JUNE 3, 2024

4 MIN READ

Ancient Snake and Centipede Carvings Are among World’s Largest Rock Engravings

Enormous engraved rock art of anacondas, rodents and other animals along the Orinoco River in Colombia and Venezuela may have been used to mark territory 2,000 years ago

BY STEPHANIE PAPPAS

Skim along the Orinoco River on the border between Venezuela and Colombia, and you might catch glimpses ofa mythological spirit world engraved into rocks lining the riverbanks.

Depictions of anacondas, centipedes, human figures and giant rodents are among the engravings, which may hark back to myths told for more than 2,000 years. Now the first scientific documentation of this art finds that some of these engravings are among the largest in the world. Their size makes them visible from a distance, suggesting they were used as ancient signposts that told travelers along the prehistoric trade route whose territory they were entering and leaving. The new findings were published on Monday in Antiquity.

The engravings may represent mythological traditions that continue today, says archaeologist and anthropologist Carlos Castaño-Uribe, scientific director of the Caribbean Environmental Heritage Foundation in Colombia. Castaño-Uribe was not involved in the new study, but for more than a decade he has worked to conserve the natural and cultural heritage of Indigenous people in the region whose beliefs still center the myth of a supernatural anaconda ancestor. “They continue to consider it one of the most transcendent [archetypes] of their mythical world,” Castaño-Uribe says, “and of their spiritual symbolism, where it is associated with fertility, water, abundance and ... the advent of the different tribes, clans and families of the main river arteries of this vast region.”

Though area residents have long been aware of the rock art, the archaeology of the Middle to Upper Orinoco had been little studied by outsiders, says paper co-author José R. Oliver, a reader in Latin American archaeology at University College London. He and his co-authors, Philip Riris of Bournemouth University in England and Natalia Lozada Mendieta of the University of the Andes in Colombia, wanted to document these sites both for scientific and conservation reasons. They surveyed a region centered around the Atures Rapids in the Middle Orinoco, a place where the river becomes impassable by canoe and travelers have to portage over land. “Everything we knew about the archaeology of the region suggested that it was this meeting point where different cultures came together and actively traded and, in some cases, probably intermarried,” Riris says.



Telephoto shot of monumental rock art of snake body in Colombia, humans for scale.Dr José Oliver

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Monumental snake engravings of the Orinoco River

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 June 2024

Philip Riris, José Ramón Oliver and Natalia Lozada Mendieta

Rock art of the Middle and Upper Orinoco River in South America is characterised by some of the largest and most enigmatic engravings in the world, including snakes exceeding 40m in length. Here, the authors map the geographic distribution of giant snake motifs and assess the visibility of this serpentine imagery within the Orinoco landscape and Indigenous myths. Occupying prominent outcrops that were visible from great distances, the authors argue that the rock art provided physical reference points for cosmogonic myths, acting as border agents that structured the environment and were central to Indigenous placemaking along the rivers of lowland South America.

Antiquity , Volume 98 , Issue 399 , June 2024 , pp. 724 - 742
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2024.55

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