Secret Meanings of Ancient Amazon Rock Art Revealed

In collaboration with Indigenous elders and ritual specialists, archaeologists have shed light on the meaning of ancient rock art from the Amazon rainforest in a study. A trio of researchers has been investigating Indigenous rock art in the Serranía de la Lindosa (La Lindosa for short)—a 12-mile-long sandstone outcrop located in Colombia's Guaviare department. This area contains tens of thousands of rock art motifs painted with ocher, featuring depictions of humans, animals, plants, mythological creatures and geometric designs. "The rock art here is arguably the best in the world," the study's lead author, Jamie Hampson, told Newsweek. He is an archaeologist in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the U.K.'s University of Exeter. "We do not know for sure how old the images at La Lindosa are, but it is possible that some were painted 11,000 or 12,000 years ago, shortly after people first arrived in the Colombian Amazon." "The Indigenous groups who live in the region today speak Tukano, Desana, Nukak, Jiw, and other languages—it is highly probable that their ancestors produced the art. It is possible too that there are other Indigenous groups close to La Lindosa—including in Chiribiquete National Park—who are still painting today." For most of the past 100 years, inaccessibility and political unrest have limited research activities in the region. Until the 2016 peace agreement between FARC revolutionaries and the Colombian government, conducting research in this remote and hard-to-access region was almost impossible. But in a new paper, published in a special issue of Advances in Rock Art Studies, the researchers discuss findings from six years of field investigations aimed at uncovering the meaning and significance of the artworks. By combining various strands of evidence—including a range of ethnographic sources and local Indigenous testimonies—the researchers propose in the paper that the rock art is associated with ritual specialists negotiating spiritual realms, as well as the interrelation between the human and supernatural worlds, rather than a literal record of the environment.

"Indigenous descendants of the original artists have recently explained to us that the rock art motifs here do not simply 'reflect' what the artists saw in the 'real' world," Hampson said in a press release. As part of their investigations, the researchers accompanied 10 local Indigenous elders and ritual specialists to six rock art panels documented at the Cerro Azul outcrop of the Serranía de la Lindosa. They conducted interviews with them, recording and translating their testimonies about the rock art. For this paper, the authors focused on figures that the Indigenous elders and ritual specialists drew their attention to when standing by the rock face—such as anacondas with legs and plumed heads, bizarre human-animal conflations and geometric motifs that indicate a portal to the spirit world behind the rock face. Ulderico, a ritual specialist from the Matapí people, told the researchers that the artworks have to be viewed from the "shamanic" viewpoint in order to understand them. "I tell you each one of these figures contributed the shamanic knowledge for our own management of the territory where we are. … When this knowledge comes out, it appears as a wardrobe, as a shamanic wardrobe, as a guide to be able to practice shamanism," Ulderico said.

The researchers found that many of the repeated motifs at La Lindosa were and are deeply symbolic, according to Hampson. To the initiated, they would have resonated on many levels. "Examples are depictions—or, better, manifestations—of animals that inhabit liminal spaces and transcend realms, for example, herons, which fly in the air, walk on the land and dive under water. This is akin to a ritual specialist or pajé transforming and visiting the spirit world in order to perform certain activities for the good of the group. As in many other parts of the world, there are also powerful 'therianthropes'—i.e. half-human, half-animal beings," Hampson said. "Supposedly 'simple' or everyday motifs such as textiles or blankets are in fact ritualistic clothing that shamans put on in order to transform. Anacondas are not 'just' snakes—they are the ancestral beings that brought settlers to the Amazon in the distant past, and are also connected to celestial bodies such as the Milky Way." Victor Caycedo, an elder with the Desana people, told the team that he believes the Serranía de la Lindosa paintings were created by spirits. Highlighting images located high up on a rock face, Caycedo said: "How would you paint up there? How would you do it? They didn't do it with a ladder … they didn't do it with some big devices that were put there. … Why? Because the natives in the old days lived spiritually. … They were a spirit." This study represents the first time that the views of Indigenous elders on their ancestors' rock art has been fully incorporated into research in this part of the Amazon, according to Hampson. "The result of this is that we don't have to simply look at the art—from an outsiders' perspective—and guess what it means, or why it was painted; we know why certain specific motifs were produced, and what they mean … I have been waiting for an opportunity like this for 25 years," Hampson said. "By listening to Indigenous groups, and looking for patterns within Indigenous testimonies, creation narrative, and ethnographic texts, outsiders learn that this is sacred, ritualistic art created within the framework of an animistic cosmology, in sacred places in the landscape; and also that Indigenous belief systems and myths need to be taken seriously, however metaphorical and hard to understand they may be at first." Indeed, without informed testimony and local knowledge, many past interpretations of Indigenous motifs have downplayed the spiritual and cognitive importance of the art, according to Hampson. "Far too often, Westerners bring their preconceived ideas of paintings being simple 'reflections' of what was seen in the local environment," he said. Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about archaeology? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.

Reference

Hampson, J., Iriarte, J., & Aceituno, F. J. (2024). 'A World of Knowledge': Rock Art, Ritual, and Indigenous Belief at Serranía De La Lindosa in the Colombian Amazon. Arts, 13(4), 135. https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13040135