Oldest South American rock art dated

In the Neuquén Province of Argentina, ancient artists covered the walls of a cave with painted motifs. Using a suite of analytical techniques, a team of researchers recently revealed that the site was likely first decorated over 8,000 years ago—millennia before other rock art that has been dated in South America ( Sci. Adv. 2024, 10.1126/sciadv.adk4415 ). "It was really a shock. We were expecting more recent dates," says lead author Guadalupe Romero Villanueva, a postdoctoral fellow at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) . At the site, the team excavated a pit filled with red ochre-stained sticks and twigs, beads and decorated bone, and thousands of stone artifacts. These collectively suggested that the area was abandoned during the mid-Holocene epoch. The oldest-dated artifacts pointed to a short period of occupation about 11,000 years ago, while the youngest indicated a second occupation in the past 2,000 years .