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Clip: Season 50 Episode 3 | 3m 20s | Video has closed captioning.
Ancient paintings on rock walls feature human figures and animals of today’s rainforest, like deer, tapirs, and jaguars. But they also appear to show animals that went extinct thousands of years ago.
Aired: 02/15/23
- [Narrator] There is no way of knowing all the different pathways people took on their way into the Amazon, but dramatic evidence reveals this was clearly a very important one because those ancient travelers covered the cliffs of the low mountains of La Lindosa with painted figures.
(gentle music) Thousands of them.
(Gaspar speaks Spanish) - [Translator] It's a fabulous world that those ancient people painted here.
They represent the animals they lived with and the plants they lived with.
These figures capture the thoughts of many groups over thousands of years.
(speaks Spanish) Some of the figures seem to represent the magic and shamanism of their rituals.
But there are also geometric figures and human figures.
- [Narrator] The ochre pigments contain iron oxide minerals from the earth.
Even though their exact meaning is not clear to Gaspar, he feels the paintings express a profound kinship with the natural world.
(Gaspar speaks Spanish) - [Translator] Unlike us today, who feel we are separate from the jungle, those people were part of it along with the rest of the animal and vegetable world.
Just another being of the jungle.
- [Narrator] Along with the figures of humans and animals of today's rainforest, like deer, tapers, and jaguars, there seem to be animals that went extinct thousands of years ago.
It is a reminder of just how ancient some of the paintings probably are.
- [Translator] We are talking about 12,600 years ago.
At that time, there was a fauna that no longer exists in South America, like mastodons and the American horse.
(speaks Spanish) All of these animals lived with humans up until about 10,000 years ago when they started to go extinct.
(Gaspar speaks Spanish) So here, we think, there are animals of the last Ice Age like the giant sloth right behind me.
- [Narrator] The painted cliffs of La Lindosa open a remarkable window on the lives and minds of the first Ice Age Amazonians.
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