A US research team has found some of the largest rock art in North America in an underground cave in the southeastern United States.
Tennessee – A group of researchers has in the USA made an amazing find: In the US state of Alabama, the archaeological team discovered hundreds of underground rock paintings, some of which are said to be almost 3000 years old. The team led by Jan Simek from the University of Tennessee has now shared their results in their academic work published by Cambridge University became.
Among the paintings in the so-called “19. unnamed cave” are said to be some of the largest cave paintings ever discovered in North America. Covering an area of more than 400 square meters, the rock walls display abstract motifs, animals and other figures from the pre-Columbian period – long before Christopher Columbus settled America in 1492. According to the research report, the images are said to have been made between 133 and 949 BC. be created.
Cave painting in the USA: computer program allows paintings to be seen in their entirety
Particularly noteworthy: In some of the cave passages in which the paintings were discovered, the ceiling is said to have been just 60 centimeters high. Some of the motifs could only be seen by the scientists when they were lying down. Only photogrammetry revealed the full extent of the paintings. With this measurement method, individual photographs are evaluated and then converted from 2D data to a 3D model. Only then were some of the motifs revealed that would have remained invisible to the naked eye.
In the “19. unnamed cave” according to which more than 16,000 overlapping images were brought together using a computer program to form the overall picture. The virtual depiction is the first complete image of the rock painting of the cave, which is around three kilometers below the surface of the earth. Murals were first found there in 1979. In 2017, Jan Simek’s team started the 3D work on it.
Cave paintings show abstract motifs of humanoid figures and giant snakes
Motifs revealed by the research team through the 3D model of the cave include a 12-foot-long round-headed snake with a diamond-shaped pattern on its back; the largest motif of the murals to date. “The glyph carved into the wall’s sedimentary layer is adjacent to a natural crack in the ceiling that appears to increase in length, suggesting the serpent was emerging from the rock,” the research report reads. It is assumed that the motif is based on the diamond rattlesnake; an animal worshiped by the indigenous peoples of southeastern North America that is now extinct.
In addition to the snake glyph, motifs of humanoid figures could be seen on the recordings. The figures, some of which were 1.80 meters tall, had square heads and bodies and were painted with vertical or horizontal lines. Jan Simek and Co. do not know exactly what these motifs represent. “These anthropomorphic figures do not correspond to any of the ethnographically documented characters from the stories of the indigenous peoples of the Southeast, nor to the iconographic materials from archaeological finds,” the experts’ report reads. However, due to some matching features to other rock paintings, they assume that the paintings from the “19th unknown cave” had religious origins.
Archaeological excavations keep making remarkable discoveries: Almost two weeks ago, a research team in Turkey found what is probably the largest underground city in the world, after another group had already uncovered a complete Roman city from antiquity at the beginning of last year. (rku)
#year #cave #paintings #discovered
