‘A World of Knowledge’: Rock Art, Ritual, and Indigenous Belief at Serranía De La Lindosa in the Colombian Amazon

Abstract

There are tens of thousands of painted rock art motifs in the Serranía de la Lindosa in the Colombian Amazon, including humans, animals, therianthropes, geometrics, and flora. For most of the last 100 years, inaccessibility and political unrest has limited research activities in the region. In this paper, we discuss findings from six years of field research and consider the role of rock art as a manifestation of Indigenous ontologies. By employing intertwining strands of evidence—a range of ethnographic sources, local Indigenous testimonies from 2021–2023, and the motifs themselves—we argue that the rock art here is connected to ritual specialists negotiating spiritual realms, somatic transformation, and the interdigitation of human and non-human worlds.

1. Introduction

‘There are the paintings… The great spiritual worlds are captured here…’

(Ismael Sierra, a Tukano Oriental elder, at the site of Principal, 20 September 2023; translation by the authors)

‘We have to read a figure, we have to read it from inside out… If we begin to look at the figure of each image it will give us many stories, and then what appears in each image is the knowledge of each species, and that is what is handled at the shamanic level…. And that is how we begin to know the pictographs…. Because this is a world of knowledge…. I tell you each one of these figures contributed the shamanic knowledge for our own management of the territory where we are…When this knowledge comes out it appears as a wardrobe, as a shamanic wardrobe, as a guide to be able to practice shamanism. …To understand the pictographs you have to have different levels of knowledge…. One part is that you have to look at them from the shamanic viewpoint… that corresponds to the shamans… you have to have another vision which is the oral shamanism which is the one that I manage….we have to concentrate very well for it to provide us with information’.

(Ulderico, a Matapí ritual specialist, at the Raudal site, 1 September 2022; translation by the authors)

In the Colombian Amazon, in the vicinity of Serranía de la Lindosa (Figure 1), are thousands of painted human and animal figures, plant motifs, and geometric designs (Trujillo 2016; Urbina and Peña 2016; Becerra 2019; Castaño-Uribe 2019; Muñoz 2020; Morcote-Ríos et al. 2021; Iriarte et al. 2022a, 2022b; Robinson et al. 2024). Having returned to the region after the Colombian government and the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) revolutionaries signed a peace treaty in 2016, Indigenous descendants of the original artists have recently explained to us that the rock art motifs here do not simply ‘reflect’ what the artists saw in the ‘real’ world; they also encode and manifest critical information about how animistic and perspectivistic Indigenous communities constructed, engaged with, and perpetuated their ritualised, socio-cultural worlds. As Ulderico, a Matapí ritual specialist, told us in front of one of the painted panels in September 2022, ‘you have to look at [the motifs] from the shamanic viewpoint’.

As with other regions globally, analysing ethnographic and ethnohistoric records alongside the rock art panels strengthens interpretation (e.g., Lewis-Williams 1981, 2006; McDonald 2013; Valle et al. 2018; Munduruku et al. 2021; Whitley 2021; Tuyuka et al. 2022; Stewart and Challis 2023). In this paper, we employ a multi-stranded approach when considering the rock art motifs at multiple panels at the sites of Serranía de la Lindosa. We address regional ethnographic contexts and include translations of narratives given by Indigenous elders in front of the rock art panels.1 Dozens of groups in the wider region practised some form of shamanism (Métraux 1949; Reichel-Dolmatoff 1978a, 1978b, 1987, 1997; Rivière 1994; Shepard 1999; Alberti and Bray 2009; Santos-Granero 2008, 2009; Kopenawa and Albert 2013; Wright 2013; Langdon 2017; Castaño-Uribe 2019; Iriarte et al. 2022b; Robinson et al. 2024). Moreover, the testimony of numerous Indigenous elders at the rock art sites today systematically and unequivocally demonstrates the connection of many of the motifs to shamanistic and animistic beliefs.2

2. Serranía De La Lindosa and Its Environs

The Serranía de la Lindosa (La Lindosa for short) is a 20 km long sandstone outcrop located along the Guayabero River in the northwest of the Department of Guaviare, Colombia. This region forms the border between Orinoiquia savannahs to the north and the Amazon rainforest to the south; it is characterised by an intersection of flora and fauna between the distinctive savannah and tropical forest environments (Vriesendorp et al. 2018). The present climate is warm and humid, receiving ~2800 mm of rain annually.

Until the 2016 peace agreement between the FARC revolutionaries and the Colombian government, civil war, political unrest, and inaccessibility made research in the region almost impossible (although see Correal et al. 1990; Gheerbrant 1993; Urbina 1994; Brito-Sierra and López-Arévalo 2015; Trujillo 2016; Urbina and Peña 2016; Rostain 2019). Recent archaeological excavations carried out by members of the ERC (European Research Council) project LASTJOURNEY have established Late Pleistocene (ca. 12.5 ka BP) human contexts (Aceituno et al. 2024; Morcote-Ríos et al. 2021); we now know that during these early times the area was occupied by mobile groups engaged in a broad-spectrum economy that included hunting, fishing, and plant exploitation (Morcote-Ríos et al. 2021; Robinson et al. 2021; Aceituno et al. 2024). The region has long been a crossroads and enclave for numerous Indigenous communities, including Arawakan, Cariban, Makú-Puinave, Tukanoan, Desanan, and Witoto ethnolinguistic groups (Cayón and Chacon 2014; see also Iriarte et al. 2022b).

