Archaeology & History

Evidence of unknown 4,000-year-old civilization found in Venezuela

By T.K. Randall
July 4, 2024 ·  4 comments

Who created these drawings and what do they mean ? Image Credit: Jose Miguel Perez-Gomez et al. It's not every day that you find evidence of an ancient undiscovered culture, but that's exactly what happened recently when researchers analyzed a series of curious drawings on rocks in Canaima National Park in Bolivia.

The drawings, which include colorful depictions of leaves, dot patterns and stick figures, were discovered on a flat-topped mountain in the region which spans some 11,500 square miles.

Dating back 4,000 years and created using red ochre, the drawings do not seem to have been made by any known civilization.

"What we are seeing is a new culture of hunter-gatherers who likely arrived in the Canaima National Park area at the end of the Pleistocene, which lasted from between 2.5 million and 11,700 years ago," lead researcher Jose Miguel Perez-Gomez told Mail Online."They settled, evolved there, and then spread to the rest of the region, reaching places as far as the Amazon Basin."

It is thought that the drawings may have been ritualistic in nature, but more research will be needed in order to fully understand their significance.

"Stylistic comparisons so far show similarities to rock paintings near the Brazilian border, which have been dated to around 4,000 BP," said Perez-Gomez.

"However, the newly found rock art is much cruder, suggesting it could be even older."

Source: Mail Online | Comments (4)

Tags: South America