Deep inside the lush green and humid Amazonian jungle, a sinewing path stops abruptly in front of a giant rock face decorated with ancient paintings of anacondas, jaguars and tortoises.
For millennia, indigenous Colombians have been illustrating their mythology in rock art, but these national treasures laid hidden — and preserved — during decades of war between government forces and Marxist rebels.
In the heart of the Guaviare jungle, a strategic area that armed groups continue to fight over, lies a UNESCO World Heritage site national park in which the Serrania de Chiribiquete table-top mountains stand tall like giant drums.
Photo: AFP
The rock frescoes adorning their sides occupy an invaluable place in the understanding of Amazonian settlement.
“It was very difficult to work in the Guaviare, because it was the epicenter ... of the war these last 50 years,” said Ernesto Montenegro, general manager at Colombia’s Anthropology and History Institute (ICANH).
“Although there were exploration missions at the start of the 20th century they stopped because of the [precarious] situation,” Montenegro said.
SACRED SPIRITS
Since the 2016 peace accord that ended the war with Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas, adventurers have ventured forth once again to try to decipher the secrets of the ritual drawings, some of which date back at least 12,000 years.
The area is sacred to the indigenous people of the jungle and not everyone has the right to even approach the rock art.
“Only wise men are worthy of entering sacred sites, in which spirits dwell. The common mortals should not even allow their thoughts to wander in,” said Andres Lopez, a historian at the institute, as he traipsed through mud to a rock painting spanning 30m in height and 100m in length.
That site lies an hour by jeep from the village of Raudal in the Guaviare Department, an area known for coca plantations and cocaine production that once marked the front line between government soldiers and FARC rebels.
An hour by boat down the Guaviare River, where military vessels mounted with machine guns still patrol, a hamlet on stilts, surrounded by right-wing paramilitaries until 2000, remains the stronghold of the First Front — former FARC dissidents who refuse to disarm.
Montenegro said that does not stop archeologists returning to Guaviare, insisting they are “benefitting from the peace process” that ended the decades-long guerrilla war.
The remaining dissidents, when they come across explorers, impose territorial limits — but seem unopposed to the study of cultural relics that remain little-known in the country.
PROTECTED SITES
The area was declared a “protected archeological site” by the Colombian Ministry of Culture at the end of May, in a move initiated by the ICANH, which also organized the first international mission to the site, alongside the French Institute for Andean Studies (IFEA).
“We hope to be able ... to explain all this. There’s still a lot to discover,” IFEA anthropologist Celine Valadeau said.
There are other unknown sites, for which “there is photographic evidence ... but it hasn’t been possible to find them, because back then there wasn’t any GPS” and the maps are imprecise, she said while displaying pictures of dancers, hunters and even amorous relations.
Mystery surrounds the paintings. Even carbon dating cannot shed light on when the drawings, created with a mineral mixture rich in manganese that turns orange once oxidized, were created, due to vegetable components.
The only indications come from the ashes of fires burned by the artists in front of the rock faces.
Crucially, though, the area was declared a World Heritage Site at the start of this month — the ninth such listing in Colombia.
Spanning an area of 2.7 million hectares, Chiribiquete is Colombia’s largest natural park and the UNESCO listing was vital to protect the area from oil and mineral prospectors.
It is the home to about 70,000 pictograms, but just as importantly to the Chiribiquete emerald hummingbird, seen as the only endemic species in the Colombian Amazon, and the jaguar, the big cat only found in the Americas that is threatened by the loss of its habitat due to deforestation.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not