It is likely that uncontacted Indigenous groups in nearby Chiribiquete National Park (the border of which is less than 100 km to the south) and other neighbouring regions are still creating rock art (van der Hammen 2006; Castaño-Uribe 2019). On the other hand, it seems that Indigenous groups in and around the hills of La Lindosa are not. There are Nukak Makú, Jiw, Tukano and Desana Indigenous reservations (Resguardos) in the vicinity of La Lindosa; several Tukano and Desana speakers live close to the rock art sites, and within the nearby town of San José del Guaviare. Since 2018, we have carried out interviews with Tukano, Desana, Matapí, Nukak, and Jiw elders in front of the painted panels; as we outline below, much—but not all—of the information tallies with shamanistic and animistic narratives recorded in the twentieth century in other regions of the Amazon.

Hundreds of rock art panels are present throughout the hill chains of La Lindosa, including well-known examples at the sites of Cerro Azul (a prominent free-standing tepui i.e., table-top hill), Nuevo Tolima, and Raudal del Guayabero (Figure 2) (Trujillo 2016; Urbina and Peña 2016; Becerra 2019; Castaño-Uribe 2019; Iriarte et al. 2022b; Robinson et al. 2024). Sixteen large painted panels—with thousands of images, mostly in red ochre—adorn the 400 × 150 m Cerro Azul outcrop.3 Ochre pieces have been recovered from the earliest occupational levels, including ochre tablets with striations from grinding found in contexts dated to ~11.54 ka cal BP, and painted rock fragments from contexts dating from ~10.28 ka cal BP to approximately 500 years ago (Morcote-Ríos et al. 2021; Iriarte et al. 2022b; Aceituno et al. 2024). Attempts to directly date the parietal images are ongoing. Because we have not yet been able to chronologically separate images with any degree of confidence, we do not discuss potential chronological changes or sequences in the artwork.

3. Methods

In this paper, we focus on six panels from Cerro Azul: Currunchos, Demoledores, Las Dantas, El Más Largo, Principal, and Reserva (Iriarte et al. 2022b) (Figure 3). The selected panels provide a range in the location, size, and number of images; they are also relatively well-preserved and accessible for drone photography. Las Dantas and El Más Largo are large rockshelters with 998 and 1031 images respectively. Principal has a high density of well-preserved motifs (244). Currunchos contains 153 images, and access to the site requires a challenging traverse from inside a cave mouth around a rock outcrop. Access to Reserva (244 images), higher up the cliff face, is also difficult, and requires climbing. The 171 motifs at Demoledores are in a concave alcove with an impressive view over the rainforest.

Using photogrammetry from drone and traditional photography, we created a 2D and 3D stitch of each of the panels before employing GIS software (ArcGIS Pro 3.3) to apply relative x and y coordinates and a unique identifier number to each motif. Motifs were then assigned to one of four descriptive categories: Figurative, Geometric, Abstract, and Unknown.4 The Figurative category includes sub-categories: humans, animals (including therianthropes), schematised figures, handprints, flora, and objects.5

4. A Closer Look at the Rock Art of La Lindosa

A total of 3223 images were catalogued across the six panels. In this paper, we concentrate on the Figurative images (

Table 1. Figurative representations in the rock art of Cerro Azul.

			Panel
	Curronchos	Demoledores	Dantas	Más Largo	Principal	Reserva	Total	% of total
Total images	153	171	998	1031	626	244	3223	100
Non-figurative	112	115	344	356	242	175	1344	41.7
Figurative	41	56	654	675	384	69	1879	58.3
Animal	23	17	203	144	154	15	556	17.25
% of total panel images	15	9.9	20.3	14	24.6	6.1
% of total panel figurative images	56.1	30.4	31	21.3	40.1	21.7
Human	3	12	209	203	83	21	531	16.48
% of total panel images	2	7	20.9	19.7	13.3	8.6
% of total panel figurative images	7.3	21.4	32	30.1	21.6	30.4
Schematised	7	24	149	266	86	28	560	17.38
% of total panel images	4.6	14	14.9	25.8	13.7	11.5
% of total panel figurative images	17.1	42.9	22.8	39.4	22.4	40.6
Handprint	0	0	88	50	51	0	189	5.86
% of total panel images	0	0	8.8	4.8	8.1	0
% of total panel figurative images	0	0	13.5	7.4	13.3	0
Flora	1	3	4	6	10	5	29	0.9
% of total panel images	0.7	1.8	0.4	0.6	1.6	2
% of total panel figurative images	2.4	5.4	0.6	0.9	2.6	7.2
Object	7	0	1	6	0	0	14	0.43
% of total panel images	4.6	0	0.1	0.6	0	0
% of total panel figurative images	17.1	0	0.2	0.9	0	0

), for the simple reason that the ethnographic and ethnohistoric records contain more information about these motifs compared with non-Figurative images (for more on the geometric and abstract motifs at La Lindosa, see below, and Iriarte et al., forthcoming).

