1 of 3 | Researcher Angel Acosta-Colon, a geophysicist at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo, presents a mesmerizing collection of pictographs, including what seems to depict a lion. Intriguingly, he posits that this cave art could be the earliest created by slaves brought to Puerto Rico during Spanish colonization. This captivating photo was kindly provided by Angel Acosta-Colon and The Geological Society of America.
Oct. 17 (UPI) — A groundbreaking study, to be unveiled at a prestigious Geological Society of America event, proposes that the ancient drawings in Puerto Rican caves date back thousands of years.
These remarkable karstic cave drawings have piqued the interest of researchers, who believe they might represent the earliest form of slave art.Find out more about their findings here.
The Geological Society asserts that previous attempts to accurately determine the age of cave art relied on comparisons with neighboring archaeological artifacts, potentially leading to misinterpretations of the true timeline of its creation.
Angel Acosta-Colon, a respected geophysicist from the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo, and Reniel Rodríguez, an esteemed archaeologist from UPR Utuado, embarked on an expedition to nearly a dozen caves on La Isla Grande, the largest island in the Puerto Rican archipelago. Their goal was to gather pigment samples from the pictographic art.
Subsequently, these samples were subjected to carbon-14 dating at the Center for Applied Isotope Studies, situated at the distinguished University of Georgia. The outcome of this analysis was the revelation that the earliest abstract pictographs found in the caves can be dated back to around 700 to 400 BCE.
“These findings are of utmost significance to us, as historical documents from the European invasion of Puerto Rico only mention our precolonial population existing for 400 to 500 years,” mentioned Acosta-Colon in a press release.
“This scientific evidence proves that we were present here thousands of years prior to the European invasion. We have concrete data supporting the notion that these cave drawings represent some of the earliest examples of slave art in Puerto Rico, reinforcing our understanding of the island’s population and history.”
Acosta-Colon firmly believes that these findings have far-reaching implications and that further exploration of additional cave art sites may push back the human history record in Puerto Rico, possibly to 5000 BCE.
