CaliToday (24/9/2025): Across the vast expanse of human history, few artifacts are as evocative and mysterious as petroglyphs ancient images carved into rock. While most depict scenes of hunting, daily life, or abstract symbols, a particular motif found in three vastly different corners of the world presents a fascinating puzzle. Intriguingly similar carvings of winged or flying humanoid figures in Japan, the United States, and Azerbaijan challenge our understanding of the ancient world, raising profound questions about cultural connections, parallel myth-making, and the universal nature of human imagination.
The Winged Figures of Fugoppe Cave, Japan
Located in Hokkaido, Japan, the Fugoppe Cave is a precious window into the Jomon period, a prehistoric culture of hunter-gatherers. The carvings within, dated to approximately 7,000 years ago, are among the most significant rock art discoveries in the country. Among the various designs, the most captivating are figures that appear to have wings or elaborate, wing-like headdresses. These anthropomorphic beings, sometimes referred to as "masked figures," possess an otherworldly quality. Their presence suggests a complex spiritual or shamanistic belief system, where flight or avian characteristics may have symbolized a connection to the spirit world, transcendence, or powerful deities.
The Celestial Beings of Nine Mile Canyon, Utah
Thousands of miles away and several millennia later, another culture carved similar figures into the sandstone cliffs of Nine Mile Canyon, Utah. Created by the Fremont people between 1,000 and 2,000 years ago, this "world's longest art gallery" is famous for its intricate rock art panels. Here, too, we find enigmatic figures with wings or antennae and trapezoidal bodies, often depicted in what appear to be ceremonial contexts. Sometimes dubbed "ant people" or "bird-men," these beings are clearly distinct from ordinary human or animal representations. Their repeated appearance suggests they played a central role in the cosmology and religious practices of the Fremont culture, possibly representing shamans in trance, spirits, or beings from a sky-world.
The Ancient Flyers of Gobustan, Azerbaijan
Venturing even further back in time, we arrive at the Gobustan National Park in Azerbaijan, a UNESCO World Heritage site boasting a collection of rock art that dates back as far as 10,000 years ago. Amidst over 6,000 engravings depicting prehistoric life, certain figures stand out for their unusual forms. Some carvings have been interpreted as humanoids with outstretched arms resembling wings or wearing costumes that grant them the appearance of flight. As the oldest examples in this trio, the Gobustan figures anchor this mysterious motif deep in our collective past, suggesting that the concept of a flying or winged human is an ancient and powerful one.
A Global Enigma: Coincidence, Connection, or Archetype?
The remarkable convergence of this specific imagery across such disparate geographies and timelines presents two primary hypotheses.
Parallel Development: This theory posits that the similarities are purely coincidental. Different, isolated societies, when grappling with universal concepts like death, the afterlife, the spirit realm, and the cosmos, may have independently arrived at similar symbols. The idea of flight as a metaphor for spiritual power or freedom is a potent one, and combining human and avian features is a logical way to represent it.
A Shared Symbolic Tradition: A more speculative but tantalizing possibility is that these carvings are faint echoes of a widely dispersed, ancient symbolic system. While direct contact between Jomon-era Japan and prehistoric Azerbaijan is highly unlikely, these symbols could be remnants of a "proto-mythology" that spread with early human migrations out of Africa, with its core ideas preserved and reinterpreted by descendant cultures over thousands of years.
A third perspective blends these two ideas, suggesting the winged figure is a global archetype a primordial image stemming from the human collective unconscious, as theorized by Carl Jung. In this view, the symbol emerges naturally from the deep structures of the human psyche, independent of cultural transmission.
Whether they are proof of a forgotten global culture, a testament to the parallel evolution of myth, or evidence of universal archetypes, the winged figures of Fugoppe, Nine Mile Canyon, and Gobustan remain a profound mystery. They serve as a powerful reminder that the ancient world was rich with imagination and that our ancestors, separated by oceans and epochs, may have shared a common desire to look to the skies and dream of flight. These echoes in stone continue to inspire debate and wonder, inviting us to contemplate the remarkable reach of human creativity in antiquity.