As we demonstrated in a previous paper (Robinson et al. 2024), animals at La Lindosa are represented individually and in groups (Figure 4 and Figure 5). They are shown both ‘statically’ (i.e., standing) and ‘dynamically’ (e.g., running deer, leaping monkeys).6 Animals are portrayed either in profile or top-down view. The top-down view is limited to Crocodylia, lizards, turtles, and stingrays. Bats appear to be the only animal represented in portrait (face-on) view. Despite the frequent occurrence of penises on human figures—many of which are erect—genitalia are almost entirely absent from the painted animals (see below). Depictions of feet are sometimes ‘specific’ (including distinct toes), ‘non-specific’ (lacking foot definition), and abstract (i.e., containing non-realistic elements). When depicted, the number of toes varies considerably, even on a single animal (see below). An important motif that we return to later is a serpent with legs, and emanations from the head (Figure 4n; see also Figure 10 below).

As in other parts of the world, several rock art motifs at Cerro Azul—and indeed across the wider region—incorporate both animal and human elements, suggesting the depiction of therianthropes (Figure 6, Figure 7 and Figure 8). The Tukano, Desana, Matapí, Jiw, and Nukak speakers who accompanied us to the rock art sites highlighted these images, discussing the fluid transformation between animal and human states in an animistic and perspectivistic worldview (see below). Therianthropic figures are most often bipedal and in a ‘performative’ stance, in which motion is implied. Arms, for example, are often outstretched, and fore and hind legs depicted as if on different planes. As noted above, penises, which are frequently depicted on human figures, are all but absent from animal figures; tellingly, however, they are present on three therianthropic figures. Many human figures at Cerro Azul have tapir- or deer-like feet (see below).

5. Rock Art, Shamanism, Ethnography, and Ethnohistory at La Lindosa and Beyond

Rock art research in the Amazon, in South America, and beyond repeatedly tells us that art is both a reflection and manifestation of cultural and spiritual beliefs, as well as a communicative tool (see examples in Hampson et al. 2022; Iriarte et al. 2022b). Pigment procurement, artistic ‘style’, composition, and the choice of subject matter are embedded within social norms and ontologies, and attempts at etic identification of rock art not only highlight the core fluidity in Indigenous categorisations but also remind us that the unambiguous ‘specificity’ of an image (from a Western point of view) was not necessarily the goal of the original artist (Hampson 2015, 2024; Robinson et al. 2024). Indeed, ethnographic evidence tells us that ‘Tukanoan decoration is not mimesis; the Indians do not copy life-forms from nature’ (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1987, p. 17). Similarly, Tukanoan ‘artistic and technical skill and perfection are not of the essence. An artifact may be ill made; a dance may be clumsily executed or a person may have a poor singing voice. What counts is … meaning. Artistic excellence should never become a goal. In fact, shamans warn people not to be too form-perfect; not to be too impressed by appearances’ (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1987, p. 17).

The rock art motifs at La Lindosa appear to mirror and embody these concepts, with the action of painting—and the resulting ‘presence’ of a motif—of greater concern than conveying the anatomical specifics of, say, a deer, or a human figure (Robinson et al. 2024). It seems that many images at La Lindosa—and indeed rock art corpuses elsewhere (see examples in Hampson et al. 2022)—were deliberately painted without diagnostic features. Moreover, artists could and did often choose to accentuate certain features to increase the potency of a particular motif (e.g., Keyser and Whitley 2006; Hampson 2015, 2016). Equally important, there are numerous ethnographic texts throughout the Americas which make clear that painted motifs were and are powerful things in themselves; indeed, the word for pigment is often synonymous with the word for ‘potency’ or ‘supernatural spirit’ (e.g., Laird 1976, p. 123; Hultkrantz 1987, p. 94; Whitley 2009; Stoffle et al. 2011, p. 14; Hampson 2015, 2024; Hugh-Jones 2016). Classificatory ambiguities in taxa (from a non-Indigenous perspective) also stem from the fact that animistic ontologies were and are fluid and polysemous (see below); it is not surprising that there are human/animal therianthropes and other motifs at La Lindosa depicting transformative states (Goldman 1940; Fulop 1954; Rivière 1994; Viveiros de Castro 1998; Alberti and Bray 2009; Wright 2013; Langdon 2017; Pilaar Birch 2018; Moro-Abadía and Porr 2021; Iriarte et al. 2022b; Robinson et al. 2024).7 In addition, we know that taxonomic specificity was not always the goal of Indigenous artists partly because many entities, including rock art motifs, were considered to be ‘emergent’, or in the ‘process of becoming’; to many Indigenous groups in the Amazon and elsewhere, processes in an animistic framework were and are as important as the final product, if not more so (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1978a, 1978b, 1987, 1997; Rivière 1994; Alberti and Bray 2009; Wright 2013; Langdon 2017; Whitley 2021). Before we turn to the detailed testimonies of Indigenous elders recorded in front of the painted sites at La Lindosa in 2022 and 2023, we look more closely at Amazonian ethnography, and what it might tell us about the significance of rock art panels and motifs.

