similarly created two millennia ago.<\/p>\n The team hopes to discover even more of these carvings and collect clues about their origins and purpose. For example, many of them appear near rock shelters with burial grounds, which suggests they may be connected to ancient funerary practices.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a valuable piece of research,\u201d says Andr\u00e9s Troncoso<\/a> at the University of Chile. \u201cIt sheds light about the rock art of a non-well-known area of South America, continuing to fill up our knowledge of this region.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEuro-American minds often jump to the mammoths, cave lions and large mammals of Pleistocene cave sites in western Europe when they think of rock art,\u201d says Patrick Roberts<\/a> at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Germany. \u201cHowever, the giant snake engravings studied in the paper are some of the largest single rock art images anywhere in the world and come from the heart of a lowland tropical environment.\u201d<\/p>\n Topics:<\/p>\n<\/section><\/div>\n