Geometric forms in the art of the ancient population of the Kola Peninsula

Abstract

Geometric images on rocky surfaces (petroglyphs and paintings), which abound in the sites of Northern Fennoscandia (more than 300 separate locations), as well as similar symbols on ceramics, bone products, horns, stone handicrafts, do not often attract the attention of researchers. Like figurative images, they, undoubtedly, have been included in the arsenal of creative activities of our distant ancestors since ancient times and reflect their worldview, captured by visual means. Pisanitsy (pictograms) of the Rybachy Peninsula is the only site of its kind in the vast territory of the Russian North. The petroglyphs of Kanozera, along with similar objects from Alta, Vingen (Norway), Nämforsen (Sweden), Vyg, Onego (Karelia) are among the largest (each with more than 1000 images) rock art galleries of the hunter-gatherer tradition of Fennoscandia and remains the only site of this kind in the Russian Arctic. Modern studies of petroglyphs by means of night photofixation technique based on special powerful lighting directed at an particular angle to the surface with engravings, as well other non destructive technical methods, including the use of a technique based on the creation of 3D models using photogrammetry and obtaining “pseudo-rubbings” allow reveling new images and refine the outline already known. Sharing similar geometric patterns with petroglyphs, the ground labyrinths of the Kola Peninsula are made in different from petroglyphs techniques and materials. The labyrinths constructed of small boulders in the bays of the Barents Sea they are frequently used by various “pseudo-analysts” to build their esoteric speculations. Working in the direction of scientific study of these phenomena, trying to demonstrate and analyze the objects of historical and cultural heritage themselves, the authors follow the postulate that true human behavior and its conscious activity, in general, begins with the use of symbols, thanks to which the final separation of man from the animal environment took place.