An important rock art discovery was made last year in the Colombian Amazon which has been dubbed ‘the Sistine Chapel of the Ancients’. Its recent announcement mentions thousands of paintings, stretched over eight-miles of cliff, of fish, lizards, turtles, birds and abstract symbols and forms. Also included are depictions of now extinct megafauna, such as an ice age horse, mastodon and sloth which apparently led the UK-Colombian team to think the art reaches back to 12,500 years ago.
There’s also figures in ritual costumes like birdmen (or perhaps, the birdman) known from other sites such as Körtik Tepe:
And Lascaux Cave:
Imagery to the right of the “invoking” birdman is reminiscent of fireballs and of a cosmic tree structure:
Why the team think red ochre would have survived so well over an exposed rock face for so long is probably a topic they’ll discuss.