12,000-Year-Old Rock Drawings of Ice Age Megafauna Discovered in Colombian Amazon

Archaeologists on the ERC project LASTJOURNEY have discovered spectacular rock pictographs in three separate rock shelters in the Guaviare Department of Colombia.

The drawings, made around 12,600 and 11,800 years ago, provide proof the Amazon rainforest’s earliest inhabitants lived alongside now-extinct Ice Age animals such as giant sloths and mastodons.

“These really are incredible images, produced by the earliest people to live in western Amazonia,” said Dr. Mark Robinson, an archaeologist in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Exeter.

“They moved into the region at a time of extreme climate change, which was leading to changes in vegetation and the make-up of the forest.”

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Image credit: University of Exeter.

Professor Iriarte at the archaeological site of Cerro Azul in the Serranía La Lindosa, Colombia.

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Image credit: Morcote-Ríos

Example of Cerro Azul rock paintings showing several motifs: (a) anthropomorphic, (b) hands, (c) zoomorphic, (d) geometric, (e) plants.

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Image credit: Morcote-Ríos

Ice-Age megafauna displayed in the pictographs of the Serranía La Lindosa including: (a) giant sloth, (b) mastodon, (c) camelid, (d, e) horse, (f) long-neck, three-toed ungulate with trunk.

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From human hands to now-extinct animals, cave art gives us a glimpse into prehistoric life. Who created cave art, and what was its initial purpose?

Explore the paintings of Chauvet-Pont d'Arc and Lascaux Grotto, and learn what prehistoric art can tell us about our world thousands of years ago.

From about 18,000 to 10,000 B.C., long before Stonehenge and the pyramids, back when mammoths and saber-toothed cats still roamed the earth, prehistoric people painted deep inside caves in what is today the Dordogne region of France.

These cave paintings are huge and sophisticated projects executed by artists and supported by an impressive culture — the Magdalenians.