BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA—Live Science reports that samples of black pigment from rock art in a cave in Patagonia have been radiocarbon dated to 8,200 years ago, making some of the images several thousand years older than previously thought. “[The cave] is not the oldest occupation in South America, but it is the oldest directly radiocarbon-dated pigment-based rock art in South America,” said Ramiro Barberena of Temuco Catholic University and Argentina’s National Research Council. In all, 895 paintings have been recorded in the cave. These paintings have been grouped into 446 motifs, or segments. “These [drawings] span more or less across 3,000 years within a single motif,” Barberena explained. He and his colleagues suggest that the drawings were used to transmit information across generations in a landscape with very little water. “It would’ve been hard to make it on your own, so an exchanging of information was important,” the researchers concluded. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Science Advances. To read about how hunter-gatherers adapted to Patagonia’s harsh environments for 13,000 years, go to “Letter from Patagonia: Surviving a Windswept Land.”
