Abstract

Author:
Siwo Feng, Yuhong Wang

Doi: 10.7508/jra.01.2024.44.55

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Apart from time, red is the color closest to the essence of petroglyphs. The basic color tone of the natural physical and image field of the famous cave red handprint petroglyphs, represented by the Badain Jaran Desert petroglyphs, belongs to the red series. The main color tone of its raw materials, cliffs or stones, includes six colors: yellow-brown, earthy yellow, pink-brown, coral, dark-purple, and reddish-brown. The vivid and dazzling image field, full of various natural phenomena, such as the sun, moon, rainbow, fire, and clouds, is mixed with these six colors. This objectively demonstrates that early humans passively adapted to nature and actively created a humanized material and spiritual world. The rock painting producers carefully selected the raw materials of the petroglyphs and their natural physical environments. They preferred the material carriers and contexts with special colors. They used the colors of the red series and made artificial red pigments. The widespread existence of red series petroglyphs vividly demonstrates the rich emotions and spiritual world of early humans, including healing, worship, and sacrifice.

KEYWORDS
Red, Petroglyphs, Badain Jaran Desert Petroglyphs