Few Amazonian researchers now doubt the overarching paradigm of the so-called New Animism, a relational practice in which humans cultivate relationships with other persons, whether human or non-human (Hallowell 1960; Descola 1994, 2012; Viveiros de Castro 1998; Bird-David 1999; Harvey 2002, 2014; Ingold 2006; Alberti and Bray 2009; Santos-Granero 2008, 2009; Abram 2010; Kohn 2013; Iriarte et al. 2022b).8 In many Amazonian perspectivist and animistic cosmologies, everything that grows, moves, or evolves is ‘equal to’ a human, with a soul and a social life (e.g., Viveiros de Castro 1998; Kohn 2013). To this end, each living being’s physical body can be imagined as an ‘outer cover’ (or ‘clothing’), hiding its human form. Only other members of the same species, or special beings such as shamans who cross species boundaries, can see through this external covering (Viveiros de Castro 1998; Kohn 2013).9 According to this Amazonian way of seeing and living, the world is inhabited by various types of emergent beings, including humans and non-humans, who perceive reality fluidly, and from different but complementary viewpoints. These entities—including spirits, animals, plants, and even objects—are conscious, and, like humans, have the ability to reflect and to influence events.10

A point we underscore here, and throughout this paper, is the key role of ritual specialists in Amazonian groups. Indeed, there are numerous ethnographic references to the crucial roles that payés [shamans] play (see below). Moreover, when Victor Caycedo, a Desana elder, accompanied us to the sites in 2022 and 2023, he explained that ‘the payé is the one who commands in the maloca [house],11 he is the one who has the powers, he is the one who has the yagé [hallucinogenic ayahuasca],12 he makes the lightning fall, he makes the winter fall. … Payés can see inside and out; they can see a person’s bones. If a man is sick, he can see a ‘stain’. He sees black marks in your knee, if that’s where you are sick. The payé sees things, diagnostically, both now and in the future. Payés open up a space: the spell is powerful.’

In his book (Sierra 2019, p. 31), Ismael Sierra—an elder from the Tukano Oriental group—also refers to payés as ‘great sages … or ancient historians…They are capable of transforming into a person, in order to reach this world. And that power, he has it more than us. He knows more than we do.’

As Reichel-Dolmatoff (1967, pp. 110–11) also makes clear:

The hills in the forest are not only meeting places of one shaman and Waí-maxsè [the Master of Animals—an important figure to whom we return below] but also the locales where, in their hallucinations, various shamans of neighboring tribes celebrate their reunions. Among them and the Master of Animals a true barter unfolds during which each tries to gain advantages. It is imagined that within the uterine hills, which are like great communal houses, the animals hang from the rafters in a somnolent state, and the shaman chooses the animals which he needs for the hunters of his group. Going from rafter to rafter he shakes them, and with each shake, the animals awake and go forth into the forest. Waí-maxsè “charges per shake” and at times when more animals have been awakened than was intended and bargained for, negotiations are renewed with the Master of Animals who asks for more and more souls.

On 16 September 2023, Victor elaborated on the concept of painted rockshelters as spiritual malocas/houses for us:

Where are we? This [gesturing to the paintings at the Principal site] is the door, this is the house and this is the wall of the tepui, one sees that it is made from stone, but for those in ancient times it was not stone, it was the wall of a house…This is a sanctuary, we are inside the tepui. The ancestors can hear us.…Each time you come, you see different things; things show themselves to you. All these rockshelters are houses.13

Also in September 2023, Ismael Sierra pointed to the paintings at the site known as La Fuga and said:

So here are the animals that are there, they exist in that mountain range that was formerly and still is, but it is in the spiritual world… These are men with two arms, they are giants that exist in that spiritual maloca… there is an animal, a panther lion that has two heads, one head here and the other here, instead of a tail it has a head, they are from the spiritual world … they are monsters that are here [pointing to the panel], almost everyone in this mountain range must have their maloca, this [pointing to the panel] for a wise man, for a payé, it is a maloca… In this world there are different places, where there are some malocas of this world. Where the white people call them sacred places. Or enchanted.

Complementing the point that, in many American regions, the word for pigment is often synonymous with the word for ‘potency’ or ‘supernatural spirit’ (see above), several of the Indigenous elders who accompanied us to the La Lindosa sites explained that the paintings were created by spirits—an ontological equivalence between the actions of a ritual specialist and their spirit helper (see e.g., Whitley 2009). At Principal in September 2023, for instance, Victor pointed to motifs high up the rock face and asked rhetorically: ‘How would you paint up there? How would you do it? They didn’t do it with a ladder…they didn’t do it with some big devices that were put there… Why? Because the natives in the old days lived spiritually… They were a spirit…’ On another occasion, also at the Principal site, Ismael gestured to the paintings and said: ‘That is not done in this world… that is not done by us…’ The Jiw14 creation story (Iriarte et al. 2022b, p. 40) also offers an explanation for the origin of the rock art at La Lindosa:

In the beginning, there was no sun, moon or stars. Everything was in darkness. Laman, the world creator, made a big pot with a lid. Whenever he lifted the lid, light flooded out and a new day dawned. Nothing lived on earth, so Laman created the first bird. The bird brought seeds from the underworld, and from those seeds grew palms and fruits, and all the plants on the planet. Next Laman prayed, and all kinds of animals appeared. Laman wanted us to remember how life began, so he decided to throw a party. In between dancing and singing, Laman made the paintings on the rocks to make sure that what he had done would never be forgotten.

