Scientists have discovered an eight-mile wall of prehistoric rock art depicting animals and humans in the Amazon rainforest that was created 12,500 years ago.

The historic artwork, now called the Sistine Chapel of the Ancients, was unveiled on the cliff faces of Cherepiece National Park, Colombia, by a British-Colombian team of archaeologists funded by the European Research Council.

The paintings were based on depictions of extinct Ice Age animals such as the mastodon, a prehistoric relative of the elephant who had not been seen in South America for at least 12,000 years.

There are also pictures of the paleolama, an extinct member of the camel family, as well as giant sloths and Ice Age horses.

Fingerprints of the human hand can also be seen. Most of the indigenous tribes in the Amazon are thought to be descendants of the first Siberian wave of immigrants who are believed to have crossed the Bering Land Bridge 17,000 years ago.

Although it is unclear exactly which tribe created the panels, there are two major indigenous tribes in the Amazon believed to have existed for thousands of years, the Yanomami and Kayapu.

The first report of the Yanomami, who live between the borders of Brazil and Venezuela, was in 1759 when a Spanish explorer found a leader of another tribe mentioning them.

Little is known about the origin of the Kayapu tribe, which has an estimated population of 8,600. And Amazonians did not keep written records until relatively recently, and the humid climate and acidic soil destroyed nearly all traces of their material culture, including the bones.

Until the discovery of these paintings, some evidence of the history of the region before the 1500s was drawn from scarce artifacts such as porcelain and arrowheads.

The site is located in Serrania de la Lindosa, where other rock artworks were previously found.

These ancient drawings, which give a glimpse of a now lost civilization, are believed to have been created by some of the first humans to arrive in the Amazon.

The cool discovery, which happened last year but was kept a secret, will now appear in the Channel 4 series Jungle Mystery: Lost Kingdoms of the Amazon, in December.

The research team was funded by the European Research Council, led by Professor of Archeology at the University of Exeter, José Ariart who said: “When you are there, your emotions flow ... We are talking about tens of thousands of paintings that it will take generations to record ... You make a turn, it's a new wall of paintings. "

Source: Daily Mail

By:Nadeemy Haded