The images
heralded by researchers as "the Sistine Chapel of the ancients"
depict animals, humans and geometric patterns
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Ancient artists created
the works between 12,600 and 11,800 years ago. (Marie-Claire
Thomas / Wild Blue Media)
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Toward the end of the last Ice Age, prehistoric artists painted
tens of thousands of imagesincluding depictions of mastodons,
giant sloths and other now-extinct animalson cliff walls in
the Amazon rainforest, reports Dalya Alberge for the Guardian.
Archaeologists found the first of the enormous set of images in
2017 but kept the trove secret while continuing work and preparing
a television series on the discovery.
A British-Colombian research team funded by the European
Research Council spotted the paintings stretched across eight
miles of cliffs in the Serranía
de la Lindosa, which is part of the Colombian Amazon. The red-ocher
art features fish, lizards, birds, geometric patterns and humans,
including people dancing. In at least one image, a human dons a
mask suggestive of a bird's face. Also shown are an extinct camelid
known as a palaeolama
and a type of horse that lived in the region during the Ice Age.
"The pictures are so natural and so well made that we have few
doubts that you're looking at a horse, for example," team leader
José
Iriarte, an archaeologist at Exeter University, tells the Guardian.
"The [Ice Age] horse had a wild, heavy face. It's so detailed, we
can even see the horse hair. It's fascinating."
Live
Science's Laura Geggel reports that ancient artists created
the works between 12,600 and 11,800 years ago. At the time, the
area was transforming from a landscape of savannas, shrubs and forests
into the tropical rainforest seen today. According to team member
Mark
Robinson, also an archaeologist at the University of Exeter,
the people who made the images were probably among the first humans
to live in the western Amazon.
"The paintings give a vivid and exciting glimpse [into] the lives
of these communities," says Robinson in a statement.
"It is unbelievable to us today to think they lived among, and hunted,
giant herbivores, some which were the size of a small car."
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The art shows a variety
of animals (including now-extinct species), plants, humans
and geometric patterns.
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The people who created
the artwork were among the first to live in the western Amazon.
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The archaeologists' work includes investigations into ancient agriculture
and the ways in which humans transformed the Amazonian landscape.
In rock shelters located near the art, researchers discovered the
remains of food eaten by the artists, including fruits, alligators,
capybara and armadillos.
Until recently, the area had been inaccessible to researchers due
to Colombia's
50-year civil war. Per Brian Boucher of artnet
News, the investigation began after the 2016 signing of
a peace treaty. But archaeologists still had to obtain permission
from rebel forces who had not signed on to the agreement to make
the five-hour trek through the forest to the cliff sites.
Iriarte tells artnet News that the artists' choice of smooth
rock walls sheltered from rain served as an ideal canvas for the
detailed paintings. Some of the works are located so high up on
the cliff walls that the researchers had to use drones to photograph
them.
Speaking with the Guardian, Iriarte says the images themselves
offer clues as to how artists reached such heights. Several show
wooden towers and humans who appear to be jumping from them.
According to Iriarte, the pictures may relate to religious practices.
For example, some show large animals surrounded by small human figures
with their arms raised, possibly in worship.
"For Amazonian people, non-humans like animals and plants have
souls, and they communicate and engage with people in cooperative
or hostile ways through the rituals and shamanic practices that
we see depicted in the rock art," he tells the Guardian.
The researchers published some of their findings in April in the
journal Quaternary
International. A documentary about the findings, "Jungle
Mystery: Lost Kingdoms of the Amazon," will air on British public
television station Channel 4 later this month.
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