Cave of the Hands
Its quite a famous archaeological site and its down here in Patagonia, a few kilometres off the side of ruta cuarenta.
There is a valley running through the Patagonian steppe (well, there are of course lots of them, but Im describing this one in particular). It winds its way along the plain, running more or less East from the Andes mountains to the West.
The valley gets quite deep at this location (maybe 200m or so) and the river has cut its way down through some apparently Jurassic rock (which by the way looks like it would have some very high quality climbing) and there are some vertical cliffs and some shallow caves and overhanging shelter spaces.
The water here in the river is reliable all year round, and thats what has made it such an important site... Apparently, the more or less "nomadic" peoples of the area have been coming to the same place for about 9000 years! Thats a long time, and from the quality of the art and the stone hunting points, it has been deduced that these were effectively modern humans, with well developed minds and strong appreciation for detail and subtlety... - Clearly these are not the humans of today ;)
Anyway, the cave with all the hand stencils was "discovered" in the mid sixties and was so remote from "the general public" that the images are very well preserved and still very colourful.
Its quite a famous archaeological site and its down here in Patagonia, a few kilometres off the side of ruta cuarenta.
There is a valley running through the Patagonian steppe (well, there are of course lots of them, but Im describing this one in particular). It winds its way along the plain, running more or less East from the Andes mountains to the West.
The valley gets quite deep at this location (maybe 200m or so) and the river has cut its way down through some apparently Jurassic rock (which by the way looks like it would have some very high quality climbing) and there are some vertical cliffs and some shallow caves and overhanging shelter spaces.
The water here in the river is reliable all year round, and thats what has made it such an important site... Apparently, the more or less "nomadic" peoples of the area have been coming to the same place for about 9000 years! Thats a long time, and from the quality of the art and the stone hunting points, it has been deduced that these were effectively modern humans, with well developed minds and strong appreciation for detail and subtlety... - Clearly these are not the humans of today ;)
Anyway, the cave with all the hand stencils was "discovered" in the mid sixties and was so remote from "the general public" that the images are very well preserved and still very colourful.
There are left hands and right hands and children's hands and adult hands. There is a six fingered hand and there is a four fingered had too. They were made with natural mineral pigments from the area which was mixed with a liquid (probably water) and sprayed by mouth over the hands placed on the rock.
There are also quite a few painted (not stenciled) images of llamas/guanacos on the rock (and a few other animal images).
But enough of my talk. Here are some pictures...
Im glad I stopped off here in the middle of nowhere to see it :)
Im glad I stopped off here in the middle of nowhere to see it :)
