Carved Petroglyph (fragment)
Lake Onega
4th-3rd millenium BC
Granite
L 308 cm, w 240 cm
This piece of rock has over sixty chipped drawings on it: figures of men, deer, elks, birds, boats with people in them, circles and semicircles with long projections. Many attempts have been made to decode the petroglyph, found in the middle of the 19th century. Some scholars think that the images record the annual economic cycle of the ancient inhabitants of Karelia (circles and semicircles with projections are interpreted as animal traps). Others regard the drawings as mythological scenes connected with sun worship (circles and semicircles) and the cult of ancestors (boats with men).
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