We were not the first to see the engraving, for it is unlikely that it was carved into a hillside centuries or millennia ago. Venezuelan archaeologist José Maria Cruxent even recorded it in his diaries in the 1940s, and there were certainly visitors before that.
The Cerro Pintado (Painted Hill) site in Venezuela’s Amazonas state is a local landmark and a well-known fixture on the itineraries of travelers on the Middle Orinoco River.
However, watching the huge snake carved into the hillside immediately sparked both our sense of wonder and scientific curiosity. Why a snake? Why did its creators climb a high granite hill to place it there? But what do the other engravings revolving around it mean?
All these questions and more swirled around our small group as we stood sticky and mosquito-bitten in the hillside savannah. Its unique status made it even more intriguing.
Although giant examples of prehistoric rock art have been found elsewhere in the world, these appear to be the largest. As mentioned earlier, some of these were already known to archaeologists; but our team has documented others, including those along the Colombian border.
The results reveal a high prevalence of these monumental engravings in the region. The subjects of these symbolic works include snakes, humans and centipedes. Animals probably played an important role in the mythologies of the people who made them. The results were published in the journal Antiquity.
New sites to review
During our visit to Cerro Pintado in 2015, we assumed that the huge 42-foot-long engraving of a serpent (possibly representing a boa or anaconda native to the region) stood in splendid isolation. Previous scholars have observed that many rock shelters in the surrounding savannah house prehistoric paintings, and we have already seen numerous engravings near our excavation sites.
Although often numerous or quite large, none of these sites shared the truly monumental scale of the Cerro Pintado engravings. Its apparent uniqueness led us to dutifully return with a drone to get better views of the extremely difficult-to-access panel. But from our initial work in the field, we suspected there was more to uncover about the rock art of the region.
Our guide, Juan Carlos García, a local educator and photographer, had traveled the area well and had many ideas to share. “See that hill,” he informed us bluntly, pointing to the Colombian shore as we surveyed the islands that separate the calm middle course of the Orinoco River from its turbulent upper reaches. There is another snake as big as Pintado behind him.”
We were beyond excited at the prospect of another snake. Also, was there a set of motifs accompanying it? Was it really that big and could it be seen from afar? These questions remained unanswered due to the lack of scientific permits in Colombia or because even if we had permits, it was not time to look for new places. After four campaigns in Venezuela, our fieldwork funding ended in 2017, leaving Cerro Pintado as a one-and-only location for archaeology.
Fortunately, the project’s principal investigator, José Oliver from the UCL Institute of Archaeology, enabled the Colombian side to return to his research in 2018. The results of careful systematic research were shared among the team in enthusiastic texts and emails. , confirmed that there was not just one snake, but several more. They were also comparable in size to the Pintado and were clearly related, but each had its own characteristics.
Natalia Lozada Mendieta, the project’s doctoral candidate and now assistant professor at the University of Los Andes in Colombia, also returned in 2021 and 2022 to find more snakes. Eventually, the entire original team reunited on the field in 2023. Collectively and with the help of local guides, we have collected a database of 13 extensive rock art sites, including more than 150 individual engravings.
Striking motifs
For us, snakes were the most striking motifs; However, giant centipedes, people dancing or playing instruments, and mysterious geometric shapes of unknown purpose did not fail to impress. Although not as unique as previously thought, Cerro Pintado is now accompanied by a constellation of related sites with a truly monumental rock art tradition.
Massive prehistoric petroglyphs, the scientific term for rock engravings, are not unknown. Whales and deer are depicted in the Stone Age art of Norway, and life-size giraffes and camels are known in Niger and Saudi Arabia respectively.
Highly visible or conspicuous rock art like this is often assumed to communicate important ideas or concepts. Although their exact meaning is lost, their impact can be felt through their physicality, that is, their size and placement.
In our case, we are fortunate to notice recurring themes in the indigenous cosmologies of northern South America that refer to giant serpents as creators and guardians of rivers, including the Milky Way, the great “river” in the sky. But they are also threatening, predatory and lethal.
This information enriches our understanding of the archaeological record. The snakes were intended to be viewed from a distance, reflecting a common understanding of the world and its inhabitants. We argue that it is this concentration of enormous works of pre-Columbian art that makes the Middle Orinoco stand out as a unique hotspot.
They appear to be the largest in the world and speak to a contested but clearly communicative cultural landscape that we are only beginning to understand in the pre-Columbian period.
More importantly, as regional tourism expands with each passing year, these areas increasingly need to be protected; This is an activity in which indigenous people should have a leading voice. There are undoubtedly dozens more sites to be encountered, recorded and hopefully preserved in this unique monumental tradition.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Fieldwork, data collection and analysis were funded by a Leverhulme Trust Research Grant (RPG-234-2014). Philip Riris received funding from a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship (PF2\180065) and an Antiquarian Society Research Fellowship. It is currently funded by the AHRC (AH/X002217/1).
Fieldwork, data collection and analysis were funded by a Leverhulme Trust Research Grant (RPG-234-2014). José Oliver received funding from the Fundación de Investigaciones Arqueológicas Nacionales-Colombia (FIAN-Proyecto 505, 2018).
Natalia Lozada Mendieta received funding from the Centro de Creacion e Investigacion de la Facultad de Artes y Humanidades of the University of Los Andes.