Southern Peru is home to one of the richest sites with rock art in South America—Toro Muerto. A unique aspect of the iconography of the petroglyphs of the site is the figures of dancing humans, the so-called danzantes, which are additionally frequently associated with geometric motifs, mostly variants of zigzag lines. Drawing upon intriguing data recorded during Reichel-Dolmatoff's research in Colombia related to the meaning of analogous motifs in Tukano art, as well as broader exploration of the sonic sphere in South American cultures and the thesis that Amazonian animism was a more archaic ontology over a broader area of South America, this paper suggests that the geometric patterns at Toro Muerto, with which the figures of danzantes are juxtaposed, may have been representations of songs. An extension of this hypothesis is the suggestion that some of the more complex compositions consisting of danzantes and linear geometric motifs were graphic metaphors of transfer to the other world.

秘鲁南部是南美洲岩石艺术最丰富的遗址之一 Toro Muerto 的所在地。该遗址岩画图像的一个独特之处在于跳舞的人类形象，即所谓的 danzantes，它们还经常与几何图案相关联，主要是锯齿形线条的变体。借鉴了 Reichel-Dolmatoff 在哥伦比亚研究期间记录的与图卡诺艺术中类似图案的含义有关的有趣数据，以及对南美文化中声音领域的更广泛探索，以及亚马逊万物有灵论在南美洲更广阔的地区是一种更古老的本体论的论点，本文表明 Toro Muerto 的几何图案， 与丹桑特的形象并列的可能是歌曲的表现。这一假设的延伸是，一些由 danzantes 和线性几何图案组成的更复杂的构图是转移到另一个世界的图形隐喻。