8,000 petroglyphs, 6,000 years old, in Mexico open for view
Rock engravings or otherwise petroglyphs are shapes and images engraved on rock by our ancestors, a kind of rock art. Some of them represent everyday life events like hunting, some of them represent the stars and some of them even look as some kind of communication.
At the site of Narigua in the hills of Coahuila in North Mexico is an area covering 2000 square meters. A few months ago more than 8,000 distinct carved figures were found dating back more than 6,000 years. Evidence of stone age groups have been found around the area as well as remains of cooking pots, stoves and arrowheads.
The shapes of the petroglyphs shows that they may have been used for religious purposes or as a means of communication, since most of them are not just depictions of everyday life events but more like circles, waves and other geometrical engravings. Research into the petroglyphs will probably help us understand what they were used for, as archaeologists suggest. The way that the etchings were made will also reveal the tools used for that purpose.
On some of the rocks, engravings such as crosses were found, which probably means that they were made later on by modern people. However if there is a chance that the crosses were made 6,000 ago that will make researching for the meaning of the engravings even more interesting.
The National Institute of Anthropology and History is now preparing to open the site for tourists, a move that could probably also attract more researchers to investigate into the meaning of the petroglyphs.
By John Black