A team of researchers scanned the roof of a limestone cave in Alabama and discovered several massive Native American mud glyphs that are about 1,500 years old.
The cave ceiling was incised in the 2nd century and the 10th century with glyph depictions of animals and figures. They made a 3D model of the cave and published their study in antiquity.
The exact location of the 19th Unnamed Cave is protected. It has mud glyph that were made by Native Americans before Europeans arrived. The ceiling of the cave is usually just 2 feet high, meaning that the glyph chamber is beyond the reach of natural light.
This isn't something they ad-libbed. Jan Simek, an archaeologist at the University of Tennessee and the lead author of the paper, said in an email that they went in with a plan and drew the images they wanted. They were planned images that had meaning to them.
The glyph are in the dark zone of the cave and would have been made by torchlight. Simek thinks the glyph were made by groups of at least two people, as holding a torch while incising symbolic glyphs on the ceiling of a cramped cave would be difficult.
The cave's particular climate means that a thin veneer of mud sticks to its ceiling, which allowed the artists to make mud glyphs, but also to ensure that they were preserved long term. The time period during which the glyph may have been made is wide. The burnt remains of a cane torch stoke were found beyond the glyph chamber, which was dated to between 133 and 433CE.
The ancestors of some living Americans are most likely the people who made the glyph. The glyph's characters are similar to rock art from elsewhere in North America, according to the researchers.
The newly discovered glyph are so large that they weren't previously noticed as artworks. The cave's low ceiling allowed the researchers to stitch together images of artworks that cannot be seen in person. Simek said that the cave has more secrets to reveal.
The five largest glyph were described in the paper. Several of the humanoids are wearing regalia. Two of the animals were 6 feet long, and the other was 3 feet long. The team states that the eastern diamondback rattlesnake is similar to the 11-foot serpent that is the largest of the glyphs.
The decision to carve hundreds of glyphs in a cave may seem strange. Simek said that the location would have been selected with intention.
The painted scenes at Lasceaux in France are nearly 20,000 years old, and a painting of a pig in an Indonesian cave is 43,900 years old. The culture of native people in Alabama is rare.
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