Cueva de las Manos or Cave of
hands in province of Santa Cruz, Argentina
Cueva de las Manos, meaning “cave of the hands” in
Spanish, is a series of famous paintings on the walls of caves. Located in the
Santa Cruz province of Argentina, the cave paintings date back to between 9,000
and 13,000 years ago, and were created by the hunter-gatherer people who
resided in Patagonia. These communities were some of the earliest in South
America, making this site very important. The caves were inhabited by several
waves of people, though the most recent of these were probably ancestors of the
Tehuelche people around 700 CE.
Archaeologists have found that the cave dwellers
used pipes carved from bones to spray paint the cave walls, using their hands
as stencils to create hundreds of silhouettes of their hands in varying shades
of red, purple, yellow, and brown. Most of the hands are left hands, suggesting
that the artists were right handed, and painted their own hands.
There is also art featuring humans and animals in
hunting scenes, with the indigenous guanacos and rheas, as well as abstract
designs like shapes and zigzags. The hunters are depicted using bolas, their
traditional hunting weapons.
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