Colombian Rock Art Shows Ancestors Traversing the Spiritual Realm, 12,500-Years-Ago

Home to one of the most spectacular global rock art traditions, the Serrania de la Lindosa rock paintings in Colombia, as old as 12,500 years, contains tens and thousands of paintings, including humans and animals morphing into each other. International archaeologists there have been working with Indigenous elders, leaders, and ritual specialists, to interpret what their ancestors left behind.

Transcending the Metaphysical: Alternating Between Realms

What they’ve learnt transcends the meta-physical, and further cements the loss of Indigenous wisdom, knowledge, and tradition, that have suffered at the hands of colonialism. These accounts, along with material research, has pointed to the art transcending spiritual realms, transformation of bodies, and a continuum in which human and non-human worlds collide.

In fact, to imagine that it is some kind of a literal record of human engagement with the environment around is doing it great disservice. Published in the special issue of Advances in Rock Art Studies, archaeologists from the University of Exeter have been working in the region for the past six years, primarily through the European Research Council funded LASTJOURNEY project.

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Archaeologists at the University of Exeter shown here at Serranía De La Lindosa, have been working in the region of for the past six years, primarily through the European Research Council-funded LASTJOURNEY project, which has investigated the demographic shift of peoples into South America. (University of Exeter)

Professor Jamie Hampson, lead author and archaeologist in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, for the University of Exeter, UK explained in a press release.

“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. They also encode and manifest critical information about how animistic and perspectivistic Indigenous communities constructed, engaged with, and perpetuated their ritualized, socio-cultural worlds. As Ulderico, a Matapí ritual specialist, told us in front of one of the painted panels in September 2022, ‘you have to look at [the motifs] from the shamanic viewpoint’.”

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Victor Caycedo at one of the rock art panel sites. (University of Exeter)

Extending over eight miles (12.87 kilometers), the paintings are found in rock shelters, on the sharp edge of the tepuis or limestone table-top mountains. Created with a red mineral pigment, ochre, the depictions include a wide range of fauna, many armed humans, and even wooden towers are depicted too, sometimes high atop the rock walls.

At the time of discovery and study a few months ago, archaeologists explained how these ancient ancestors had intimate knowledge of the various habitats in the region, as part of a broader ‘subsistence strategy’, including knowing exactly which animals to hunt, which plants to harvest when, and how.

Examples of animal taxa represented at Cerro Azul. (a) armadillo, (b) paca, (c) coati, (d) amphibian, (e) tapir/danta, (f) stingray, (g) feline, (h) turtle, (i) deer, (j) crocodile, (k) monkey, (l) porcupine, (m) possible horse, (n) serpent with head plume and legs, (o) lizard, (p) deer, bat, spider, aquatic birds, (q) possible sloth, (r) canid. (Hampson, A., et al. /Advances in Rock Art Studies)

What the Elders Know: Prophetic Warnings and Innate Knowledge

The animals inhabit and symbolize ‘liminal’ spaces, moving fluidly between earth, water, and sky, such as anacondas, jaguars, bats, and herons. The elders see these as significant in the context of shamanic transformation: one elder described jaguars as embodiments of shamanic wisdom, almost as if the animal itself becomes a shamanic avatar. They also cautioned about the need to preserve these images, warning that losing them could sever the connection between Indigenous people, their ancestors, and traditional practices, forever.

Scenes of therianthropic (combining the form of an animal with a man, often a deity) transformation particularly excited the elders; they repeatedly drew the attention of researchers to the images that incorporated ‘avian/human, sloth/human, lizard/human and snake/bird/human’ figures.

Tukano-speaker Ismael Sierra, pointing to paintings at a site called La Fuga in 2023, said:

“So here are the animals that are there, they exist in that mountain range that was formerly and still is, but it is in the spiritual world… These are men with two arms, they are giants that exist in that spiritual maloca (house)… there is an animal, a panther lion that has two heads, one head here and the other here, instead of a tail it has a head, they are from the spiritual world.”

This study is a first of its kind in many ways; for starters, it’s the first time that the views of Indigenous elders have been incorporated into research from this part of the Amazon. Having an ‘insider’ perspective enriches the study, helps understand specific motifs, and look at the framework of animistic cosmology, explained Dr. Hampson. Local communities have further been involved in material preservation through the introduction of a diploma program.

"I have worked with rock art and Indigenous groups on every continent—and never have we been fortunate enough to have such a direct fit between Indigenous testimony and specific rock art motifs,” he concluded.

Top image: One of the huge rock art panels at the Cerro Azul outcrop of the Serranía De La Lindosa, Colombia. Source: Jamie Hampson/University of Exeter

By Sahir Pandey