Cueva de las Manos

As I stood in the valley of Cueva de las Manos (Cave of the Hands) in Argentina and viewed these amazing pictographs three things struck me. One, they are in impeccable condition. 9,000 years old and they look as if they could have been painted yesterday.  Two, to the people who created them, their hands were their most important tool and this is how they conveyed that message. Everything was created or caught with their hands and their bodies. And three, what the heck, that’s not a hand!?! Indeed it is not. Within a wall spanning 49 ft wide and almost 7 ft tall, there are innumerable left hands depicted (suggesting a lot of righties), a few right hands, less than 10 hands with 6 fingers and exactly three rhea feet (or hoofs or claws?). A rhea is similar to an ostrich or emu, but smaller and predominantly found in South America.  Rhea made a great meal when eaten for their meat, with the additional bonus of having bones that could be hollowed out and used as straws to blow pigment out of to create these images of their hands. You have to think though, if only 3 made it on the wall, it must have been a wild time the night the emu foot got put up there.  Wonder what they were drinking…