Ethnoornithology is a multidisciplinary field of study that focuses on human-bird relationships and humans’ knowledge of the Earth’s avifauna. Falconry (the use of trained birds of prey—usually eagles, falcons, and hawks—to hunt wild animals) is one type of human-bird relationship, with its origins obscured in poorly understood prehistoric times. We hypothesized that falconry would have been memorable enough to prehistoric peoples to be the subject of rock art, and that evidence of prehistoric falconry could be found in the petroglyphs of the Persian Plateau. To assess this hypothesis, we visited 13 major rock art sites in the Persian Plateau, and searched for petroglyphs depicting a person bearing a bird on the forearm. We found, identified, and photographed 11 petroglyphs depicting falconry. Most (n = 10) occurred in the archaeological region of Teymareh, most (n = 7) showed a falconer mounted on horseback or elephant, and many (n = 6) included an accompanying trained canid or cheetah. These tableaus suggest that falconry was but one aspect of a suite of human-animal associations developed and maintained by the prehistoric peoples of the Persian Plateau. Based on previous surveys of the petroglyphs of Teymareh, along with other evidence, we assume that most of the petroglyphs we discovered were inscribed approximately 4000 years ago, likely making them some of the oldest remaining evidence of falconry in the world. We suggest that our work indicates that future research on petroglyphs may be useful in further exploring and understanding the relationship between prehistoric mankind and wildlife.

民族生物学是一个多学科的研究领域，其重点是人与鸟之间的关系以及人类对地球航空动物的了解。猎鹰（使用受过训练的猛禽（通常是鹰，猎鹰和鹰）来捕猎野生动物）是一种人鸟关系，其起源在史前时期被人们所理解的模糊不清。我们假设猎鹰将足以让史前民族成为岩石艺术的记忆，并且在波斯高原的岩画中可以找到史前鹰猎的证据。为了评估这一假设，我们访问了波斯高原的13个主要岩石艺术遗址，并搜索了刻有石像的文字，描绘了一个人在前臂上有一只鸟。我们发现，识别并拍摄了11幅描述猎鹰的岩画。多数（n= 10）发生在Teymareh考古区，大多数（n = 7）表现出安装在马背或大象上的猎鹰，而许多（n= 6）随附有训练有素的犬科动物或猎豹。这些画面表明，猎鹰只是波斯高原史前人类发展和维持的一系列人类-动物联系的一个方面。根据对Teymareh岩画的先前调查以及其他证据，我们认为发现的大多数岩画都是大约4000年前被刻上的，这很可能使它们成为世界上最古老的猎鹰证据。我们建议我们的工作表明未来对岩画的研究可能对进一步探索和理解史前人类与野生动植物之间的关系可能有用。