We learned to paint thousands of years ago. We used cave walls to print our art, and one of the first things we painted was a penis. That we love drawing penises is a fact, but in this context, we are referring to the concerns that our ancestors had. In recent years we have made a lot of discoveries such as a petroglyph of a gigantic snake, an “illustrated story” in rock or proof that the Sahara was not yet a desert 4,000 years ago.
But there is one series of engravings that remain a mystery: the strange 900 petroglyphs of Qatar.
Petroglyphs. A petroglyph is a carving or scraping in rock, and we have found them in practically every part of the world. When the first writing systems began to appear 5,000 years ago, populations began to leave aside the petroglyphs to switch to the new code.
Normally, petroglyphs correspond to everyday shapes of those who made them, such as animals, hunting scenes or religious symbols for rituals. In Qatar, specifically in Al Jassasiya, these engravings are… different.
Multitude of shapes. In 1957 we discovered the first carvings in Al Jassasiya, a region north of Qatar and one of the 12 petroglyph sites that we know of in the country. From the beginning, these engravings attracted attention and, for six weeks in 1973, a Danish team set out on a journey to catalog the entire site.
Over the years, we have continued to find engravings in the rock (on the ground), until we reach 900, more or less. The problem is that we still don’t know exactly what many of them represent.
“Unique”. Ferhan Sakal is the head of excavation and archaeological site management at Qatar Museums and, speaking to CNN, stated that “although rock art is common in the Arabian Peninsula, some of the carvings at Al Jassasiya are unique and cannot be can be found anywhere else. He goes on to state that the carvings “represent a high degree of creativity and observational skills on the part of the artists who made them.”
Although some figures are shared by other petroglyph sites in the area, researchers maintain that there are carvings at Al Jassasiya that are unique to that location. And the truth is that there are some very interesting figures.
The sizes. It is difficult to definitively state what each of the carvings symbolizes, but what is most abundant in Al Jassasiya are rosettes or rows. The most common pattern is two parallel rows of seven holes and, as we say, experts can only theorize about the possible use. Can it be religious? Maybe, but also something practical, such as holes to play games like Al Haloosa or Al Huwaila, popular entertainment in ancient times in which participants drop stones into these depressions.
The problem is that the size of the holes is irregular and some are on slopes, so it would not be practical at all. They could also have been used for pearl storage, object classification, or as systems for calculating time and tides.
Some can even be seen on Google Maps
Boats. The most striking are the oval sizes with lines on their sides. Here the theory also comes into play and it has been said that they are insects and even eyes, but it seems that the most accepted thing is that it is the overhead view of a dhow, a traditional boat. These are the unique marks that Sakal refers to and they are interesting because there are representations both in profile and from a bird’s eye view.
“It is an example of abstract thinking, since they could not see a dhow from above,” says Sakal in statements to CNN. And if one big question is what they are, the other is when they were made. There are even fewer certainties here.
The beyond. But… what if it wasn’t an eagle’s eye view, but underwater? Those who carved those ships could have dived to see the ship from below. Frances Gillespie and Faisal Abdulla Al-Naimi are two authors who have covered the carvings and comment that “this is what the boats would have looked like when they were anchored to the shores of the beaches. The oars were left in place for searching divers. of pearls they would cling to and rest every time they went up.
However, and due to the concentration of these carvings in Al Jassasiya, they may simply be the ships that helped the deceased cross from one world to another, something present in the mythology of several civilizations.
We don’t know much. “There are wild hypotheses about the age, ranging from the Neolithic to the late Islamic era,” says Sakal. On the Visit Qatar page, it is stated that some could date back to the 3rd century BC, while others would be between the 10th and 18th centuries AD. It is a huge range that coincides with Sakal’s belief that not all of them were made at the same time. , but acknowledges that they have no direct clues about the date or the reasons why they recorded those shapes in Al Jassasiya.
It seems that it will be a mystery that will accompany us for a long time, but the hypotheses help us understand a little more about what the area was like in the past and, if the circular carvings were used to catalog pearls and the ships were not spiritual but of the searchers, the industry in the region must have been very prosperous.
Imágenes | Google Maps, Elspamo4, Visitqatar, StellarD, StellarD (2)
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