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'The Sistine Chapel Of The Ancients' Uncovered In The Amazon

View of rock art at the Cerro Azul hill in Serrania La Lindosa in the Amazonian jungle department of Guaviare, Colombia, on June 8, 2018. (Guillermo Legaria/AFP via Getty Images)
View of rock art at the Cerro Azul hill in Serrania La Lindosa in the Amazonian jungle department of Guaviare, Colombia, on June 8, 2018. (Guillermo Legaria/AFP via Getty Images)

A team of British and Colombian archaeologists has made a spectacular discovery deep in the Amazon jungle: tens of thousands of paintings strewn across eight miles of cliff faces that date back to the last Ice Age.

The find is being described as “the Sistine Chapel of the ancients” — a trove of ancient paintings made in red ochre that offer a glimpse of a lost civilization.

Here & Now‘s Tonya Mosley speaks with Mark Robinson, a research fellow in the department of archaeology at the University of Exeter.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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