Rock paintings in the Latmos Mountains

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The Latmos Mountains in the background of the excavation sites at the ancient city of Herakleia on Latmos

The rock paintings in the Latmos Mountains ( Turkish Beşparmak Dağları - German  "Five Finger Mountains " ), on the Anatolian west coast, in the north-western tip of Caria , are provisionally dated to 8000-4000 BC. Dated. The main part of the pictures is in the early to middle Chalcolithic in the 6th millennium BC. BC originated. They represent the first evidence of prehistoric rock painting in western Turkey .

The Latmos Mountains are made up of granite and gneiss and include numerous caves. The first two rock carvings were discovered and described in 1994, now there are almost 170, with a few exceptions, are distributed around the summit of the mountains. They are located under rock shelters or on the walls of small caves, mostly near sources or streams. The caves and abrises that have been found so far were not inhabited and are considered possible places of worship outside of settlement areas, the remains of which, however, have not yet been found. The finds of these rock paintings result from the archaeological research of this mountain, which is also important for Greek mythology , which the German Archaeological Institute has carried out in this region since 1991 under the direction of Anneliese Peschlow-Bindokat .

The rock art was visible at all times in the daylight-lit caves. In the Karadere (German: Schwarztal) cave, at eye level, there is a one meter wide and 45 centimeter high image field “with eleven figures, followed by a twelfth figure in the next niche on the right. In the majority there are stick figures with extra-long bodies and stubby legs “with a T-shaped headdress that reminds one of horns. Human figures in the Göktepe (= heavenly hill) cave have round or rounded body shapes, which also reveal female figures clearly. The drawings in red were applied with fingers and brushes.

In contrast to cave paintings from the Upper Palaeolithic in Western Europe, the main theme is not depictions of animals, but depictions of people. These are mostly presented in community, often as a couple of man and woman. These images also differ from post-glacial cave paintings, which mainly depict hunting scenes. Archaeologists attribute this change of subject to the change in the way of life of the people who have now settled in this region.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Early images of man. The prehistoric rock paintings of the Latmos Mountains (Western Turkey) PDF for the exhibition of the German Archaeological Institute , Berlin, in Bozen, Autonomous Province of Bozen-Südtirol, Italy, from September 17 to October 30, 2005 (accessed on September 8, 2010)

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