The relationships between Indigenous myths and specific rock art motifs are of course far from straightforward; it should come as no surprise that myths and motifs are contextual, interdependent, and polysemous. As outlined above, Amazonian ethnographies and present-day explanations demonstrate that artworks do not merely ‘reflect reality’ or ‘illustrate’ the narrative and metaphorical myths, as if they were pictures in books; rather, the images reside within an animistic and agentive framework, and act as storehouses of symbolic potency. The creation of motifs, and their context on the walls of what many Indigenous groups refer to as the ‘Master’s House’ (i.e., painted rockshelters; see below), emphasises one part of their semantic spectrum—animistic potency—while also illuminating a range of other values, including those in social and economic realms. Numerous Amazonian groups recognise the hills and tepuis—and other places with rock art, such as river rapids—as sacred spaces corresponding to a mythical time within an animistic worldview (e.g., Reichel-Dolmatoff 1971; Urbina 1994; Hugh-Jones 1996; Riris et al. 2024).

Ethnographic sources—and even present day narratives—must of course be used with caution; clearly, testimonies cannot be taken at face value, or as a coherent series of unambiguous facts (see e.g., Lewis-Williams 2024). Unsurprisingly, anthropological texts and interviews are fragmentary and at least in part a product of recorders’ interests and contextual knowledge (or lack thereof).15 We also need to remember that Indigenous informants often do not bother explaining the most fundamental concepts that make up their worldviews simply because they regard them as self-evident e.g., the sacred and mundane worlds constantly intertwine; rock art motifs are powerful things in themselves; there is no sharp divide between nature and culture; etc. In the Upper Rio Negro region, for instance, Hugh-Jones (2016, p. 165) explains that ‘Many of the petroglyphs would appear to represent Yuruparí [ceremonial] instruments but in Indigenous eyes they are not representations; they are the real thing. Petroglyphs are Yuruparí in another form (see also Xavier 2012, p. 7). This is why one should avert one’s eyes and not look at them. By the same token, for Tukanoans, their anaconda ancestors did not merely arrive by river; the meandering rivers are those ancestors and were created as the anacondas moved.’ (Our emphasis. We consider the significance of snake motifs below.) When we read ethnographic texts, then, we must be careful not to overlook important ‘nuggets’—pieces of information couched in Indigenous language and metaphors (Lewis-Williams 2024, p. 72). Or, in David Whitley’s (2021, p. 69) words, ‘many ethnographically relevant statements about rock art can only be recognized as such when the ontological differences between the Western and the Indigenous worldviews are themselves understood’. 16

6. A Closer Look at Animal Motifs: Moving Beyond ‘Menus’

Animals feature prominently in rock art worldwide, including multiple regional traditions and corpuses in South America (Beltrão and Locks 1993; Miotti and Carden 2007; Prous 2007; Baeta and Prous 2017; Carden 2009; Troncoso et al. 2017, 2018; Motta and Villanueva 2020; Troncoso and Armstrong 2022; Robinson et al. 2024). Studies from across the globe demonstrate that it is extremely rare to find a direct relationship between the ratio of painted animal images to the species identified in associated archaeofaunal assemblages (Laming-Emperaire 1957; Leroi-Gourhan 1965; Vinnicombe 1972; Whitley 1994; Lewis-Williams 2002; Fiore and Zangrando 2006; Valenzuela et al. 2015; Russell 2017; Valle et al. 2018), and La Lindosa is no exception (Robinson et al. 2024). This disconnect alludes to the complex and many-layered social and ideological relationships between humans and animals beyond utilitarian exploitation (Descola 1994, 2012; Viveiros de Castro 1998; Fiore and Zangrando 2006; Valenzuela et al. 2015).

As we have recently shown (Robinson et al. 2024), scenes of food preparation and consumption are not depicted in La Lindosa rock art. While the low frequency of representations of larger mammals (e.g., tapirs, deer) in the zooarchaeological assemblage at La Lindosa may be related to the lack of preservation of identifiable bone fragments (Robinson et al. 2024), it is worth noting that hunting taboos for multiple Amazonian groups generally avoid these larger mammals, in part due to the symbolic relationships with these important animals; unsurprisingly, hunting and consumption are mediated by the ideational domain (Ross et al. 1978; Reichel-Dolmatoff 1997; Politis 2007; Yoamara et al. 2020; Robinson et al. 2024). Indeed, the larger animals are often perceived to be more sacred and more potent because they embody spirit-ancestors (Politis 2007; Robinson et al. 2024). The tapir, for example, in a complex and multi-stranded relationship, is incorporated into Tukano ontology and genealogy as an ancestor (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1985, 1997). A Tukanoan hunter’s account notes that there are two types of tapir: the zoological animal, and one that has been transformed from a human (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1997); we should not be surprised by the fact that human figures at Cerro Azul often have animal feet (Figure 9). These kind of symbiotic and discursive relationships are also found within Amazonian ontologies in Brazil and Venezuela, where the consumption of certain primates (as well as tapir) is restricted because they are believed to be members of the family and/or ancestors (Yoamara et al. 2020).17

