The ancient rock art that stretches across an 8-mile wall was discovered in the Amazon rainforest.
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The site hailed as “the Sistine Chapel of the ancients” was discovered last year, but has since been kept secret. It was initially filmed for the Channel 4 series “Jungle Mystery: Lost Kingdoms of the Amazon” that will be screened in December. The documentary’s presenter Ella Al-Shamahi said that “The new site is so new, they haven’t even given it a name yet.”
Scientists say the paintings were made around 11,800 to 12,500 years ago.
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The site was discovered by an international team of British and Colombian researchers. José Iriarte, professor of archaeology at Exeter University and expert on Amazon and pre-Colombian history, commented on the discovery: “When you’re there, your emotions flow … We’re talking about several tens of thousands of paintings. It’s going to take generations to record them … Every turn you do, it’s a new wall of paintings.”
There are drawings of deer, tapirs, alligators, bats, monkeys, turtles, serpents, and porcupines, as well as what appears to be Ice Age megafauna.
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Remarkably, all the paintings turned out to be well-preserved and incredibly detailed. “The pictures are so natural and so well-made that we have few doubts that you’re looking at a horse, for example. The ice-age horse had a wild, heavy face. It’s so detailed, we can even see the horse hair. It’s fascinating.”
Iriarte also said in a statement that this ancient art serves as spectacular evidence of how humans reconstructed the land, how they lived there, hunted, farmed, and fished. “It is likely art was a powerful part of culture and a way for people to connect socially. The pictures show how people would have lived amongst giant, now extinct, animals, which they hunted,” he concluded.
Although the discovery was made about a year ago, the drawings were first unveiled for an upcoming documentary series by Channel 4.