Unlike most other Stone Age rock carvings around the world, these images are not drawn on walls or standing rocks, but cut into the exposed stone of flat hilltops along what is called the Konkan coastal plateau. Their style is realistic for the animals, and more stylized for humans. Most of the animals, including elephants, are life-size and one site with multiple carvings is the largest in South Asia, Dr. Garge said. He believes it should be a national monument.

The discovery so far has not received a great deal of academic attention, but Jean Clottes, an expert on cave art and the editor of the International Newsletter on Rock Art, said in an email that the collection of images “is an important discovery, no doubt.” He said well-preserved carvings on the ground have been found elsewhere, but are unusual.

Meenakshi Dubey-Pathak, a freelance researcher and artist who has published extensively on Indian rock art said the carvings share imagery with other Indian rock art and rock art worldwide.

“These were hunter gatherers,” she said and the carvings were not art for art’s sake. “They had meaning and purpose,” she said.

Indian tourists have been visiting the sites, since published reports of the epic journey of discovery by Mr. Risbud and Mr. Marathe first appeared last fall. But the sites are not easy to locate. You can find images on the tourism website for Ratnagiri, but there are no directions to or GPS locations for the various sites.

To find the carvings, a tourist needs to ask local town and village residents; Dr. Garge, Mr. Risbud and Mr. Marathe would like to keep it that way. Most of the carvings are on private land, and it would be costly to buy all the sites to preserve them. Dr. Garge hopes to make the sites a source of income to local residents.

He described an encounter with a tea seller who had a small stall at a crossroads near one of the sites. The state had considered putting up signs with directions, Dr. Garge said, but the tea seller asked him not to do so.