The concave spherical shapes, about 20cm across, may have been cut
with metal tools (Image: Aron Mazel)
Mysterious rock carvings engraved into strange shapes are baffling
UK archaeologists. One resembles a heart, another a human
footprint.
Aron Mazel and Stan Beckensall, who stumbled across the unusual
carvings close to England's border with Scotland, believe they are
the first such designs to have been discovered in the UK.
"We have absolutely no idea what they are," says Mazel, an
archaeologist at the University of Newcastle. "They are nothing
like anything we, or anybody else we have talked to, have seen
before." He believes the carvings were not created recently - in
the last 15 to 20 years - and could be as ancient as 3000 years
old.
The researchers were alerted to the etchings on an isolated boulder
by a farm worker, while they were investigating the well-known "cup
and ring" rock art in Northumberland. These prehistoric etchings
have been found across the UK, and are particularly abundant in the
county.
This lichen-covered rock carving resembles a heart (Image: Aron
Mazel)
Stone pick axes
"The carvings we have found before - cup and ring - dated back to
the Neolithic Bronze Age and were probably done by early farmers,"
Mazel told New Scientist. They were hacked into rock faces using
stone pick axes.
But the new-found carvings are "very different", he says. "They are
sharper on one hand, but also quite smooth." Metal tools are likely
to have been required to make them.
"Also, the imagery reflected in the carvings are very different,"
Mazel says. "They are elliptical shapes, and something which looks
like a footprint, and a heart."
Mazel and Beckensall are puzzled by their discovery and have
consulted experts in the field such as English Heritage, but no one
has been able to shed any light.
"We are keen to draw people's attention to them - seeing the
pictures of the markings may prompt somebody to come forward with
new information, perhaps relating to similar rock art samples they
have viewed elsewhere," says Beckensall.
