I attended The
Ometepe Petroglyph Project held in Nicaragua from the late January to early
March 99.
The project was held on the twin volcanic island of Ometepe in Lake
Nicaragua. Ometepe is the world's largest freshwater island. The purpose of
the project was to survey parts of the island, looking for and recording
pre-columbian petroglyphs. This was the last season of a five year project.
Several hundred petroglyphs were found, mapped and recording by photography
and scale drawing during the six week survey. The figures included various
anthropomorphic and zoomorphic representations such as smiling faces, monkeys,
lizards and turtles. However, the vast majority were either geometric forms,
spirals and circles being very common, or totally abstract collections of
curvilinear lines.
Many large cupules which had clearly been used as mortars were also found,
as well as many troughs and "washboard" shapes which caused much
discussion. In addition we found a proto-statue, a rock that was clearly an
unfinished statue of the type found in other parts of the region.
  Regrettably,
very little archaeological research has been done in Nicaragua, and the European
colonists were quite effective in wiping out the indigenous population and, with
it, knowledge of their cultural and ethnic history. As a result the origins of
the petroglyphs are not known. It is thought that they may have been made by
the Chorotega, an indigenous peoples that used to occupy the area, however there
is only anecdotal evidence for this. Who made the petroglyphs, when they were
made, why, and what most of them represent remains a mystery. |
