Conny Waters – AncientPages.com – Previously unknown motifs depicted on south-west Sweden’s best-preserved rock paintings have now been revealed by researchers at the University of Gothenburg.
The art is probably at least 5,000 years old, perhaps much older. At this time, the sea level was much higher than today.
Newly discovered rock paintings in Tumlehed reveal shipping at the Stone Age. Credit: Bettina Schulz Paulsson/GU.se
The Tumlehed rock paintings (painted by a hunter people) depict large red-painted figures of fish, boats, deer, and wave patterns that appear on a smooth, almost vertical slope.
This rock art was invisible to the naked eye, but new technologies used by the researchers, show the images in a new light.
The most important of these newly discovered motifs are boats with elk-head stems. This is the first time that these kinds of boats have been documented in southern or western Scandinavia and these motifs provide further evidence of the long-distance sea voyages undertaken by Stone Age maritime hunters.
The rock painting at Tumlehed – located in the Gothenburg suburb of Torslanda, on the island of Hisingen and barely 15 km from the center of the city – is one of a few well-known rock paintings in Sweden.