Petroglyphs provide an essential part of archaeologists’ knowledge about prehistoric times. Although those paintings do not have the complexity of historical era paintings, they contain symbols and signs of the life of very ancient people. They are a way to understand their way of life, hunting method, and beliefs. “Aqrablu” petroglyphs are very valuable from this point of view.
In the west of Shahindej city, in West Azerbaijan province, there is a village named Aqrablu. Zarineh River passes by this village and gives it double beauty. But the fame of Aqrablu is due to its ancient petroglyphs and their value in archaeological research. There are nineteen petroglyphs with figures of humans and animals and geometric shapes. The method used in Aqrablu engravings is called petroglyphs in scientific terms. They are cut and carved on the surface of the stone.
Aqrablu carvings are 500 meters away from the village. The natives call it Kivisur, a Kurdish name that means Red Mountain. The rock is smooth and polished and the best place where ancient people could draw their images and leave memories of their way of thinking and life for future generations. Those surviving figures are from the prehistoric Neolithic period.
Fortunately, the erosion of the signs of Aqrablu is not so much, and the shapes are still visible. Archaeologists can quickly examine those patterns and see images that show humans hunting or tools such as bows and arrows. Shapes that are called geometric, and for understanding them you have to do guess work, can be seen in Aqrablu. It is possible that those geometric patterns are connected with the beliefs and customs of Neolithic people. Shapes of animals can also be seen next to the other shapes. The role of animals can also be seen in other paintings. They are mountain goats with long crescent horns between 10 and 35 cm in size. In Iran, the oldest image of a goat that has been seen dates back to the beginning of the Neolithic period. Humans domesticated Goats for the first time 11 thousand years ago in the foothills of Zagros. There are even signs of prehistoric humans worshipping this animal.
An example that is worth observing is a horse with a rider sitting on it. This beautiful engraving shows the rider aiming his arrow while sitting on the reverse side of the horse’s movement. This way of riding and throwing the arrow is a sign of mastery of the depicter who has used his creativity in this primitive engraving. As Ismail Maroufi Aghdam and his research colleagues have pointed out in their scientific paper about Aqrablu engraving (the name of the report is at the end of this article), the aqrablu rider goes back to a time when humans had tamed the horse. Therefore these engravings are not beyond the stone age, and belonging to the 1st millenium BC, it is said that the Aryans were the first people to tame the horse.
Another engraving in Aqrablu is a house from the neolithic period, with a symbol drawn on top of it; perhaps as some researchers have guessed, it is a shape of a snake. A rhombus-shaped geometric pattern can also be seen in Aqrablu petroglyphs. Another symbolic motif is a circle with three lines in it. What does this circle with three lines mean, it is hard to know. This symbol has also been seen in other petroglyphs of Iran (such as the Timreh petroglyph).
Aqrablu’s drawings cannot be considered simple and primitive. They have depth and volume, and it is evident that thoughts are hidden in their engraving. It is no like because they lived in the prehistoric period, so they did not have thought-out sketches or have drawn them hastily and carelessly. Each engraving tells about the lives of ancient people.
