Fig. 1105.—Venezuelan petroglyphs.
In the strange combination that surmounts it, a, there are seen at the lower part two figures resembling the eyes of jaguars, but asymmetric. Still the difference is apparent rather than real. These eyes are always formed of three circumferences, the central one being at times replaced by a point, as in the eye at the left; the one at the right shows its three circumferences, but the outermost is continuous with the rest of the drawing. The two eyes are joined together by superposed arches, the smallest of which touches only the left eye, while the larger one, which is not in contact with the left eye, forms the circumference of the right eye. The whole is surrounded by 34 rays, pretty nearly of the same size, except one, which is larger. Is there question of a jaguar’s head seen from in front with its bristling mane, or is it a sunrise? All conjecture is superfluous, and it is useless to search for the interpretation of these figures, whose value, entirely conventional, is known only by those who invented them.
In b of the same pictograph, alongside of a tangle of various figures, always formed of geometric lines, we distinguished, at the left, three points; in the middle a collection of lines representing a fish. Let us note, finally, the dots which, as in the preceding case, run out from certain lines.
The design of c, while quite as complex, has quite another arrangement. At the left we see again the figure of the circumferences surrounding a dot, and these are surmounted by a series of triangles; at the bottom there are two little curves terminated by dots. At d two analogous objects are represented; they may be what Humboldt took to be arms or household implements.
In the above figure, the uppermost character, a, is similar to various representations of the “sky,” as depicted upon the birch-bark midē' records of the Ojibwa. The lower characters are similar to several examples presented under the Shoshonean types, particularly to those in Owens valley, California.
Dr. A. Ernst in Verhandl. der Berliner, Anthrop. Gesell. (c) gives a description of Fig. 1106, translated and condensed as follows:
Fig. 1106.—Venezuelan petroglyphs.