Cracking the code
Newly deciphered rock art in the surrounding countryside of Milan has given archaeologists a valuable insight into the lives of our ancient ancestors
WORD & PHOTOS BY LISA GERARD-SHARP
ROCK ART HAS BEEN described before but it has never been read," declares Emmanuel Anati, as he surveys the site that has obsessed him for 50 years. The Italian anthropologist is the world’s leading authority on Valcamonica, which boasts the largest expanse of rock engravings in Europe. Etched into the rocks before him is a cavalcade of praying priests, astronauts (or aliens, some say), deer hunters, duellists and solar discs. It looks bewildering but the code to this prehistoric comic strip is finally being cracked – with implications for our understanding of how early writing evolved.
In prehistoric times, polished boulders made perfect writing tablets. Nowhere was this truer than in Valcamonica, north of Lake Iseo, in Lombardy. Set amid chestnut and birch woods, this enigmatic valley appealed to the sensibility of the ancient Camuni tribes, who were drawn to the beauty of the rocks, which they adorned with shamans and sun-gods. At once rural and industrial, Valcamonica has been inhabited since Neolithic times, when the Camuni tribal civilisation first etched its way into existence. The magic of the landscape survives, enhanced by the enigma of the rock art. Spanning an arc of 6,000 years, these carvings symbolise the creative continuum in the valley. It might seem churlish to quibble that the mysterious symbolism made the prehistoric comic strips meaningless to later generations.
Not that today’s Camuni ever expected elucidation of their UNESCO World Heritage Site. The valley people have always felt a mixture of pride and puzzlement towards the matchstick-men petroglyphs. Dubbed "stickmen" or pitoti (puppets), these primitive carvings have always lurked in the local consciousness, despite only being formally discovered in 1908. The mystique of prehistoric rock art has also wormed its way into local lore through the survival of the majestic boulders themselves. In Naquane National Park, over 300,000 carvings are etched onto the glacier-seared sandstone, with representative scenes ranging from Stone Age scratchings to full-blooded Bronze Age narratives.
For generations, the Camuni hunter-gatherers recorded everyday life and their relationship with the other world in scenes so complex that archaeologists remained baffled. However, rock art can now be read – and not just in Valcamonica. Anati and other archaeologists began to work out the "grammar" of this proto-writing system by using a unified system of signs known as pictograms, ideograms and psychograms. If pictograms are pictures resembling what they signify, ideograms represent concepts while psychograms are psychological maps.
By deciphering a number of boulders with an accuracy envied by his peers, Anati has gone some way to proving his point to a sceptical scientific community. Bludgeoned into submission by a multi-disciplinary approach, the rock art community has taken heed of Anati’s daring, wide-ranging approach. "The rocks I decipher are the well-known, international ones, but rock art is a multi-disciplinary field – more like social anthropology – you have to be on top of semiotics, linguistics, sociology, everything." Anati stunned rival French archaeologists by interpreting the French Lascaux Caves as ancient marriage contracts from 30,000 years ago.
After passing this test, Anati turned to deciphering Valcamonica’s boulders, and cracking the code: "The turning point was to consider the rocks as messages – these messages are legible 10 or 15,000 years after they were written." These singular rocks were first inscribed by the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age Camuni people, even if the Etruscans and Romans followed suit. However, after Anati managed to decipher an Iron Age boulder, "we concluded that the majority of the inscriptions referred to mythological accounts and initiation rites." The earliest Neolithic rock-carvings took the form of rudimentary animal figures in static positions, usually deer and elk, which represented local deities, while more sophisticated narrative art came in during the Iron Age. In the Foppe di Nadro site, Rock 1 celebrates the sun cult with prayers while Rock 27 is inscribed with Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Age scenes, running from Stone Age shamans to Iron Age duels.
Other elements lend credence to the sacred rites theory. At Autumn Equinox, the shadow of the mountain still falls over the key rock carvings, closely embracing the figures of the shaman and deer-gods who took part in the propitiatory rites.
In the Naquane site, the imposing Big Rock 1 records a civilisation in stone, engraved with a thousand drawings dating back to the Neolithic and Iron Age eras. On parade are warriors, women, shamans and riders depicted in the duality of their everyday lives: deer-hunting and weaving, as well as taking part in initiation rites to appease the gods. This rock is humorously entitled: "when food is also a god", referring to the dual role of the deer as sacred symbol and venison snack. Nearby, the "horsemen of the rocks" is a common status symbol ("a horse then was like a Ferrari today," the guide kindly points out). But if civilisation is also about progress, then Rock 23 reveals its four-wheeled wagon, a precursor to the Ferrari. In turn, Rock 35 depicts a blacksmith in his smithy, forging the definition of Iron Age man, and propelling the valley towards its industrial vocation that sustains it today.
