Nearly 6000 Year Old Texas Rock Art

From the news story 6,000-year old West Texas rock art influenced Mesoamerican cosmology we learn that new research, conducted in part at Texas State University, has dated Pecos River rock art to 6,000 years ago and identified complex metaphysical concepts in the imagery that influenced the belief systems of multiple Mesoamerican cultures.

Researchers say “We have securely dated one of the most distinctive rock art traditions in the world—the Pecos River style murals of Southwest Texas, with 57 radiocarbon dates from 12 sites, we’ve learned that Indigenous communities began to paint these sacred, polychromatic murals almost 6,000 years ago. But it didn’t stop there. Using the same graphic style, symbol system and rules of paint application, they continued to create these visual manuscripts for more than 4,000 years.”  

For years, many modern archaeologists believed that these expansive murals had been added to and expanded by prehistoric peoples over a period spanning centuries. Radiocarbon dating conducted by the research team told a vastly different story. The dates within many of the murals clustered so closely as to be statistically indistinguishable, suggesting that they were produced during a single painting event as a visual narrative. “This contradicts the commonly held belief that the murals were a random collection of images that accumulated over hundreds or thousands of years” the researcher said.

Modeling estimates that Pecos River style began between 5,760-5,385 years ago and probably ended 1,370-1,035 years ago.  Analyses revealed eight of the murals were created as compositions adhering to a set of rules and an established iconographic vocabulary. This suggests consistent messaging throughout a period marked by changes in material culture, land use and climate. From this evidence, the researchers concluded that Pecos River style paintings, embedded in a cultural keystone landscape, faithfully transmitted sophisticated metaphysical concepts that later informed the beliefs and symbolic expression of Mesoamerican agricultural societies.

“The compositional nature of the murals was further supported by our analysis of the painting sequence. Using a digital microscope to retrace the steps followed by the original artists, we discovered that the painters adhered to a rule-bound color application order.” For example in the image above artists incorporated natural features in the rock wall to serve as the eyes and nose of this human-like figure. Like several figures at Halo Shelter, this one has a halo-like headdress and fine lines running vertically down its forehead. And the “rule-bound color application order demonstrates that the painting order was black was applied first, then the red, then the yellow.  The key to determining the order of paint layers is to examine the edges of each layer at the points of intersection with another layer. 

 “As a result, paint layers of multiple figures are intertwined, forming well-planned, highly sophisticated compositions – some spanning more than 100 feet long and 20 feet tall. They are visual manuscripts created according to a set of rules passed down from one generation to the next for more than 4,000 years.”

Indigenous communities in the U.S. and Mexico can relate the stories communicated through the imagery to their own cosmologies, demonstrating the antiquity and persistence of a pan-New World belief system that is at least 6,000 years old,” the researcher said. “Think about it, the canyons of Southwest Texas house a vast and ancient library of painted texts documenting 175 generations of sacred stories and Indigenous knowledge.”