Does this Amazon rock art depict extinct Ice Age mammals?

[Judi Lynn]

A photo provided by Jose Iriarte, an archaeologistNEW YORK, NY.- At the end of the last ice age, South America was home to strange animals that have since vanished into extinction: giant ground sloths, elephant-like herbivores and an ancient lineage of horses. A new study suggests that we can see these lost creatures in enchanting ocher paintings made by ice age humans on a rocky outcrop in the Colombian Amazon.

by Becky Ferreira

NEW YORK, NY.- At the end of the last ice age, South America was home to strange animals that have since vanished into extinction: giant ground sloths, elephant-like herbivores and an ancient lineage of horses. A new study suggests that we can see these lost creatures in enchanting ocher paintings made by ice age humans on a rocky outcrop in the Colombian Amazon.

These dazzling rock art displays at Serranía de la Lindosa, a site on the remote banks of the Guayabero River, were long known to the area’s Indigenous people but were virtually off limits to researchers because of the Colombian civil war. Recent expeditions led by José Iriarte, an archaeologist at the University of Exeter in England, have sparked renewed interest and debate over the interpretation of the animals in the paintings.

“The whole biodiversity of the Amazon is painted there,” Iriarte said, both aquatic and land creatures and plants, as well as “animals that are very intriguing and appear to be ice age large mammals.”

Iriarte and his colleagues, who are part of a project studying human arrival in South America, defend the case that the rock art depicts ice age megafauna in a study that was published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. But as the study itself acknowledges, the identification of extinct animals in rock art is controversial — and the site at La Lindosa is no exception.

More:
https://artdaily.cc/index.asp?int_new=144432&int_sec=11#.YjQyBXrMLDc

[SheltieLover]

1. Wow!

Ty for sharing!

[malaise]

3. That's amazing

Thanks

[Duppers]

4. What a discovery!!

K & R.

[Chainfire]

5. It looks to me like they featured dogs as well.