Amidst the sun-scorched rocks of the Negev desert, ancient carvings tell the story of a long-lost civilization, a witness to millennia of history. Yet these priceless images, some of humanity’s oldest art forms, are under attack from desert-adapted fungi and lichens. A recent study published in Frontiers in Fungal Biology reveals that these microorganisms, capable of withstanding extreme temperatures and drought, secrete acids that dissolve the limestone petroglyphs, causing gradual yet severe damage to these irreplaceable artworks.
The research team, led by Laura Rabbachin from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, collected several samples from petroglyph sites in the central-western highlands of the Negev desert. Using DNA sequencing, they found that the petroglyph harbors a variety of microcolonial fungi and lichen that have evolved to live on limited resources. These organisms secrete acids to dissolve the limestone into more accessible forms, allowing them to thrive in such a nutrient-poor environment. However, the continuous breakdown of the limestone causes significant surface erosion, slowly erasing the details of the carvings and threatening their long-term stability.
“Microcolonial fungi are considered highly dangerous for stone artifacts. For example, they have been implicated as a probable cause of the deterioration of stone cultural heritage in the Mediterranean,” said Laura Rabbachin, lead author of the study. “Lichens are also well known to cause rocks to deteriorate and thus to be a potential threat to stone cultural heritage.”
Unfortunately, the study concluded that there’s no way to completely prevent the damage caused by these microorganisms. The best course of action, they suggest, is to monitor these processes and document the petroglyphs to create a permanent record of them for future generations.