The natural and supernatural worlds across Amazonia were and are fluidly integrated, and animals are endowed with human-like characteristics and behaviours (Århem 1996; Descola 1994, 2012; Reichel-Dolmatoff 1997; Viveiros de Castro 1998; Bird-David 1999; Cabrera et al. 1999; Politis and Saunders 2002; Iriarte et al. 2022b; Robinson et al. 2024). Animals often embody or contain the spirits of ancestors, with the three largest mammals of the forest—tapir, jaguar, and deer—particularly revered as spirit-animals; they are ‘like people’. Conflation of, and transformation between, animal and human states (including one animal species to another animal species) is a common component of Amazonian cosmologies, with numerous myths featuring transformation within and between a wide array of animal species (Descola 1994; Reichel-Dolmatoff 1997; Viveiros de Castro 1998; Bird-David 1999).

According to the Nukak (Iriarte et al. 2022b, p. 52), ‘tapirs are just like us. In Bak, the world below, tapirs keep jaguars as their pets. In Bak, tapirs remove their skin and show their human form. Tapirs enter our world, called Yee, through sacred natural salt licks (salados), they dress as animals and we take care of them.’ Here we see the shamanic concept of beings moving from one realm to another—an important concept that we return to below.

The serpent motifs at Cerro Azul are another example of animals that are not painted simply because they were ‘good to eat’.18 Some of the serpents at La Lindosa have legs and plumes on their heads (Figure 10). Serpents were and are of great importance to Indigenous groups, partly because they are liminal creatures, at home in the water and on land—like Amazonian payés, they can move from one realm to another (e.g., Reichel-Dolmatoff 1987, 1997). Serpents are also important because they are ‘re-born’ after shedding their skin—as are ritual specialists after certain rituals (e.g., Reichel-Dolmatoff 1987, 1997). There are numerous ethnographic accounts (e.g., Hugh-Jones 1979; Reichel-Dolmatoff 1987, 1997; Ballestas Rincón 2007; Riris et al. 2024) from Amazonia that include large snakes—often anacondas—as ancestral and/or celestial creator beings, often glossed as ‘snake-canoes’. These potent beings are found within animistic and shamanistic frameworks and, as in other parts of the Americas, are connected with re-birth, transformation, waterways, the sky and the Milky Way, and the underworld (Castaño-Uribe and van der Hammen 2005; Iriarte et al. 2022b; Hampson, forthcoming).19 At the site of Más Largo in September 2022, Ismael pointed to the plumed serpent motif with legs and said: ‘I am going to begin with this big anaconda, for us Tukanos the anaconda means a lot. Because the Tukano people, who are composed of twelve groups of people… we arrived in a spiritual world…. We came from that spiritual world many, many years ago…. Then we arrived and from there we made a transition…’ At the site of Raudal, too, Ulderico explained that ‘the power of the figures of La Lindosa is oriented by the power of the boa’. Clearly, rock artists in the Amazon did not depict animals simply because they saw them in the ‘real’, everyday world.

Animal tracks are absent from the art at Cerro Azul, and, as mentioned above, foot depiction often lacks definition or consistency in the number of digits; once again, this strongly suggests a stylistic and cultural choice rather than the representation of key anatomical information that could aid a hunter (cf. Robinson et al. 2024). Circular foot and head elements are unlikely to represent the armour of European war dogs (pace Urbina and Peña 2016) because the feature appears on a range of (non-canid) quadrupedal animals (Figure 5f above). More importantly, two of the Indigenous informants who accompanied us to the sites rejected this claim. All of the above strengthens the hypothesis that the Cerro Azul artwork was not simply a means of depicting activities associated with everyday animal hunting, processing, or eating. As attested by numerous ethnographies and ethnohistories, hunter-prey relationships were and are embedded within complex social institutions and an overarching animistic framework.

7. Hunting and Fishing in an Animistic World

At Las Dantas, a male human figure appears to be hunting a quadruped with a long spear (Figure 5c above). Nearby (on the same panel), two other ‘scenes’ show similar interactions with a canid (Figure 5b) and a deer. A further image at Más Largo depicts two humans connected to a deer (Figure 5e). As with all the motifs at Cerro Azul, these scenes are not necessarily literal, and the lines connecting humans and animals probably represent spiritual connections and a symbolic hunter-prey relationship within the animistic frameworks discussed above (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1967, 1971, 1976; Lewis-Williams et al. 2000; Keyser and Whitley 2006; McGranaghan and Challis 2016; Stewart and Challis 2023; Robinson et al. 2024; Hampson, forthcoming).20

At Más Largo, there are instances of male human figures using lines to hook fish. Next to the human figures are large concentric circles, which at first glance seem to depict ripples in the water (Figure 11; see also Figure 5a above).

