'The Sistine Chapel of the ancients': Eight
mile wall of prehistoric paintings of animals
and humans is discovered in heart of the
Amazon rainforest
Daily Mail (UK),
by
Isabella Nikolic
&
EMILY WEBBER
Original Article
Posted By: Imright,
11/30/2020 1:56:28 AM
An eight-mile wall of prehistoric rock art featuring animals and humans has been discovered in the Amazonian rainforest after it was created up to 12,500 years ago. The historical artwork, which is now being called the 'Sistine Chapel of the ancients', was uncovered on cliff faces last year in the Chiribiquete National Park, Columbia, by a British-Columbian team of archaeologists funded by the European Research Council. The date of the paintings has been based on the portrayal of extinct animals from the ice age such as the mastodon - a prehistoric relative of the elephant which hasn't been seen in South America for at least 12,000 years.
Reply 1 - Posted by:
MindMadeUp 11/30/2020 3:02:03 AM (No. 619714)
What is an "eight-mile wall"? Does that mean it's 8 miles long? All covered with rock art?
5 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
Highlander 11/30/2020 4:16:12 AM (No. 619724)
Looks like something I used to see on the refrigerator when my kids were little. Why didn’t the archeologists show what they envisaged as a mastodon, or an extinct camel? This article is short on details.
20 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
MrDeplorable 11/30/2020 5:26:09 AM (No. 619737)
Kind of funny: The paint on my 2003 Corolla is just about gone after 17 years and these Siberian nomadic naifs paint pictures that last twelve millennia. That archaeologist needs to keep looking. There must be a 12,000-year-old car around there somewhere.
37 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
rfr46 11/30/2020 5:35:32 AM (No. 619739)
So now the Sistine Chapel is being relativized into an impressive collection of images, however crudely drawn and irrespective of their spiritual inspiration!
30 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
FleetUSA 11/30/2020 5:42:01 AM (No. 619741)
Something fishy here. This article doesn't ring true. Photos look too pretty, someone's hand on the rocks might degrade art.
19 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
Foont 11/30/2020 5:45:22 AM (No. 619743)
The only other works of this age of which I am aware are deep in caves and protected from the elements. These certainly appear to be out in the open and in a rough environment (the article mentions that artifacts and bone don't last long down there). The photos seem to show paintings that look to be in remarkably good condition for having been exposed to wind, rain and sun for over 12,000 years.
25 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
privateer 11/30/2020 5:59:07 AM (No. 619746)
I wonder if the article is short on details on purpose. They should keep looking; they might find the Piltdown man's wife...or Volume 1946 of the Hitler Diaries. He forgot it down there on a visit to select a retirement home.
10 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
BirdsNest 11/30/2020 6:19:57 AM (No. 619752)
Keep looking, they COULD find more Biden votes.
31 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
F15 Gork 11/30/2020 6:25:47 AM (No. 619755)
Reminds me a little bit of the graffiti on the outside of a NYC subway car......
7 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
Skinnydip 11/30/2020 8:02:24 AM (No. 619793)
I'm calling BS on this.
16 people like this.
One of those drawings looks a little like bit like Batman to me.
3 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
Newtsche 11/30/2020 8:14:43 AM (No. 619807)
Agreed this stuff looks too well preserved.
7 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
ROLFNader 11/30/2020 8:18:29 AM (No. 619809)
They had me until I saw the 59 Edsel.
12 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
BarryNo 11/30/2020 8:27:45 AM (No. 619816)
I kind of echo many of the other responents, here. This appears to be an open-air cliff face exposed to the elements of a changing climate, not a secluded cave with stable atmosphere and undisturbed habitat as in Europe, or a secluded, dry single protected image found here and there in the dry outback of Australia. This is miles of art where paint has somehow retained pigment and avoided erosion from rain, wind, and modern atmosphere for thousands of years.
And there are the convenient "towers" depicted. Note Michelangelo never painted scaffolding in the margins of the Sistine Chapel. It's too convenient.
And I honestly want this to be real. I really do.
I also doubt that any tribe could minting it cultural integrity over that long a period. The suggestions that two local tribes did so, is also, suspicious.
