The longest known painting created by early Indigenous Americans has been found in Alabama. A 10-foot-long (3 meter) rattlesnake and other paintings were made out of mud on the walls and ceiling of a cave by Indigenous Americans.
The richest place for Native American cave art in the American Southeast is the cave. To investigate its historic art, the team turned to photogrammetry, a technique that involves taking hundreds of digital images in order to build a virtual 3D model. The researchers spotted five previously unknown giant cave paintings using this method.
The methodology allows us to create a virtual model of the space that we can manipulate. Your field of vision is limited by the ceiling. We couldn't get back far enough to see the large images.
He said that after creating the virtual model, we could look at it from a different perspective.
Climate change is wiping out the world's oldest cave art.
There are 6 images, the first one is image 2 of 6 image 3 of 6 image 4 of 6 image 5 of 6
The researchers said that the glyph may depict a diamondback rattlesnake, a creature considered sacred by the Indigenous peoples of the American southeast. The peoples built large mounds to be closer to the spirits of the upper world, while caves were seen as the opposite way to go to the Underworld.
Simek said that these are special because they have no large figures from this area, and so that changes our perspective on what might be in these caves.
This cave was first discovered in 1998 and is the 19th unnamed cave. The majority of paintings discovered in one large chamber were found in the cave's underground passages, according to a 1999 study published in the journal Southeastern Archaeology. The team hopes to improve understanding of Indigenous American art by using photogrammetry techniques on the 19th unnamed cave.
The study will be published in a journal.
It was originally published on Live Science.
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