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Ancient rock carving in southern Peru are similar to drawing made by the great unwashed high on drugs , a new study advise .
The carving likely portray dancers and are have on more than 2,000 boulder in the ironical gorge ofToro Muerto(Spanish for " Dead Bull " ) in the valley of the Majes River . They are thought to be between 1,400 and 2,100 years honest-to-goodness . Archaeologists think many were carve between 100 B.C. and A.D. 600 by the Siguas people , who were influenced by the Nasca ( or Nazca ) acculturation of southern Peru that made the famousgeoglyphs in the desertof the same name .
A new study notes similarities between the ancient rock carvings at Toro Muerto and drawings made in the 20th century by Amazonian Tukano people under the influence of the hallucinogenic drug ayahuasca.
But wavy lines in the rock music carvings are also strikingly exchangeable to art made in the 1970s by the Tucano ( also spell Tukano ) people indigenous to the Amazon rain forest in Colombia , Brazil and Ecuador . In those cases , the Tucano made their artistic production during visionary states cause by ingesting the hallucinogenic drug ayahuasca — a drinkable made from the vineBanisteriopsis caapi . These similarities suggest that the Peruvian rock carvings may also have been influenced by exchangeable visions , according to the new written report , published on April 3 in theCambridge Archaeological Journal .
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Dancing carvings
Study co - authorAndrzej Rozwadowski , an archaeologist at Poland ’s Adam Mickiewicz University , explained that many other research worker used the Romance American term " danzantes , " meaning " dancers , " to describe the carving at Toro Muerto . It was n’t dead established that the figures were trip the light fantastic toe , but many of them appear to be , he told Live Science .
Many of the cutting " are characterise by dynamic poses , the knees of some of them are bent , the legs of others are consecutive but spread widely , suggesting movement , " say Rozwadowski , who conducted the study withJanusz Wołoszyn , an archaeologist at the University of Warsaw . The research was carried out by a Polish - Peruvian team led by Wołoszyn andLiz Gonzales Ruiz , the director of theToro Muerto Archaeological Project .
The cogitation also propose that geometric patterns of wavy lines and circles depict in bands along the dancing figure may act a parallel world , the cosmos , or an afterlife , as ascertain in Tucano art made in the seventies . In a noteworthy typesetter’s case , one of the carvings at Toro Muerto is remarkably similar to a set of twentieth - century Tucano drawings that depict scenes from ayahuasca visions .
More than 2,500 volcanic boulders carved with petroglyphs, thought to be between 1400 and 2100 years old, have been found at the Toro Muerto archaeological site in the Majes River Valley of coastal southern Peru.(Image credit: A. Rozwadowski; CC-BY-4.0 DEED, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
" The legitimate conjecture … is that the central danzante smother by crinkled lines is in reality ' smother ' by songs , which — embodying energy and power at the same time — were the origin of transport to another world , " the writer wrote .
Visionary drugs
Rozwadowski stress that the similarities between the ancient Toro Muerto carvings and the ayahuasca - influenced Tucano artwork did n’t of necessity mean that the Toro Muerto carver , too , were high on hallucinogens ; alternatively , the imagery could have deduct from an artistic pattern for portraying a parallel world or the macrocosm .
In any case , the ancient the great unwashed of southern Peru plausibly did n’t use ayahuasca — a drinking made from vines from the Amazonian rainforest , many C of miles away and on the far side of the Andes .
But it ’s guess the Wari mass , who lived in the neighborhood between A.D. 400 and 1000,used hallucinogensfrom the seed pods of theAnadenanthera colubrinatree , which plausibly existed in the area when the carvings at Toro Muerto were made .
Many of the rocks are carved with figures that appear to be dancing, alongside bands of geometric patterns — typically zigzags, wavy lines, and dots — that may represent a parallel world, an afterlife, or the cosmos.(Image credit: Photo: A. Rozwadowski/Drawing: Polish–Peruvian research team,(CC-BY 4.0 Deed))
Rozwadowski supply that the large telephone number of carving at Toro Muerto stand for it was a pregnant site and perhaps a place for teaching .
" One of the reasons for the importance of the land site may have been the transfer of knowledge , and some petroglyph could be a visualization of this cognition , " he said .
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The researchers suggest the concentration of rock carvings at Toro Muerto indicate that it was a site of great significance, and perhaps a place for teaching.(Image credit: A. Rozwadowski,(CC-BY 4.0 Deed))
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Justin Jennings , senior curator of Archaeology of the Americas at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto who was n’t involve in the study , said that the line of latitude between the Toro Muerto carvings and Tucano art were striking and may both relate to thought of how the cosmos began .
The carvings at Toro Muerto appear to show dancers and designs similar to those made by the Tukano. But the researchers say the similarities could be because of convention, rather than showing the influence of hallucinogens.(Image credit: J.Z. Wołoszyn,(CC-BY 4.0 Deed))
" It ’s a cool theme , and very much worthy of further geographic expedition , " he told Live Science in an email .
But " 20th century Columbia is a world away , both geographically and temporally , and I am more hesitant than the authors in paint a picture that we can conceive of a share cosmovision between the Amazon and the Andes that could have wear for so long . "