The meaning behind—and full significance of—the concentric circle and nested U-shape elements is unknown, but these geometric motifs are likely connected to ritual specialists and altered states of consciousness (see Figure 12; see also Reichel-Dolmatoff 1978b, 1987; Lewis-Williams 2002; Déléage 2007; Iriarte et al. 2022b; Iriarte et al., forthcoming; Hampson, forthcoming).21

Even if we do not know the full significance of the geometrics, we do know from ethnography and from the testimony of local informants that fish and fishing play an integral role in Indigenous animistic ontologies throughout Amazonia (e.g., Reichel-Dolmatoff 1971, 1987, 1997; Ballester 2018). A Yanomami (Venezuela) myth, for instance, includes Thueyoma—a female fish-being—who allowed herself to be captured (in human form) by the Creator Omama (Chagnon 1997). There are also numerous ethnographic narratives in which ritual specialists transform themselves in altered states of consciousness into caiman-men in order to capture women in rivers (Figure 13; see e.g., Nimuendajú 1939; Reichel-Dolmatoff 1997; Surallés 2005). One evening in September 2023, after returning from the rock art sites, Ismael showed us images in his book (Sierra 2019) and told us that ‘another being that transforms is the tonina, or freshwater dolphin. There is also Wai majso (fish woman)—or what white people would call mermaid.’ The very act of fishing, too, involves interaction between the realms of land and water (Hampson, forthcoming).

8. Liminality, Portals, Transformation

Importantly, when we compare depictions of fishermen and the aquatic (heron-like) birds (Figure 5a and Figure 4p above)—and indeed with the snake-bird-human motif at Nueva Tolima (Figure 7)—we see that the motifs have exaggerated knees; this is a crucial iconographic and conceptual link that should not be overlooked.22 Herons and other aquatic birds are of course liminal, cross-realm creatures that feature heavily in the animistic ethnography (e.g., Reichel-Dolmatoff 1997, p. 130; see also Appendix A) and indeed the testimonies of local informants. Victor, for instance, explained at the site of Principal that:

The [ritual specialist] who wanted to be transformed… the one who wanted to be a heron, that one dressed in his clothes and transformed himself and flew away… Spiritually they [the ritual specialists] ate and that’s why they transformed into animals and went to look for food…. And just like … the tapir, the deer, the heron, in that way they were converted, and they went out in search of food, and on their return… this is the door [pointing to the deer and U-shaped motif; see Figure 14 below]23, that is the door, that is the door that the deer is entering, that is the main door, this is the big maloca, that is why we call it the tepui, at that time it was maloca, very big, this is where these tribes live. This is a secret that they have for all the South Americans who are here in the Orinoco… Payés fly and look for animals. A spirit can go below because he holds the world in one hand. Water birds can go into the world above and the world below.

In addition to the U-shaped portal and shamanic deer, another important section of the panel at Principal includes aquatic heron-like birds and bipedal human-like deer with their heads turned around as if to look at the birds (see top left of Figure 14; see also Figure 8 above; and right of Figure 15 below); again, and as attested by Victor and Ismael, this alludes to transformation and cross-realm liminality within an animistic framework (see Hampson, forthcoming).

9. Shamanism and the Master of Animals Within a Tiered Cosmos

Within many Amazonian groups, human-animal relationships are mediated by Waí-maxsè, the Master of Animals and forest spirit who protects and controls animals (e.g., Reichel-Dolmatoff 1967, 1971, 1978a, 1987, 1997; Fausto 2008; Fernández-Llamazares and Virtanen 2020). The release of game and a successful hunt require negotiation with these spirits. Indeed, hunts were and are regulated by rules, restrictions, and rituals (Fernández-Llamazares and Virtanen 2020), many of which are related to fertility within an animistic ontology (see e.g., Descola 1994; Viveiros de Castro 1998; Bird-David 1999; Harvey 2002; 2014). There are several ethnographic and ethnohistoric examples of ritual specialists negotiating with the Master of Animals to release game; the shamans perform ritualised trances and visit rockshelters to paint animals before hunts:

With a red pigment they paint on rocky walls the animals which the hunters need, thus reaffirming their request to Waí-maxsè. Next to the figures, or within their bodies, they paint the signs which, according to the Tucano, symbolize fertility: rows of dots that signify drops of semen, lines in zigzag which signify the succession of generations, or lines which fill up the body of the animal and signify its fecundity. (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1967, p. 111.)

