A digital enhancement to bring the rock art into sharper relief.
(Photo:G.R.V.)
Cave art left behind by ancient humans has created many scientific mysteries.
A digital enhancement to bring the rock art into sharper relief. (Photo:G.R.V.)
Sometimes cave art records human-ness such as handprints, or activities such as hunting.
Sometimes the designs discovered painted in caves or carved into rocks are geometric in nature.
The drawings in CH1 have been an object of study for almost a decade.
What do you see in this rock art? (Photo:G.R.V.)
They present 446 distinct groupings of individual drawings.
Accelerator mass spectrometry revealed the remaining carbon in the organic material.
Using radio-carbon dating, a practice based on radioactive decay’s regular timeline, the charcoal could be dated.
The volcanic landscape of the Monte Desert and the cave. (Photo:G.R.V.)
Multiple samples were used for accuracy.
These yielded an impressive result: the charcoal was 8,171 years old.
Not all drawings were created at the same time, however.
The pit structure, red ochre, and a shell bead. (Photo:G.R.V. and R.B>)
The climate was very arid.
While they left much behind to study, there is still much to learn about Patagonia’s earliest inhabitants.
What do you see in this rock art?
(Photo:G.R.V.)
The volcanic landscape of the Monte Desert and the cave.
(Photo:G.R.V.)
The pit structure, red ochre, and a shell bead.
(Photo:G.R.V.
