Multiplatform Lithic Art “Spotify”

According to research conducted in 2017 by archaeologists from the University of London and published in the journal Antiquity, some of these petroglyphs found in the Orinoco River, Venezuela, may be more than two thousand years old and have also been classified as the largest petroglyphs in the world. To the point that to photograph them, they had to use a drone and a zenithal shot from about 100 meters above sea level, because from the ground it was impossible to obtain a complete image of some of them, which were up to 30 meters long, as is the case of the serpent with a coiled tongue that appears in the image below.

All the rock art studied at this ancient site comprises a total of eight distinct groups of petroglyphs distributed across six islands located in the middle of a rapid of the Orinoco River, which at that time became a zone of ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and commercial convergence. Archaeological evidence, from analogous petroglyphs found in nearby regions of Brazil and Colombia along the tributary, indicates that different ethnic groups interacted over the course of two thousand years through this "fluvial superhighway," making the flow of the Orinoco River a beneficial "social network" between all the cultures throughout the peripheral area.

These engravings reflect people's daily lives: how they lived and traveled throughout the region, the importance of aquatic resources, and the seasonal tides of the Orinoco River. Curiously, in the language of the "Wuarao" ethnic group (still present in the Orinoco Delta), it is a toponym derived from the words "ori," meaning "confluence," and "noco," which refers to place; that is, "place of confluence."

In the following image, perhaps one of the most evocative engraved in stone, a cultural celebration, a musical performance, is evident. Since music is a universal language, we can all interpret it: it is the carving on the immense boulder of a jaunty, scruffy-haired human figure playing a wind instrument in the middle of a long shot.

This aforementioned flute player, carved as if in the background of the shot, appears with a great sense of perspective, while surrounded by other villagers with their arms raised, depicted in a closer shot.

The entire group displays a very suggestive boisterous demeanor in the implicit message; they undoubtedly made an effort to encode the enjoyment and pleasure of the folkloric spectacle. It is worth speculating whether this "place of confluence" between the five islands of the tributaries of the "Ori-noco," where a musical rite was engraved in stone with a sense of eternal fixation, functioned as a multi-platform "Spotify," used by the different ancient ethnic groups for the retransmission of their particular musical expressions "via streaming."