Cueva de las Manos

Cueva de las Manos is a cave and complex of rock art sites in the province of Santa Cruz, Argentina, 163 km south of the town of Perito Moreno. It is named for the hundreds of paintings of hands stenciled, in multiple collages, on the rock walls. The art in the cave dates to between 7,300 BC and 700 AD, during the Archaic period of pre-Columbian South America, or the late Pleistocene to early Holocene geological periods. Several waves of people occupied the cave over time. The age of the paintings was calculated from the remains of bone-made pipes used for spraying the paint on the wall of the cave to create the artwork, radiocarbon dating of the artwork, and stratigraphic dating. The site is considered by some scholars to be the best material evidence of South American early hunter-gatherer groups.