The 12,000-year-old Garuda petroglyph of Ratnagiri

 

The extremely ancient petroglyphs of Ratnagiri, India, continue to amaze us and raise questions about we really understand about the origins of civilizations and the nature of our reality.

Before I get to this newly discovered petroglyph, let me give a brief overview of the Ratnagiri petroglyphs. Nearly 600 ancient petroglyphs have been found till now, carved on the red laterite rocks of the Konkan coast in western India. The news of this discovery had been first  reported by BBC in October 2018. The Director of the Maharashtra State Archaeology Department, Tejas Garge, had told BBC that these carvings were nearly 12,000 years old!

The initial estimation of age of the petroglyphs still stands. The Ratnagiri petroglyphs have since been added to UNESCO’s waiting list for a “World Heritage Site” tag.  As per the UNESCO site, the carvings date from nearly 12000 years ago. The dating is based on the Mesolithic tools found at the site, the carving styles, and, most importantly, the fauna depicted in the petroglyphs, which thrived in this area towards the end of the Late Paleolithic period, and then disappeared.

When I had first seen the images of these petroglyphs – mostly depicting birds, animals, sea creatures, geometrical forms and intriguing human figures – I was astonished to find that a number of them portrayed sacred symbols and astrological signs, which are found in the art and culture of many ancient cultures. The appearance of these symbols at such an early period upends what we know about the origins of sacred symbols and human civilization. 

The global symbols that I had noticed were the following:

1. The Winged Scarab or Khepri - an extremely popular and auspicious symbol of creation and regeneration in ancient Egypt
2. The Master of Animals – a globally dispersed symbol that denoted strength, courage, dominance and protection.
3. The astrological signs of Pisces and Aquarius, predating the earliest known appearances of these signs by thousands of years

I had written about these symbols and their global correlations in an article on my website titled, “12,000-year-old Petroglyphs of Ratnagiri in India depict Sacred Symbols of Global Importance”. 

It is quite obvious that these sacred symbols were the legacy of a civilization that flourished during the last Ice Age. Which means that the origins of esoteric knowledge and sacred signs go back thousands of years prior to what has been believed by historians so far.

Even though the grand monuments of the Ice Age civilizations were destroyed and washed away by the cataclysmic events of the Younger Dryas period between 10,900 and 9,700 BCE, these humble, unpretentious rock carvings – which were probably etched out by shepherds and gatherers in their spare time sometime around 10,000 BCE – have withstood the vagaries of time and weather, preserving for us a small slice of the beliefs, culture and environment of those remote periods.

With that in mind, let's look at this petroglyph. It depicts a humanoid being wearing a headdress and a chest ornament. But instead of legs he seems to have a tail fin like that of a fish! And those aren’t arms either; they appear to be elongated dorsal fins, or the wings of a bird.

Ratnagiri petroglyph depicting a merman or birdman. Source: Archaeological Survey of India (Facebook)

Clearly, this is not a petroglyph of a human being. It is either a merman (i.e. the male version of a mermaid) or a bird-deity found in the traditions and sacred art of many cultures! Let’s investigate the merman option first.

While we cannot be entirely sure of the gender from this image, I think it looks more like a male than a female. The helmet and the chest ornament worn by the merman is not out of place here. In ancient depictions of mermaids and mermen, they are generally shown wearing a cap or a crown, as well as jewels and ornaments. Take a look at these images.

Merman wall relief from the palace of Sargon II at Dur Sharrukin, Iraq. Credit: Gary Todd, CC0

Mermaid terracotta plaque from Chandraketugarh, India. c.200 - 100 BCE. Source: www.sylph-ocular.com

The only thing that is somewhat odd about this merman is that, mermaids and mermen are generally depicted having a well-defined human torso with human arms. They don’t usually possess dorsal or pelvic fins, although it would be perfectly fitting for an aquatic being to have different types of fins, just like a fish. 

Here’s an image that shows a mermaid with fins instead of hands.

Ancient mermaid in a map printed in 1545. Source: The National Library of Israel. 

Apparently, mermaids have also been depicted with fins instead of arms: although this is an exception rather than the rule. I would think that mermaids and mermen – if they do exist - probably have both arms as well as additional dorsal and pelvic fins, and they use whichever is appropriate.

If this Ratnagiri petroglyph is that of a merman, then at 12,000 years of age, it is easily the earliest depiction of a merman or a mermaid found anywhere till now.

Let us now explore the possibility of this image being that of the bird-deity or birdman, found in many ancient traditions.

The bird-deity or birdman was generally depicted as a human-bird hybrid, although in many representations it appears purely as a bird with outstretched wings. A symbol of irresistible strength, speed, and martial prowess, it served as the emblem of the royalty and the armed forces of many nations.

Ancient accounts describe it as an enormous, effulgent, “bird of fire” that returns to the earth periodically to herald a new age. It can whip up storm clouds and hurricane-force winds, and strike us with lighting and thunder. It can block out the sun and even stop the rotation of the earth. The bird-deity was also a force of renewal and regeneration.  It seeded the earth with life, purified the land and waters, and bestowed rain and fertility.

The Garuda bird with outstretched wings is the national emblem of Thailand. Credit: Public Domain Image via Wikimedia Commons

Rock carved ThunderBird petroglyph at Twin Bluffs, Juneau County, Wisconsin. Credit: Sixa369, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

I had noticed that the curved shape of the wings of the Thunderbird looks very similar to the wings on this petroglyph. However, in the petroglyph, the tail looks so much like that of a "fish” that I opted for the “merman” hypothesis when I first composed this post and shared it on Facebook.

But Catherine Ulissey, who is the wife of Robert Schoch and works with him on many of his research projects, informed me that the petroglyph looks very similar to the "birdman" of Easter Island.

Curious, I decided to look up the birdman motif of Easter Island. It turns out that a bird-deity or birdman was very popular in Easter Island, and a “birdman cult” had grown around it with its own set of rituals. There are many petroglyphs of the bird-deity / birdman on Easter Island, some of which bear a striking resemblance to this petroglyph, particularly with regards to the shape of the wings and the tail. Have a look.

Easter Island bird-deity / birdman petroglyph. Adobe Stock.

Birdman figure from Easter Island. Credit: Bradshaw Foundation

Having looked at both options, I was convinced that the bird-deity / birdman hypothesis is the correct one, and updated the original post with the new interpretation. 

Even though the birdman of Easter Island has the head of a bird and the Ratnagiri petroglyph has a human head, it is not of any real concern, since the bird-deity could be depicted  with a human head as well as an avian head.

In conclusion, this Ratnagiri petroglyph depicts the ancient bird-deity who was venerated all over the world. In India, the bird-deity was known as Garuda. Hence, we can posit: This is a 12000-year-old petroglyph of Garuda in Ratnagiri. It is the oldest representation of Garuda found till now. 

The Ratnagiri bird deity is stylistically identical to the birdman of Easter Island.

This is a sobering reminder that the origins of religious beliefs and many of sacred symbols of the ancient world - some of which continue to be revered today - goes back to a highly evolved civilization that flourished during the last Ice Age, at the time of the erstwhile Golden Age or Satya Yuga.  Needless to say, our understanding of history is in dire need of a thorough overhaul.

In my book, Yuga Shift, I had proposed that the bird-deity is a many-tailed, colorful, gigantic periodic comet with a bi-lobed nucleus. It remains hidden in a dormant state within the Taurid Resonant Swarm, and becomes active towards the end of a Yuga Cycle, when it brings about planetary-scale transformation. And that time is now.