Around 1,500 years ago , on the interference fringe of one of the most inhospitable environments on Earth , homo still manage to make a living . With the Atacama Desert to their back , these pre - Latino community turn over to the ocean , track down Navy SEAL and dunce shark but also take on much large prey such as spermatozoan whale with nothing more than a simple harpoon and sea lion skin boat .
And while these people were not out on the water , they tape what they view around them . Using ocher paint , they created some of the only ancient rock candy artdepicting maritime animals – let in heavyweight , dolphins , swordfish , and squid – known anywhere in the earthly concern .
Ancient rock artistry , daubed on the walls of cliffs and caves from Africa to Europe to Australia by our long - dead ancestors , tends to concentrate on the mighty beasts that once ambled across the grassland and grovel through the forests . This is likely because the graphics that has survive is found inland , and the hoi polloi who create it were simply drawing what they encountered .
This make the acute reddened sketches find cake therocks in the El Médanoin ravinealong the South American Pacific seacoast all the more unbelievable . Nowhere else has such a detailed and pictorial theatrical of ancient hunter - gatherer tap marine creatures been seen before .
The artistic creation is therefore vital to our understanding of how pre - Latino mass survived in such challenging environment , as well as impart incredible sixth sense into ancient hunting technique .
The locating of El Médanoin , as well as a recently let out second ravine called Izcuña – the centering of a new paper published inAntiquity – is an surround of extremes . To the east lie the world ’s most waterless desert , while to the west is one of its rich sea . sandwich in the centre , and swear on fresh water leap that bubbled up along the glide , people somehow made a aliveness here for thousands of years .
The unique paintings that they create help us sympathise how , as they not only show the animals that live along the shoreline , but also how they hunt them . The drafting show that individual figures stood in diminished boats or flock , with a harpoon line connecting both hunter and prey .
These lines are commonly connected to the heavyweight or dolphin ’s head , thoracic quintet , and center , but almost never to the tail , while some of the large quarry have multiple lines indicate “ intense and complex opened - ocean hunting expeditions , ” suggest the research worker . archeological digging have expose harpoon with detachable head crafted from wood , with line made from sealskin skin . The boat were also create from sea lion skin , stitched together with C of cactus spines and cotton wool thread .
Interestingly , the hunt are portray as lonely case , with only a handful shew more than one sauceboat . This imply that it was a specialised , unfrequented and individual activity , practise by only a few .
