evagattuso - stock.adobe.com - illustrative purposes only - pictured above a Toucan sits in the Amazon
The area of Serranía de la Lindosa, a 12-mile-long sandstone outcrop in Colombia, contains thousands of rock art motifs that record the history and beliefs of the Amazon's Indigenous peoples.
Aided by Indigenous elders and ritual specialists, archaeologists have been able to finally document the ancient rock art at six of the sites from the Amazon rainforest after nearly a century of political unrest and geographical barriers that made the art inaccessible.
"The rock art here is arguably the best in the world," said Jamie Hampson, the lead author of the study and an archaeologist from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom.
"We do not know for sure how old the images at La Lindosa are, but it is possible that some were painted 11,000 or 12,000 years ago, shortly after people first arrived in the Colombian Amazon."
The Indigenous groups now living in the region speak Tukano, Nukak, Desana, Jiw, and other languages. It is likely their ancestors created the art.
There may even be Indigenous groups near La Lindosa who have kept up the tradition and are still painting today.
The rock art motifs feature are painted with ochre and include depictions of hundreds of human figures, animals, plants, mythological creatures, and geometric shapes.
For most of the past 100 years, research activities in the region have been limited. It wasn't until the 2016 peace agreement between the Colombian government and FARC revolutionaries that conducting archaeological research in the remote area was made possible.
Now, after six years of field investigations, researchers have uncovered the meaning and significance of the artwork.
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