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BURGOS, Mexico — Nearly 5,000 cave paintings depicting humans, animals, astronomy, weapons and other abstract figures have been discovered in a mountain region of Mexico.
Previously, scientists did not think that any pre-historic peoples inhabited the Burgos region of the San Carlos mountains, but the discovery completely turns that assumption on its head.
Eleven different sites were identified, with more still waiting to be explored. A single cave contained over 1,500 paintings.
The team who discovered the paintings was led by Gustavo Ramirez with the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History. He told the BBC that while the paintings are ubiquitous, there is much more work to do, including dating and gathering evidence for who these ancient peoples were. Roughly three nomadic groups are thought to have produced the paintings.
"We have not found any ancient objects linked to the context, and because the paintings are on ravine walls and in the rainy season the sediments are washed away, all we have is gravel," Ramirez said.
Archaeologist Martha Garcia researched archives for information on which groups could have produced the artwork, but found nothing but vague references to some nomadic peoples described by Spanish invaders who escaped into the mountains.
Chemical analysis will help set a date for when they were made, but estimates right now go as far back as 6,000 B.C.
