According to Live Science , researchers recently published a beautiful work painted with ocher – a red pigment commonly used as paint in the ancient world.

It’s a nearly 8-mile (13-kilometer) long picture, set in the hills of the Colombian Amazon. Mark Robinson, an archaeologist at the University of Exeter (UK), said: “These are truly amazing images, created by the first people living in the western Amazon. They started drawing images This is at the archaeological site of Serranía La Lindosa, on the northern edge of the Colombian Amazon, at the end of the last ice age, about 12,600 to 11,800 years ago.

This ice age painting links thousands of images, including handprints, geometric designs and a variety of animals, from the likes of deer, tapirs, crocodiles, bats, monkeys, turtles, snakes and porcupines to to camels, horses and other mammals with three-toed hooves.

Other images depict people, hunting scenes, plants, trees and steppe creatures. “The paintings provide a vivid and interesting glimpse into the lives of these communities,” Robinson said. It’s incredible to think that “people of that time could live and hunt among giant beasts, some of which were the size of small cars”.

Many large animals in South America became extinct at the end of the last ice age, possibly due to human hunting and climate change, researchers say.

According to author Laura Geggel, the drawings provide clues about the diet of hunter-gatherers during that period. Bones and plant remains show that their menu included fruit, piranhas, alligators, snakes, frogs, and rodents such as paca, capybara, and armadillo. …

In addition to the 8-mile “picture”, scientists excavated and discovered rock shelters in the Amazon region in 2017 and 2018. They studied the early period of human settlement in the Amazon , as well as the impact that human farming and hunting of that period had on biodiversity in this area.

“The rock paintings are breathtaking evidence of how people hunted, farmed and fished,” said José Iriarte, an archaeologist at the University of Exeter. “It’s possible that art was a strong part of culture and a way for people of that period to connect socially”.

Dating back 12,600 years, a quite long period of time, the above paintings with exquisite details of people, animals, plants… are still a source of inspiration for scientists to research and discover. add new things.