Sacred Carvings

Geoglyphs are generally a type of land art, and sometimes rock art. It is a large design or motif (generally longer than 4 metres) produced on the ground by durable elements of the landscape, so that it can be seen from a distance. A positive geoglyph is formed by the arrangement and alignment of materials on the ground in a manner akin to petroforms, while, a negative geoglyph is formed by removing part of the natural ground surface to create differently coloured or textured ground in a manner akin to petroglyphs.

Petroglyphs are rock carvings or paintings made by pecking directly on the rock. They have been found in all parts of the globe except Antarctica, dating back to approximately the Neolithic and late Upper-Paleolithic boundary (roughly 10,000 to 12,000 years ago), though some, such as those found at Kamyana Mohyla, were created earlier than this; some petroglyph sites in Australia are estimated to date back 20,000 years, and other examples of petroglyphs are estimated to be as old as 40,000 years.

Around 7,000 to 9,000 years ago, following the introduction of a number of precursors of writing systems, the existence and creation of petroglyphs began to suffer and tail off, with different forms of art, such as pictographs and ideograms, taking their place. However, petroglyphs continued to be created and remained somewhat common, with various cultures continuing to use them for differing lengths of time, including cultures who continued to create them until contact with Western culture was made in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Many hypotheses exist as to the purpose of petroglyphs, depending on their location, age, and subject matter. Petroglyphs from different continents show similarities. Some petroglyphs likely formed types of symbolic communication, such as types of proto-writing.

Some petroglyph maps, depicting trails, as well as containing symbols communicating the time and distances travelled along those trails, exist; other petroglyph maps act as astronomical markers, nonetheless, petroglyphs from different continents do show observable similarities.

More controversial explanations of similarities are grounded in Jungian psychology. Other theories suggest that petroglyphs were carved by spiritual leaders, such as Shamans, in an altered state of consciousness, perhaps induced by the use of natural hallucinogens.

Many of the geometric patterns (known as form constants) which, recur in petroglyphs and cave paintings have been shown by David Lewis-Williams, a South African archaeologist, best known for his research on southern African San rock art, and 'Rosetta Stone', to be hardwired into the human brain. They frequently occur in visual disturbances and hallucinations brought on by drugs, migraine, and other stimuli.

A petrosomatoglyph is a supposed image of parts of a human or animal body in rock. They occur all over the world, often functioning as an important form of symbolism, used in religious and secular ceremonies, such as the crowning of kings. Some are regarded as artefacts linked to saints or culture heroes. The word comes from the Greek π?τρα (petra, "stone"), σ?μα (soma "body"), and γλ?φειν (glyphein, "to carve"). Feet are the most common; however, other features including knees, elbows, hands, heads and fingers are also found.

Hieroglyph, meaning “sacred carving,” is a Greek translation of the Egyptian phrase “the God's words”, which, was used at the time of the early Greek contacts with Egypt to distinguish the older hieroglyphs from the handwriting of the day.

Hieroglyphs are written in rows or columns and can be read from left to right or from right to left. You can distinguish the direction in which the text is to be read because the human or animal figures always face towards the beginning of the line. Also the upper symbols are read before the lower.

A hieroglyph was a character of the ancient Egyptian writing system. Logographic scripts that are pictographic in form in a way reminiscent of ancient Egyptian are also sometimes called "hieroglyphs".

Hieroglyph, is a character used in a system of pictorial writing, particularly that form used on ancient Egyptian monuments. Hieroglyphic symbols may represent the objects that they depict but usually stand for particular sounds or groups of sounds.

Altogether there are over 700 different hieroglyphs, some of which represent sounds or syllables; others that serve as determinatives to clarify the meaning of a word. The hieroglyphic script originated shortly before 3100 B.C., at the very onset of Pharaohnic civilization.

The logographic systems include the earliest writing systems; the first historical civilizations of the Near East, Africa, China, and Central America used some form of logographic writing. In a written language, a logogram or logograph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced hanzi in Mandarin, kanji in Japanese, hanja in Korean and Hán t? in Vietnamese) are generally logograms, as are many hieroglyphic and cuneiform characters.

The earliest known writing was invented there around 3400 BC in an area called Sumer near the Persian Gulf. ?The cuneiform script, created in Mesopotamia, present-day Turkey and Iraq, c. 3200 BC, was first. It is also the only writing system, which, can be traced to its earliest prehistoric origin. This antecedent of the cuneiform script was a system of counting and recording goods with clay tokens.

In 1799, members of Napoleon's Egyptian expedition discovered the ‘Rosetta stone’, which, would provide the key to unlocking the ancient Egyptian language. The Rosetta Stone is a large block of black granite, over 2000 years old. It was a remarkable find as it contains inscriptions that enabled scholars to learn how to read hieroglyphs that were previously indecipherable.

The decipherment was largely the work of Thomas Young, a British polymath, and Jean-Fran?ois Champollion, a French philologist and orientalist, with the hieroglyphic text on the Rosetta Stone containing six identical cartouches (oval figures enclosing hieroglyphs).

Since the different languages do not repeat the same information word for word, it can only be a partial translation of the hieroglyphics based on some assumptions. Despite imperfect methods, the Rosetta Stone has still proven to be an invaluable resource for understanding these Egyptian symbols.

Only those privileged with an extensive education (i.e. the Pharaoh, nobility and priests) were able to read and write hieroglyphs; others used simpler versions more suited for everyday handwriting: first the hieratic script, and later the demotic language used by ordinary people.

Conventional "proto-writing to true-writing" systems followed a general series of developmental stages in the Old World, with true writing systems developing from neolithic writings in the Early Bronze Age (4th millennium BC) on.

Written languages stands as humanity’s greatest achievements. Whereas speech is fleeting, written communication provides a permanence and has ultimately influenced everything we know and are yet to know…

Food for thought!