Họa tiết bí ẩn trong hang động là tác phẩm nghệ thuật trên đá lâu đời nhất được tìm thấy ở Patagonia

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In the stark inland desert of Patagonia in Argentina, there is a remote cave decorated with nearly 900 paintings of human figures, animals and abstract (trừu tượng) designs. Until recently, archaeologists had assumed that the rock art at this site, known as Cueva Huenul 1, was created within the past few thousand years.

But in a paper published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, archaeologists (nhà khảo cổ học) say that one of the cave’s most mysterious motifs (họa tiết bí ẩn), a comblike pattern, first appeared some 8,200 years ago, making it by far the earliest known example of rock art in one of the last places on Earth to be settled by our species. Cave artists continued to draw the same comb design in black pigment for thousands of years, an era when other human activity was virtually absent (vắng mặt) at the site. The cave art provides a rare glimpse of a culture that may have relied on this design to communicate valuable insights (truyền đạt những hiểu biết có giá trị) across generations during a period of climatic shifts.

The comb motifs overlap with this long period of hardship, according to Dr. Romero Villanueva and her colleagues, who identified the age of the paintings with radiocarbon dating. The team also found that the black paint was probably made with charred wood (gỗ cháy), perhaps from burned shrubs (cây bụi) or cactuses (cây xương rồng).

Though the meaning of the comb motif has been lost to time, the researchers speculate that it might have helped preserve the collective memories and oral traditions of peoples who endured this unusually hot and dry period.

Though the purpose of the comb motif is likely to remain a mystery, the motif’s persistent presence in the cave opens a new window into Patagonia’s prehistoric peoples (người tiền sử).

source: nytimes,