As in many animistic traditions worldwide (e.g., Keyser and Whitley 2006; McGranaghan and Challis 2016; Challis 2019), there are special relationships in the Amazon between ritual specialists, rock art, hunters, and prey.24 The Desana word yee, for instance, means both jaguar and shaman—and there are numerous ethnographic examples in the Amazon of ritual specialists transforming into jaguars (e.g., Reichel-Dolmatoff 1997, p. 140). Victor, at the site of Principal, told us that a ritual specialist ‘takes yagé snuff and turns into a jaguar. He can walk all over the world, all four parts of the world. If he is a good person, he can turn into a payé. You need to smell the yagé and then you transform and you get to know the people. When pointing to a jaguar painting in a book on the rock art of Chiribiquete, Ulderico explained that ‘it is not the jaguar of the forest we are talking about, it is the image of shamanic knowledge’.

A well-known Barasana myth also makes clear that jaguars are shamanic avatars as well as ‘mediators between the three cosmic divisions of the world, between life and death, between the human world and the spirit world of the ancestors, and between nature and culture’ (Hugh-Jones 1979, p. 125; see also Lewis-Williams 2002). Barasana shamans are believed to keep jaguars as other people keep dogs—and they become jaguars at death. Moreover, Barasana groups consider jaguars to be the ‘predators of the earth’; it is no coincidence that jaguars can swim and climb trees—like ritual specialists, they metaphorically transcend tiered cosmological realms (Hugh-Jones 1979, p. 125; see also McEwan 2001). In a similar manner, eagles and anacondas are associated with shamanic travel: eagles (the predators of the sky) swoop down to the earth and catch fish in rivers, and anacondas (the predators of the water and the underworld) often leave rivers and travel on dry land (Hugh-Jones 1979, pp. 124–25).

Bats (see Figure 4p and Figure 14 above) are also important to many Amazonian groups not only because they are (unusual) flying mammals, but also because they, like jaguars and tapirs, are nocturnal. For many groups, night is associated with the underground realm of spirits—and also with ritualistic performance, altered states of consciousness, dreaming, and the dead (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1997). Bats of course hang upside down (towards the underworld) and congregate in caves, tree roots, and streams—liminal spaces which Indigenous groups believe are portals to other worlds (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1997; see also Iriarte et al. 2022b, p. 54). Moreover, pointing to the paintings of bats at the site of Principal, Victor told us: ‘So much has been said that those are the bats, but it happens that that … is a dress [a costume of the spirits; see below], and he [the payé] dresses up and transforms into a bat.’

Another example of embodied transformation is the human figure with elongated arms and unusual legs at Raudal (see Figure 15 above). Again, we know from Indigenous informants and ethnography that shamans in altered states of consciousness often describe themselves as having elongated limbs and other somatic distortions (see e.g., Hampson 2016; Hampson, forthcoming).

10. Shamans and Plants

It is not just animals that are important to Amazonian ritual specialists; as is well known, plants play a key role in animistic worldviews, too. Indeed, ritual specialists are sometimes known as vegetalistas (e.g., Reichel-Dolmatoff 1997; Langdon 2017). In Chiribiquete, there are painted depictions of yagé, yopo, virola, and tobacco plants (Castaño-Uribe 2019, pp. 209, 217, 219). Seeds of the hallucinogenic yopo (Anadenanthera peregrina) and copal (Protium sp.) resin—which is used as ceremonial incense by many Amazonian groups today—were found in excavations at La Lindosa (Iriarte et al. 2022b, p. 38; see also Rodd 2002; Daly 2024). At Cerro Azul, there are several examples of plant-like motifs with human-esque legs (Figure 16; see also Iriarte et al. 2022b, p. 72)—motifs we discuss in forthcoming papers.

11. Moving Forward, Caring for the Paintings, and Why This Research Matters

Further work is needed to ascertain exactly how strong animistic and shamanistic relationships might have been at La Lindosa—but local Indigenous testimonies make it clear that at least some of the rock art here is connected to ritual specialists negotiating spiritual realms and the interdigitation of human and other-than-human worlds (Hampson, forthcoming). The intertwining of this knowledge with other strands of evidence—including dozens of independently collected Amazonian ethnographies—underscores the ritualistic elements of the art and how those elements fit within wholistic ontological frameworks.

The preservation of the paintings of La Lindosa is of paramount importance to the Indigenous groups in the region. In September 2023, Ismael pointed out that the spirits have left: ‘Who is going to maintain [the paintings]? It’s like having your own house when you live in a house…. When you see that people are very tiresome, very annoying, they are making war all over the place, you have to leave—and that’s what is happening here…. Those who take care of you are spirits…. No one believes it, but here are the spirits…. We believe because my father was one of those [ritual specialists] who interacted with these characters [motifs] here….’ These kinds of connections are personal, and real.

David Whitley (2021, p. 74) reminds us why anthropological approaches to rock art research are key:

[T]he explicit adoption of an ontological perspective was the foundation of ethnographically based shamanistic rock art interpretations. Absent this change, the ethnographic data would have remained unrecognized. The putative lack of such evidence would then continue to serve as justification for the colonialist claim that rock art has no connection to contemporary indigenous people, as was argued [in the Californian context] by Heizer and Baumhoff (1962) and has been parroted by many others, thereby continuing to strip indigenous peoples of their rightful heritage.

Clearly, it is only by listening to Indigenous elders and fully engaging with anthropological texts that we will be able to continue meaningful rock art research at La Lindosa.