Prehistoric rock art in Colombia
November 30, 2020 6:46 AM   Subscribe

'One of the world’s largest collections of prehistoric rock art has been discovered in the Amazonian rainforest' writes Dalya Alberge at The Guardian.

A Daily Mail article has slightly larger versions of the same images.

A couple more images here.

A previous discovery in the same area.

More will be apparently be broadcast in a forthcoming documentary on (UK) Channel 4 - Jungle Mystery: Lost Kingdoms of the Amazon.
posted by misteraitch (11 comments total) 38 users marked this as a favorite
 
This is amazing.
posted by carter at 7:04 AM on November 30, 2020 [5 favorites]


World’s most inaccessible art found in the heart of the Colombian jungle

Didn't realize Damien Hirst moved
posted by little onion at 7:47 AM on November 30, 2020 [7 favorites]


I love this.
posted by doctornemo at 8:11 AM on November 30, 2020


From the photos it appears these cliffs are exposed to the open air. How can such fine detail have survived all these millennia with essentially no protection from the elements?

(Also, as someone from the Pacific Northwest, it took me a while to parse "a British-Colombian team")
posted by five toed sloth at 8:34 AM on November 30, 2020 [4 favorites]


This is awesome and wonderful and incredible. Also, a lot of the animal figures remind me of Gary Larson cartoons. Meaning no disrespect to either Gary Larson or to the ancient artists - it seems he merely tapped a very deep vein indeed when he worked.
posted by DSime at 8:42 AM on November 30, 2020 [3 favorites]


Original paper (via Charles C Mann).
posted by Nelson at 8:56 AM on November 30, 2020


Wow. Just wow.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:59 AM on November 30, 2020


This twitter thread from one of the researchers has more pictures.

There is a peer-reviewed journal article here, it may be paywalled but is likely available elsewhere, nonetheless.

As I read it, there is a suite of dates from the apparently associated archaeological site ranging from 20,000 (too old?) to 300 (too young?) years ago. The researchers favour the 12,500 dates and they appear to be solid regardless of the others - but having such a wide range is a small red flag. There are no direct dates on the rock art itself, they are dated by a combination of "the associated archaeological habitation site includes dates of 12,500" and "some of the rock art appears to show extinct fauna such as ground sloth and horse".

In this figure, (a) is said to be a giant ground sloth, (b) a mammoth or mastodon, (d) and (e) a horse, (c) a long necked camelid thought to be an extinct species related to guanaco/llama and the other two an unknown long necked, three-toed creature with a trunk possibly Xenorhinotherium

And, it really does appear to show that! And the adjacent site is good circumstantial evidence, or corroborates at least that people were nearby at this early time period. However it is still a relatively weak association - the panels with the horse and sloth do look like those creatures but they are not the sort of finely detailed unambiguous styles found in some part of the world (e.g., Dordogne), and there are tens of thousands of figures presumably from all time periods in this enormous site so finding a few which appear to be from extinct fauna is super interesting but in my view is not yet conclusive. A lot of rock art globally includes fantastical animals and therianthropes.

Ideally there would be we ways of dating the art itself, for example by U-Th dating of any calcite overlaying the paint, by 14C dating of any organics used as binders in the pigment (e.g., bird eggs commonly used globally), and finding fragments of painted bedrock flaked off into dated layers of the archaeological site.

Anyway, it's a stupendous site, it has been known for some time, the scientific investigation is just gaining steam, and a lot of the reporting in the last few days is more aimed at promoting the Ch4 documentary than anything else.
posted by Rumple at 9:09 AM on November 30, 2020 [17 favorites]


This is absolutely magnificent.
posted by annieb at 3:56 PM on November 30, 2020


This has made my day. How lucky we are to be able to share in this discovery! It's all so beautiful.
posted by Kitchen Witch at 7:32 AM on December 1, 2020


Interesting thread from a Colombian archaeologist, Camilo López Aguirre:

Ok people, the current hype in #Science around #Archaeology research in #Chiribiquete and #LaLindosa in #Colombia, albeit deserving, it's a clear example of how scientific discovery is colonised and monopolised. We need to have an awkward conversation 1/n

Although some contrary perspective offered in this thread by Ella Al-Shamahi :

Hi all a few folks are querying a few things about this new rock art find - I keep trying to respond but am repeating myself quite a bit. So apologies if you are getting repetition!

So again this particular site in la Lindosa is a NEW rock art site, there are other sites... 1/

posted by Rumple at 1:32 PM on December 3, 2020


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