Cueva de las Manos
Stencilled hands and hunting scenes painted on a Patagonian canyon wall from about 7300 BC.
The site lies in the canyon of the Río Pinturas in northern Santa Cruz, where a rock overhang and the cliffs beside it carry one of the most important collections of hunter-gatherer rock art in South America. The paintings were made in several phases between roughly 7300 BC and the early centuries AD, using mineral pigments in red, ochre, black, white and violet. Best known are the hundreds of stencilled hands, made by blowing pigment around a hand held against the rock; the great majority are left hands, suggesting the spray tube was held in the right.
Alongside the hands are hunting scenes with guanacos and rheas, human figures, felines and abstract patterns, together with cup marks and zig-zag designs from the later phases. The art was studied in detail from the 1960s onwards by the Argentine archaeologist Carlos Gradin, and UNESCO inscribed the site on the World Heritage List in 1999. Visits follow a walkway of some 400 metres past four painted sectors, always with a guide, and the surrounding canyon is part of a provincial park reached from National Route 40.
Highlights
- Hundreds of stencilled hands, most of them left hands
- Guanaco and rhea hunting scenes in red and ochre
- Painting phases spanning roughly 7300 BC to AD 700
- UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Río Pinturas canyon
