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December 1st, 2020 
Awake Goy Tens of thousands of paintings of people, giant extinct animals and psychedelic plants from 12,500 years ago have been discovered on remote cliffs in Colombia. This rare collection of Ice Age Colombian art was discovered in the Amazon region of Colombia in 2019. The prehistoric Colombian art of this area is one of the world ’s largest collections of rock art ever discovered. The researchers involved with the discovery call it “the Sistine Chapel of the ancients” and believe the illustrations were created up to “12,500 years ago,” across eight miles of jungle-matted cliff faces in the Amazon rainforest.
Amazing Colombian Art Painted On Rocks Is Still A Secret!
An article in The Guardian says that these rock paintings were actually discovered in 2019 but the whole story was kept under wraps as it was being filmed for a new Channel 4 series called Jungle Mystery: Lost Kingdoms of the Amazon , which premieres in December, 2020.
The documentary ’s presenter, Ella Al-Shamahi, an explorer, paleoanthropologist, and evolutionary biologist, says the discovery of the paintings is so new that “they haven ’t even given it a name yet.”
The Colombian rock art was discovered in the extremely remote Serranía de la Lindosa area, an archaeological site about 10.6 miles (17 kilometers) south of San José del Guaviare.
Similar Colombian rock art was also found in 2015, according to The Guardian , in the “nearby” Chiribiquete National Park, the largest national park in Colombia, and the largest tropical rainforest national park in the world.
This Ice Age Colombian art was discovered in 2015 in the remote Chiribiquete National Park and is very similar to the 2019 cliffside discoveries. (Francisco Forero Bonell/ Fundacion Ecoplanet )
Painted by some of the very first humans to reach this Amazon region, the ancient Colombian art features thousands of hand prints peppered among geometric patterns, Ice Age animals like giant sloths and horses, and mastodons. These mastodons are an ancestor of the modern elephant that went extinct in South America around 12,000 years ago.
Paintings From A Time When Animals Hunted Us
The original Indiana Jones moment, the 2019 discovery in the Serranía de la Lindosa area, was made by José Iriarte, professor of archaeology at Exeter University , and his British-Colombian team of researchers.
The paintings are mostly made with red ochre and many are located so high up on the cliffs that the only way the explorers could see them was with drones equipped with high-resolution cameras.
Most of the ancient Colombian art was found in an exceptionally good state of preservation. For example, a giant ice-age horse is so detailed that the researchers said it had “a wild, heavy face.” The archaeologists were bewildered by the range of subjects in the paintings, including birds, lizards, fish, turtles, and even groups of ancient people holding hands and dancing around a figure wearing a bird-beak mask.
The person wearing the bird mask is not the only evidence of ritual worship from the ancient culture who made the paintings. The researchers say many of these large animals appear “surrounded by small men with their arms raised, almost worshipping these animals,” said Al-Shamahi.
And believe it or not, Iriarte says some of the paintings show wooden towers with figures bungee jumping from them. You’d have to be out of your mind to jump from a wooden jungle tower with a vine tied around your ankle, right? Well it looks like these Ice Age Colombian people were doing just that.
This image from a lower cliffside location shows red ochre handprints and geometric lines. (Marie-Claire Thomas / Wild Blue Media Ltd )
The Latest Cliffside Colombian Art Tells A New Story!
Iriarte says much of the imagery shows hallucinogenic plants and trees and this suggests the people might have been ingesting powerful chemicals to assist their perceived uniting with animal souls through shamanic rituals.
While it is of course a coincidence, the so-called “Shaft Scene” in France’s Lascaux cave paintings, dating from approximately 15,300 BC, in the Dordogne region of France, also features a famous “Bird Man figure,” which seems to be a feature repeated in Paleolithic art worldwide.
The paintings not only reveal volumes of new data about hunting and associated rituals, but Al-Shamahi points out that the landscapes featured in the painting differ greatly from how they are today. Accounting for this mismatch the researchers noted that this region hasn’t always been rainforest and that 12,000 years ago, according to the rock art, it was “more savannah-like.”
You can watch the new series Jungle Mystery: Lost Kingdoms of the Amazon at 6.30pm on Channel 4 on 5 December 2020. This ancient Colombian art discovery is covered in episode 2 which airs on 12 December.
Top image: A cliffside Ice Age Colombian art “mural,” discovered in 2019, that simply boggles the mind in its size and extreme location! Source: Marie-Claire Thomas / Wild Blue Media Ltd
By Ashley Cowie
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