The Cave of Hands

Our overnight bus ride on the 6th January from El Calafate was one of the worst we experienced during our travels so far. The Cal Tur bus we took was not designed to be an overnight bus as the seats didn’t recline and there was no food or drink provided, or an attendant as on other buses in Argentina. But the real problem came when the second bus going to Perito Moreno alongside ours broke down about an hour into the 13 hour journey. We waited around for a while, then an entire full bus (25+ people) worth of passengers got on our bus and stood in the aisles next to our seats. As the hours went on the aisle dozens of passengers started melting down onto the floor, laying on top of each other (and us) unable to stand anymore. No one was able to get any sleep that evening. We were grateful we had seats and were not at all surprised when no one from either bus got any explanation or apology from the drivers or companies. We had heard about the horror stories of Patagonian buses, Cal Tur seems to be a company which lives up to the nightmares. It seemed as if the whole thing had been planned, to save two buses having to make the journey…

After the insane bus ride to Perito Moreno in Santa Cruz Province (again, the city not the glacier!) Colin and I were in dire need of some simple touring and housing. We wanted everything to go decently smoothly and kept simple since our sleep had been very minimal (less than 2 hours for Colin and not much for me either) that past night. Thankfully the morning of January 7th we got lucky and the two of us (plus a guy from Japan) paid $350 Argentine pesos each (yes, expensive) for a day trip to the UNESCO World Heritage Site Cuevos de los Manos aka the Cave of Hands. Our driver for the day took us from the bus station to his hostel to drop off our things, stopping at the bakery on the way for some provisions of chocolate chip muffins and pastries. After a quick tea and some munching on food in the hostel dining room the four of us set off for the very long yet fascinating drive – pretty much out into the middle of nowhere. 

The longer we drove the more I felt the remoteness of the site. Everything around was flat Patagonian steppe or desert (the 7th largest desert in the world!) for ages until our car reached some canyons. Eventually, at the bottom of these canyons was a place that must have looked like pure paradise for the ancient indigenous people of the region who do not have a name but likely were ancestors of the Tehuelche people. 88 meters below the Cave of Hands at the bottom of the valley, were tons of trees and the Pinturas River running through with fresh water, feeding them. While we only saw the guanaco roaming further away, this would undoubtedly be a favorite spot (at least part of the year) for the animals and thus for the hunters following them as well.

We arrived at the welcome center and explored a museum while we waited for our English-speaking tour to begin. Once it began our guide led us around the site. We were curious and later asked our tour guide about her education and she informed us that she hadn’t been to school or formerly trained in archeology – everything she knew she had learned from the archeologists working on the site. She did say that she would be participating in more archeological digs and taking classes soon, therefore moving away from the site.

The area the caves are located in was covered in rocks that were volcanic 150 million years ago during the Jurassic period. Some of these rocks in the area faulted, meaning one side of the rock wall becoming misaligned with the other side. The fault ended up becoming a pathway for water, which eroded the rock and eventually created the valleys (on large scale) and the caves (on smaller scale) we see today. While is one large ‘cave of hands,’ you unfortunately can’t go inside anymore. Over the recent years numerous uneducated Argentines used the cave as a place for BBQs (asados) and left their names in graffiti over the walls, so much of the art in the cave itself has disappeared. Thankfully there is still art on the outside of the cave along its walls, where the overhanging rock has protected it from the sun and rain and some protective barriers have now been set up in front of the art. It is quite amazing for the art to have survived because it is very old, dating from 13,000 to 9,000 years ago in multiple ‘waves’ of ancient indigenous artists. Our guide explained the different ‘waves’ or trends in the art could be seen as we walked through the site.

Inside the cave archeologists have found tons of artifacts, including arrowheads, stone tools, animal feathers and bones. The best finds were numerous bone-made pipes. These hollow bone pipes had evidence inside them of paint, and this paint helped archeologists date the artwork. The majority of the hands on the cave walls were created using the bone pipes in ‘negative’ style, that is, an indigenous native put paint inside the bone pipe and then put their left hand (90% of the hands are left) on the cave wall while holding the pipe in their right hand (as most people are right handed, this makes sense.) They would then blow on the pipe, throwing the paint over their right hand to create a stencil or silhouette of their hand. Sometimes they would paint the cave wall beforehand with one color, then stencil with another color – the results are very creative, and of course, colorful.

The colors used for painting the walls were made of different minerals found by the natives in sediments. The natives mixed these sediments with a binding substance (likely fat or blood but we do not know) and painted with it, using plaster to help the paint adhere to the cave walls. The color of red and purple were created from mixing iron oxide, the color white from kaolin, the color yellow from natrojarosite, and the color black from manganese oxide.

The artwork is divided into three main stylistic groups. Stylistic Group A is the oldest at 9,300 years before present. It includes scenes with guanaco, (which the natives got almost all their supplies from such as meat, fur, fat, bones for tools, and tendons for ropes) and other animals such as rhea and puma. There were many human figures shown hunting these animals, with the hunters drawn very small in size compared to the animals – likely a subtle indication of how important animals were to human survival.

Stylistic Group B is the second group of art around 7,000 years before present until 3,300 years before present. It is this group that created the hands stencils the cave is known for (including one 6 fingered hand, strangely, similar to a 6 fingered hand art image we saw in Brazil at Sete Cidades) along with stencils of rhea feet and puma paws. Some of the later art included zoomorphic and anthropomorphic drawings as well.   

Stylistic Group C is the youngest group of art which began around 1,300 years before present. It was dubbed by our guide as ‘modern art’ because of its style which included bright colors, geometric shapes, and repetitive patterns – dots, zigzags, and squiggles. A lot of these (especially the dot calendar) were similar to paintings we saw previously in Sete Cidades in Brazil, just like the 6 fingered hand! Strange…

In one section we pointed out a group of large red dots on the ceiling of the cave and asked her what they were. These images are possibly stars- which could have been made by artists throwing a hunting weapon called a boleadora at the ceiling, since the boleadora has circular stones on it.
 

Throughout the caves many of the artwork overlapped, and we could clearly see evidence of different ‘waves of art’ drawing around each other and sometimes over each other. It also looked like all members of the family participated in creating the art as some hands were much smaller than others and could only belong to children. An amazing piece of our human history!  

Since our Japanese friend had to catch his bus to Bariloche that evening at 6:00 pm, we had to book it back to Perito Moreno as soon as our tour was finished to ensure he didn’t miss it. Since Colin and I had decided to stay the night in Perito Moreno, we planned to get the 9:00 am bus to the border Los Antiguos, and cross into the Chilean one-horse town of Chile Chico, in the early afternoon. On to Chile!

Francesca