The rock carvings reveal that the Camuni were hunter-gatherers, then farmers and metal-workers, who settled amid these chestnut groves. They lived in primitive farmsteads and cultivated their crops, respecting the rhythms of the seasons, studying the movement of the stars, and worshipping the sun and animal deities. The Camuni, hunters rather than warriors, were swiftly crushed and assimilated by the Romans. But while the Camuni flourished, stone was paramount. Even during the Iron Age, the engravers preferred stone flints as tools, such was their attachment to stone – and sacred rock could not be sullied by metal.
Despite huge advances in deciphering the rocks, some defy facile description. Ancient graffiti artists felt little compunction about erasing their predecessors’ work. Valcamonica’s rocks were a drawing-board for all-comers: there is even Roman graffiti of the "I woz here" variety. And an attractive surface drew scribes from all eras. In Naquane, Rock 32 was partly selected for its soft, feminine contours. On these smooth surfaces, propitiatory rites merge into ploughing scenes, warfare and weaponry, all inter-cut with symbols of labyrinths, which represent the passage from this life to the next. Here, as on other rocks, is the symbol of the Camunian rose, thought to be the oldest representation of a rose, and a symbol of sacrifice and eternity for the population. Hunting, praying, dancing, copulating, invoking the gods, indulging in sacrificial rites: all human life is here in these wild chestnut groves.
The deciphering is an ongoing process but the initial findings tap into a seductive thesis: that there is a universal structure to world prehistoric rock art. Similar themes recur in all such rock art, from initiation rituals to sex, hunting, food and the territorial imperative. Emmanuel Anati is convinced that there is a universal structure to rock art: "With my findings, archaeology becomes the basis for history, rather than an end in itself. This means that archaeologists are no longer mere historians but active researchers interpreting rock art for contemporary times." He also posits the theory of our shared linguistic roots, speculating that early Homo Sapiens may have shared a "primordial mother language from which all the spoken languages developed". Be that as it may, the boldest conclusion is also the most mundane: that prehistoric peoples resembled one another; and that our prehistoric ancestors were much the same as us.
Odczytanie malowideł skalnych pod Mediolanem rzuca nowe światło na życie naszych prehistorycznych przodków.
"Malowidła były do tej pory opisywane, nigdy odczytywane" – mówi Emmanuel Anati, najwiekszy znawca malowideł w Valcamonica w Lombardii. Jednak niedawno zadziwiający kod został złamany.
Od neolitu tereny Lombardii zamieszkiwali Kumanowie, którzy przez 6000 lat tworzyli petroglify o nieodgadnionym symbolizmie. Zapisywali oni swoje życie codzienne w sposób tak skomplikowany, że zdumiewał on archeologów z całego świata. Jednak dziś mogą być odczytane. Przy pomocy systemu piktogramów, ideogramów i psychogramów archeolodzy zaczeli opracowywać system prehistorycznej "gramatyki".
"Punktem przełomowym było uznanie kamieni za wiadomości, z których wiekszości dotyczyła mitologii i rytów przejścia. Najwcześniejsze neolityczne rysunki przedstawiają statyczne figury zwierząt symbolizujące lokalne bóstwa. Późniejsze malowidła przedstawiają wojowników, szamanów i kobiety. Kamienie ukazują postep cywilizacyjny Kumanów, którzy najpierw byli zbieraczami-łowcami, potem nauczyli sie rolnictwa i obróbki metali.
Mimo wielkich postepów w odcyfrowywaniu malowideł, niektóre wciąż pozostają nieczytelne. Prehistoryczni rysownicy nie mieli skrupułów przed zamazywaniem twórczości swoich przodków. Na jednym z kamieni rytuały błagalne przeplatają sie z scenami orania ziemi, walki i labiryntami symbolizującymi przejście do innego życia. Na innym widnieje najstarszy znany wizerunek róży, symbolu wieczności i poświecenia.
Dotychczasowe okrycia skłaniają ku tezie, iż cała prehistoryczna sztuka naścienna ma uniwersalną strukture. Podobne elementy przewijają sie wszedzie: inicjacja, seks, polowanie. "Moje odkrycia sprawią, że archeologia stanie sie podstawą aktywnego badania historii" – przekonuje Emanuel Anati.
Jakkolwiek na to nie patrzeć, najśmielsza konkluzja jest również najbardziej prozaiczną – prehistoryczni ludzie byli podobni do siebie i nie bardzo rożni od nas.
DECIPHERING ROCK ART
The most rewarding rock art is in Foppe di Nadro site and in the Naquane National Rock-Engravings Park, with its 300,000 engraved rocks (open Tue-Sun 9am-1 hour before sunset). Both parks represent accessible gateways to Valcamonica. Naquane has the most celebrated rocks while Foppe di Nadro looks as it did in prehistoric times: a crest of a hill; gentle terraces; wooded slopes; smooth rocks; megalithic walls, the remains of a prehistoric village and a reconstructed Iron Age homestead.
