Dear colleague in rock art,

In 2011 I published the printed version of my book commenting the 1986-book by Núñez Jiménez about rock art in Peru. My book is called: Petroglyphs of Peru - Following the Footsteps of Antonio Núñez Jiménez. As I noticed that for several people the price was a problem, I created a much cheaper PDF e-version onto the BLURB website. At that time the maximum for an upload onto Academia and ResearchGate could not cope with the total bytes of that PDF. A few years ago I deleted my BLURB account and my five printed books are no longer for sale. A few years later ResearchGate allowed uploading items up to 500 MB. Therefore I now have the opportunity to give you access to my 2011-book about the 1986-work by Núñez Jiménez (download available via this URL). It must be stressed (and I do so in my book as well) that I only comment on the 1986-work by Núñez Jiménez, not the person, nor the researcher. When I wrote the subtitle, I indeed clarified that I followed the footsteps that Núñez Jiménez made to admirably explore the petroglyphs of Peru, as I literally surveyed most of those sites myself. But it must be emphasised that I did not follow/accept many of his illustrations in his 1986-work.

At first my book was intended to be published as a much shorter paper, which - in 2008 - I offered Robert Bednarik to submit this paper about Núñez Jiménez’ work for publication in Rock Art Research; a highly respected Journal where several of my papers had already been published. Having experienced a most co-operative and friendly communication with Bednarik (until then), I was surprised that he had serious objections as to my suggested paper. He argued that “it would be unfair to write a paper about a deceased person who could not defend himself”. His incorrect argument would mean that any (rock art) researcher would be denied the right to comment and/or criticise any work of deceased persons.

However, I am firmly convinced that it is not at all inappropriate to comment on the work of any academic scientist or amateur scientist (whether deceased or not), as long as the person is not attacked. I even applaud when a scientific work published by anyone (thus by me as well) that has unambiguous errors, is being criticised. In 2016 I also published a paper about this matter: Sobre Dibujos de Arte Rupestre (Andino). Una Petición Para Sólo Publicar Dibujos Que Son Científicamente Sólidos (PDF available at Academia). The main reasons to write my 2011-book and my 2016-paper are that - in my opinion - it is completely unacceptable that incorrect material is being published and … secondly, I do not accept the common habit that researchers uncritically copy and paste and consequently publish incorrect illustrations, which in case of Núñez Jiménez’ 1986-work happens quite a lot. If a researcher uses/publishes a drawing by Núñez Jiménez (or by Eloy Linares Málaga or Daniel Castillo Benites, for that matter), it should be clearly notified in the text/caption that the drawing is possibly incorrect.

Since my 2011-book was published, I visited Peru several times again and surveyed several other rock art sites and re-visited some rock art sites. As a consequence more flaws and pertinent errors can be added to the long list of errors in Núñez Jiménez’ 1986-work. An incomplete and abbreviated list of the errors (without illustrations) that I could find after 2011 is published in the PDF that can be downloaded below this page (the Fig. numbers refer to the drawings in the book by Núñez Jiménez).

Maarten van Hoek

Independent rock art researcher since 1975.

Websites:

https://arte-rupestre3.webnode.nl/

https://arterupestreandino.jouwweb.nl/

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Maarten_Van_Hoek

https://independent.academia.edu/MaartenvanHoek

To demonstrate the profound impact of an incorrect drawing by Núñez Jiménez, I included an illustration (see below) of part of his Fig. 985 (Palamenco) and my illustration (right).