There are so many warning bells, I almost wish I'd never seen the article.
6 people like this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
Rather Read 11/30/2020 8:50:33 AM (No. 619836)
Looks kind of new to me.
4 people like this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
walcb 11/30/2020 8:52:23 AM (No. 619841)
If there are paintings of mastodons, extinct camels and horses why didn't they show any, or at least good, pictures of them? There were no pictures of animals with tusks.
6 people like this.
Reply 17 - Posted by:
watashiyo 11/30/2020 9:02:17 AM (No. 619850)
Red Sharpie will not fade for 12500 years.
6 people like this.
Reply 18 - Posted by:
mobyclik 11/30/2020 9:15:49 AM (No. 619866)
What, no UFO's?
2 people like this.
Reply 19 - Posted by:
Lawsy0 11/30/2020 9:22:28 AM (No. 619876)
Everything old is new again. Don't let the Democrats anywhere near it!
4 people like this.
Reply 20 - Posted by:
DVC 11/30/2020 9:44:09 AM (No. 619893)
Some of the descriptions are ridiculously over wrought. One quotation from another article is "The pictures are so natural and so well made that we have few doubts that you’re looking at a horse".
Well, I saw photos of many dozens of the images......and a large square with a tiny head on one corner and two tiny legs on the bottom corners, then a tail on the other corner.......doesn't come anywhere near close to that descriptions. Perhaps there are a few images that are artistically done and deserve praise for their artistic skill, but the ones shown are about the same as what the average 6 year old puts out with crayons.
Interesting? Sure, neat history, fun to see that they have survived so long. But great artistic representations? I didn't see any.
Yes, a good discovery, but the archeologists need to dial it back a bit in their breathless and overblown descriptions.
And as to artistic skills......there are some cave paintings in France that ARE truly artistic. Much more realistic and more artistic skill than these. For example:
https://i.pinimg.com/564x/b4/96/69/b4966980d245570dc1a07abf1f38c422.jpg
Frankly, the natives of North and South America were at least 5,000 years behind Europe and the middle east, perhaps more like 10,000 years. The natives of the Americas didn't have the wheel, no significant metal smelting, no iron, no bronze, very, very little copper, no alphabets, no numbers, no geometry, simple structures made with stacked rocks, no arches, no bridges. The art and architecture is childish, and basically when Europeans had been in the iron age and had advanced art and architecture, aquaducts, number systems, mathematics, geometry, multiple written languages for several thousand years, the natives of the Americas were still ignorant stone age tribes.
The natives of the Americas were, as a whole group, failed cultures - stagnant at the stone age, pre-wheel, level without significant technical or artistic advancement in 10,000 years. It is unfortunate, but it is the hard reality, and I'm sure that by modern university standards, it is probably racist to notice.
17 people like this.
Reply 21 - Posted by:
Hermoine 11/30/2020 9:46:06 AM (No. 619897)
Looks like a kindergarten art project...not buying that this is 12K+ years old and still in that good of shape.
7 people like this.
Reply 22 - Posted by:
walcb 11/30/2020 9:57:33 AM (No. 619906)
Some of the stone structures constructed by the ancient indians far exceeded what was being done in the "old world" at the same time, even though they didn't invent the wheel and geometry was unknown. There was a written language recorded, was preserved and brought back to Europe by the Conquistadors.
1 person likes this.
Reply 23 - Posted by:
Quigley 11/30/2020 10:26:19 AM (No. 619932)
The time period interests me, the abrupt end of the big ice age. Apparently north america had been swept by biblical floods presumably from millions of square miles of melted ice which formed a lake larger than all the great lakes, and perhaps other catastrophes which left the survivors in a pickle. Whatever had been there was taken away c 12900 years ago. It would be nice to find something recorded about what happened. But truth, the pictured paintings are in unbelievable condition to be that age.
1 person likes this.
Reply 24 - Posted by:
columba 11/30/2020 10:55:59 AM (No. 619953)
Comparing the pagan drawings in South America to the beauty of the Sistine Chapel is as dumb as thinking that Biden and Harris actually won the election.
