Exquisite, ancient rock paintings spotted in remote Colombia

A crew of filmmakers discovered beautiful paintings that may be thousands of years old on rock walls in a remote part of the Colombian jungle in 2015. The region is almost inaccessible to modern people and remains unexplored except by the natives who are believed to still live there.

The Guardian reports that the crew, headed by director Mike Slee, took photos and video of the paintings from a helicopter. They have been described as ‘masterpieces’ and depict a holy man, hunters and different animals species.

“They reveal the hand of a master of painting,” Fernando Urbina, a rock-art specialist with the National University of Colombia, told the Guardian.

A view of Chiribiquete park, where the paintings were found (Carlos Castaño Uribe/Wikimedia Commons)

Urbina said the paintings could be as old as 20,000 years. But it will be impossible to estimate their age with radiocarbon dating because they were painted with mineral-based, iron oxide pigments rather than the organic charcoal that European rock paintings were made with.

Urbina expressed to the Guardian special interest in a seated human figure with his arms folded over his shoulders, a ritual position among people of the Amazon that may mean the man depicted was a sage.