Cave of Hands

The Cave of Handsis at 71 kilometers to the south of the City of Perito Moreno in the Northwest of the province of Santa Cruz. It in a deep canyon that the Ríver Pinturas eroded in the stone. This area comprises the Cave of the Hands, the Eaves of Charcamata and the Cueva Grande (Big Cave) or of Altamirano.

The name of Cave of the Hands originates in the thousands of hands that like negative impressions, cover the rock. The hands are painted in black, ochre, violet, yellow and red. They were probably drawn around 550 before Christ. and the people that painted them were the first to use white. Most of these impressions are in a 24m long cave. Apart from the hands there are drawings of animals and geometric figures. The paintings of the guanacos are the oldest ones and they are about 9000 years old, at that time the region was inhabited by hunters. Around the year 1000 before Christ, the geometric figures and the impressions in positive of the hands were painted.

All these figures have survived the centuries without having been damaged. The pigments used were the powder of the stones of the region mixed with guanaco fat. Neither the humidity no the sun or the wind can get into the cave, factors that have protected the paintings.

History of the Cave of the Hands

The first news of this cave art in Patagonia was given by the Perito Francisco P. Moreno in 1876, before the discovery of the Caves of Altamira in Santillana del Mar in Spain.

The Cave of the Hands is located in a region called Estancia Alto Río Pinturas in a deep canyon.

The River Pinturas is a tributary of the Río Deseado. The area was mapped for the first time by Alberto Rex González in 1949. The cave that has a Northeast orientation, is 20 meters long. It has two lateral walls and two big rocky eaves of flat surfaces. It is in these surfaces that the paintings of the hands have been drawn. These surfaces are almost 60 meters long. The paintings are up to a height of 3m, and at the end of the cave, where it is lower, there are paintings on the roof.

The Eaves of Charcamata are the biggest ones in the area. It has an entrance of more than 100m and the eaves are projected more than 60m.

In the Region of the River Pinturas there are 3 different styles

1.Pictographs carried out around 7300 before Christ. This first style includes dynamic, simple, very natural hunting scenes and they evidently represent a fact in the hunter's life. Approximately forty guanacos (that have been represented by somebody who has observed them attentively) are pursued by ten hunters. The scene finishes in a fence made by the hunters around a guanaco. In these scenes, the human figures are represented full face and many of the hunters have something on their head which could be feathers. Another scene represents some guanacos leaving a canyon. In this scene the painter has used some fine lines to represent the way of the missiles. These missiles are called "lost balls", similar to the boleadoras (Two balls to which two strips of hide were attached. They were whirled round the head and thrown to entangle the legs of the animal). The guanacos are always bigger than the human figures. When the hunters run behind the prey, the figures are drawn in profile, many times they lack their arms. The colours that have been used always coincide with the colours used in the drawings in negative of the hands that are nearby. There is a fixed order in the application of the colour, always beginning with black and finishing with violet. All these figures correspond to the external walls and the eaves of the Cave of the Hands, they cover big spaces and they are in well lit places. They were painted by guanaco hunters that occupied the caves which were used as refuges and possibly as place for ceremonies as well. Little is known about the meaning of the hands or the way in which they prepared the colours.. The colour of the negative hands depended on the colours found nearby, they are mainly red (hematite), white (limestone) black (manganese or vegetable coal) and yellow (limonite or yellow ocher).

2.This group includes guanacos and hands and diverse abstract figures and they are found in the Cave of the Hands, in the Big Cave and in the Eaves of Charcamata. The human figures have been drawn full face, the head has an ornament, they have a single arm and the legs are short, the bodies are often white and they stand in horizontal rows. The hands are very frequent and they sometimes include the forearm, most of the impressions correspond to the left hand. The guanacos appear either isolated or in groups. Of long neck and small head, they have been painted in black and violet. Some are even a meter long and they are with their young. In the big cave there is a group of ninety black guanacos and they have been painted on the wall at the end of the cave and they offer a symmetrical representation. In the eaves of Charcamata they are white. The abstract figures are violet, yellow and black.

3. These paintings are only in the Cave of the Hands: negative hands of white colour on a red surface. There are ornaments in zig zag, triangles, and some animals.