{"id":201576,"date":"2021-12-20T12:00:14","date_gmt":"2021-12-20T12:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=201576"},"modified":"2021-12-17T06:37:22","modified_gmt":"2021-12-17T06:37:22","slug":"incredible-cave-paintings-8-miles-long-revealed-deep-in-amazon-forest-the-sistine-chapel-of-ancients","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/12\/incredible-cave-paintings-8-miles-long-revealed-deep-in-amazon-forest-the-sistine-chapel-of-ancients\/","title":{"rendered":"Incredible Cave Paintings 8 Miles-Long Revealed Deep in Amazon Forest: The Sistine Chapel of Ancients"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

GIPRI Colombia\/YouTube<\/p><\/div>\n

15 Nov 2021 – <\/em>Tens of thousands of pristine cave paintings were found daubed across an eight-mile stretch of rock in a once-in-a-century discovery in Colombia\u2019s Amazon rainforest.<\/p>\n

Hailed as the \u201cSistine Chapel of the Ancients,\u201d it\u2019s the kind of discovery that changes the world of archaeology.<\/p>\n

Believed to be 12,500 years old, the art is extremely detailed, and includes handprints and depictions of Ice Age megafauna like the mastodon, a relative of the mammoth, Ice Age horses, and giant ground sloths.<\/p>\n

The discovery, made in Chiribiquete National Park in the south of Colombia, was actually made in 2019 but was kept quiet to be revealed in a major documentary called Jungle Mystery: Lost Kingdoms of the Amazon.<\/em><\/p>\n

Presumably, archaeologists also want to preserve as much time to study the art alone as they can, as the news could draw tourists, or even looters and artifact hunters to the site.<\/p>\n

RELATED:<\/strong> While Excavating 1000-Year-old Viking Ship, Norwegians Find Remnants of Elite Society<\/a><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The discoverers suspect the works could have been made by Paleolithic hunters who crossed the Bering land bridge into the new world from Siberia.<\/p>\n

Of majesty and mystery<\/h2>\n

A joint Colombian-British team made the discovery, led by Jose Iriarte, a professor of archaeology at Exeter University, who was quite vocal about the raw power of literally tens of thousands of different images, some of which are so well done they include horse tails with individual hairs painted.<\/p>\n

CHECK OUT: <\/strong>Rare Archeological Treasures Discovered Beneath Attic Floorboards of English Tudor Mansion<\/a><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re there, your emotions flow\u2026 We\u2019re talking about several tens of thousands of paintings. It\u2019s going to take generations to record them \u2026 Every turn you do, it\u2019s a new wall of paintings,\u201d he told<\/a> the Observer.<\/p>\n

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GIPRI Colombia\/YouTube<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Further complicating the mystery is that the paintings cover nearly every inch even far up the cliff faces where they were only seen clearly when the archaeologist broke out the flying camera drones.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m 5ft 10in and I would be breaking my neck looking up. How were they scaling those walls?\u201d said Paleo-archaeologist Ella Al-Shamahi, who will present the new documentary.<\/p>\n

Along with large mammals, birds, fish, lizards\u2014masked figures often in dance are also painted here.<\/p>\n

Trees and hallucinogenic plants are also depicted, which wasn\u2019t a surprise to Iriarte who noted that \u201cfor Amazonian people, non-humans like animals and plants have souls, and they communicate and engage with people in cooperative or hostile ways through the rituals and shamanic practices that we see depicted in the rock art.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chiribiquete was an area that was controlled by the anti-government paramilitary organization FARC until recently, when they signed a truce with Bogota, which is likely one reason why it\u2019s taken so long to discover such an enormous trove of cave paintings.<\/p>\n

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GIPRI Colombia\/YouTube<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Al-Shamahi recalled, according to the Guardian<\/a>, that \u201cwhen we entered FARC territory, it was exactly as a few of us have been screaming about for a long time. Exploration is not over. Scientific discovery is not over but the big discoveries now are going to be found in places that are disputed or hostile.\u201d<\/p>\n

MORE: <\/strong>Buried Roman City Mapped in Stunning Detail Using Ground-Penetrating Radar<\/a><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The team will be back, searching the surrounding areas for more paintings as soon as COVID-19 allows.<\/p>\n

Jungle Mystery–Lost Kingdoms of the Amazon<\/em>. Watch a clip:
\n<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=l1DjIiQ1qRA&feature=emb_imp_woyt<\/p>\n

Go to Original – goodnewsnetwork.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

15 Nov 2021 – Believed to be 12,500 years old, tens of thousands of pristine cave paintings were found across an eight-mile stretch of rock in Colombia\u2019s Amazon rainforest. Hailed as the \u201cSistine Chapel of the Ancients,\u201d it\u2019s the kind of discovery that changes the world of archaeology; the art is extremely detailed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":201577,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148],"tags":[2302,536,1818,915,1661,260,304],"class_list":["post-201576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","tag-amazon","tag-amazonia","tag-archaeology","tag-art","tag-colombia","tag-history","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}