4 people like this.
Reply 25 - Posted by:
DVC 11/30/2020 11:05:00 AM (No. 619962)
Interesting assertions, #22. Please point to a reference for even a single example of your "stone structures constructed by the ancient indians far exceeded what was being done in the "old world" at the same time". As far as I know there are no examples, perhaps you can show me one.
I have toured Roman structures which are still intact and survive, and I will challenge anything produced in N and S America to come even remotely close to the fully intact 2000 year old Pantheon. It has been in continuous use for 2,000 years, and is a free span concrete dome 140 ft wide. All the structures I have seen in the Americas are stacked stone blocks, with no keystone arches at all, nothing remotely like the vaulted barrel arches and other advanced arched and domed structures, like the buttressed vaults seen in Trajan's Market, or other ancient Roman buildings which still stand, intact, after 20 centuries.
And "written language" does not include pictograms or hieroglyphics which is all that I have seen in the Americas. A legitimate written language is made up of a limited alphabet of characters (typically only about 25-30) which represent phonemes, not entire words, or even concepts.
Frankly, one of the biggest challenges that the Oriental countries have today is their cumbersome, inconvenient semi-hieroglyphic methods of writing. These systems are extremely complex, cumbersome, difficult to learn and hinder them seriously in modern communications. Their 'typewriters' are really a giant kludge. Apparently there has been some modernization and streamlining in the last century. I am absolutely no expert on kanji, but it is apparently some sort of a limited subset of the original large number of semi-hieroglyphic characters, but still has well over 100 "characters", complex and cumbersome at best, archaic in reality.
6 people like this.
Reply 26 - Posted by:
marbles 11/30/2020 11:19:41 AM (No. 619978)
If you have ever seen the cave paintings at Pech Merle, Font de Gaume and most importantly Lascaux, you would see a vast differences. Those cave paintings are exquisite.And at least 5,000 yeas older. These "paintings" are child like. Something does not compute.
4 people like this.
Reply 27 - Posted by:
Aubreyesque 11/30/2020 12:16:45 PM (No. 620003)
I second #25s response. A corbel arch is NOWHERE near the innovation of the Roman arch or column. A Central American sacbe is indeed a wonder but not as well planned or stable as the Roman road. Classical architecture is still standing whereas archaeologist have to dig through piles of rubble overlaid by thick growth before determining structure. And the mystery of why the Mississippi Mound cultures suddenly stopped building is somewhat evident in that they relied exclusively on wood, not stone.
2 people like this.
Reply 28 - Posted by:
Rumblehog 11/30/2020 1:06:57 PM (No. 620027)
If that's what humanists consider competitive with the Sistine Chapel then they're blind, as well as stupid. This looks more like modern day graffiti on bridges and train cars.
2 people like this.
Reply 29 - Posted by:
Laotzu 11/30/2020 1:21:00 PM (No. 620037)
1. Wow, those undernourished aboriginals sure had big hands.
2. Amazing how the jungle knew to not grow up around where the paintings are.
3 people like this.
Reply 30 - Posted by:
ROLFNader 11/30/2020 2:13:34 PM (No. 620070)
I found a few boxes of this apre historic artwork in my garage attic and took it in for carbon-dating . Seems nearly all of them were created around the birthday of someone named "Pop Pop".
3 people like this.
Reply 31 - Posted by:
Safari Man 11/30/2020 2:17:24 PM (No. 620073)
phaique
2 people like this.
Reply 32 - Posted by:
jj1319 11/30/2020 3:27:59 PM (No. 620109)
One of the images I saw was clearly William Shatner.
I'm doing research on the "Pop Pop" character. I'll get back with you.
Nicely done, all.
2 people like this.
Reply 33 - Posted by:
hershey 11/30/2020 4:04:48 PM (No. 620128)
Read the article...what does the Siberian land bridge have to do with natives in the Amazon..and it's in Columbia, so I suspect they've been imbibing a bit too much of their export product...12,500 years, original paint, I don't think so...
1 person likes this.
Let me guess. They need grant money for research and translation.
2 people like this.
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