The oldest set of rock art motifs dated directly by radiocarbon was found in the archaeological site Cueva Huenul 1, northwest of Argentine Patagonia, with a date of 8,200 years before the present spanning more than 130 human generations that span thousands of years. years old, they inscribed a figure similar to a comb with the teeth pointing downwards at the site.
This important discovery and its research was carried out by a group of archaeologists, among whom Ramiro Barberena, associate researcher at the Center for Research, Innovation and Creation of the Catholic University of Temuco, stands out.
The research results suggest that this diachronic rock art emerged as part of a resilient response to ecological stress by highly mobile, low-density populations living in the mid-Holocene with extremely arid conditions.
This research was published in February in the journal Sciencie Advances, titled “Earliest directly dated rock art from Patagonia reveals socioecological resilience to mid-Holocene climate.” It has had great impact and dissemination worldwide, achieving eleven thousand downloads in just two weeks and ranking in the top 5% of all research results ranked by Altmetric.
In Ramiro Barberena’s opinion, it has been very important for the impact of the publication “that it is an exceptional discovery and the development of international links of academic cooperation. In this work we have linked as part of a solid interdisciplinary team institutions from Chile (UC Temuco, Universidad de Tarapacá), Argentina (CONICET, Universidad Nacional de Cuyo) and the USA (University of Georgia).This allows us to put our issues of local interest on a global level of attention,” he highlighted.
Research relevance
According to Ramiro Barberena, this research work has been significant on three levels: methodological, historical and giving an account of an exceptional social process.
Regarding the methodological aspect, obtaining direct radiocarbon dates for cave paintings is a great challenge and, therefore, there is little precedent in South America. The difficulties are several: in general it involves a very small amount of material and, more importantly, it does not usually have organic matter that can be dated. “So the first great achievement is methodological: combining a chemical analysis that demonstrated the presence of carbon in the pigments and then being able to make direct dates for the art,” said the researcher.
With this research it was possible to obtain the oldest direct date for rock art in South America, so the historical aspect has been very relevant to the importance of the results of this work.
Finally, accounting for an exceptional social process is another of the characteristics that stand out in this research, “we have obtained three dates for a particular graphic motif, which is similar to a black comb. That same motif was made in the same place (Cueva Huenul), with the same technique and with very similar pigments, which is why we believe that there is transmission of information throughout human generations. And here the key thing: for how long? At least 3000 years. This is equivalent to about 130 human generations. In other words, there was transmission of social information between generations between 8,000 and 5,000 years ago,” said Ramiro Barberena.
Paleoecology shows that the middle Holocene was hyper-arid, human groups were very small and dispersed, this is how extensive social networks were of utmost importance for survival and the Huenul Cave was a key cultural place in South America where men From that time they anchored social interaction, which today can be determined thanks to the work of researchers who are reading the past.
