Symbols in Time and Space
A
man stands in front of a rock with an oval stone in his hand. All is
quit. He hears only the sounds of the wind, the birds and running
water. Rays of sunlight glance through the treetops onto the wet rock.
He knows what he has to do. He knows how and why. There is an image
inside him and he is going to transfer it to the rock. He lifts his
hand and hacks an outline of the image into the rock. His hand does
what his thoughts and tradition say he must do. The sound of stone
against stone breaks the silence. Again and again he hammers and hacks
in the same groove, making it deeper. The image becomes clear against
the grey rock. The image on the rocks becomes the same as the image
inside him.
Five thousand years later...
A
man stands in front of a rock and sees that an image has been carved
into it - an image that another person once saw inside himself and
transferred to the rock. The place, the rock and the image are the
same, but inside him he has quite different images and they do not look
like the one on the rock. What stories were so important that they had
to be chiseled into the rock and into the memory, exactly there and in
no other place?
(from: "Rock Carvings in the Borderlands - Bohuslän and Østfold" by Anne-Sophie Hygen and Lasse Bengtsson)
A Statement of Belief
People
enjoy rock art. Pieces of pottery and flint implements may be some of
the things that help us to understand the past, but people like being
in a vast, beautiful landscape, able to stand at a place with great
views, look at art on the rocks, and continue to wonder what it's all
about. People love places. People love a mystery. Give them the chance
and they will be the best preservers of our heritage. Try to exclude
them physically, intellectually and spiritually, and they will resent
you, for rock art is not exclusive to a favoured group. It is the
earliest means of 'communication' that we have in symbols with people
from the deep past. It will continue to intrigue us, worry us, and we
want to remain linked to it.
(from 'Prehistoric Rock Art in Cumbria' as well as 'Prehistoric Rock Art in Northumberland' by Stan Beckensall)
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