Cueva de las Manos: The Cave of the Hands in Patagonia

Cueva de las Manos, Spanish for “Cave of the Hands”, is a rock art site in the Río Pinturas canyon of Argentine Patagonia, famous for hundreds of hand stencils in red, black, white and yellow. Hunter-gatherers painted its walls over an exceptionally long period, from about 9,300 to about 1,300 years ago, adding hunting scenes of guanaco and many abstract motifs. It was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1999 and is one of the most important prehistoric sites in South America.

Background: people in Patagonia

Patagonia, the southern tip of South America, was among the last regions of the world to be settled by people. Humans had reached South America by at least 14,500 years ago, as shown by sites such as Monte Verde in Chile, and spread south as the glaciers of the last Ice Age retreated. The broader story is told in our article on the peopling of the Americas.

The Patagonian steppe is dry, windy and cold, but it supported large herds of guanaco, a wild relative of the llama, and rheas, large flightless birds. Hunter-gatherers depended on these animals for meat, hides, sinew and bone. They moved through the landscape seasonally and sheltered in caves and rock overhangs.

The site

The Río Pinturas, whose name means “River of Paintings”, has cut a deep canyon into the volcanic rock of the plateau. Cueva de las Manos lies high on one side of the canyon, in Santa Cruz Province, south of the town of Perito Moreno.

The site includes a main cave about 24 metres deep, with an entrance roughly 15 metres wide and 10 metres high, and a series of rock overhangs, or aleros, along the cliff face. Paintings cover the walls of the cave and the rock faces outside it. The cave itself was also used as a living and working place, and excavations in its floor have recovered stone tools, animal bones and pigment remains.

Discovery and research

Local people knew of the paintings, and they were described in print in the 1940s, notably by the Salesian missionary and explorer Alberto María de Agostini. Scientific research began in earnest in the 1960s and 1970s under the Argentine archaeologist Carlos J. Gradin, working with Carlos A. Aschero and Ana M. Aguerre.

Their excavations and detailed recording of the paintings established a sequence of styles and linked them to dated layers of occupation. Their publications in the 1970s and 1980s remain the foundation of what is known about the site.

The hand stencils

The most famous images are the hands. Most are negative stencils: the painter placed a hand on the rock and sprayed pigment around it, leaving the outline of the hand in bare rock surrounded by colour. Some positive prints, made by pressing a painted hand onto the wall, also exist.

Counts vary, but researchers have recorded well over 800 hand images. The large majority are left hands, which suggests that painters usually held the spraying tool in the right hand. Many hands seem to belong to adolescents, judging by their size, and some researchers link them to initiation rites, although this is speculation.

Pigments and technique

The pigments were made from local minerals. Red, purple and yellow came from iron oxides, white from kaolin, and black from manganese oxide. These were ground and mixed with a liquid binder.

Remains of bone tubes found at the site may have been used to spray paint by blowing. Painters may also have taken pigment into their mouths and spat it at the wall, a method recorded among rock artists elsewhere. Overlapping stencils show that hands were added repeatedly over long periods.

Hunting scenes and other images

Alongside the hands are scenes of guanaco hunting. These show groups of guanaco, sometimes pregnant females, being surrounded or driven by human figures, who use throwing weapons such as bolas, a set of weighted cords thrown to entangle an animal’s legs. Some scenes suggest coordinated hunts, with animals being encircled or driven towards hunters.

The hunting scenes are among the oldest and most admired paintings at the site. The animals are shown with lively, curving outlines, and the artists captured details such as the long necks, slender legs and rounded bellies of the guanaco. Some panels contain dozens of animals, and the overlapping figures suggest that they were added over time rather than painted as a single composition.

Archaeologists have used these scenes to study prehistoric hunting methods. Bones from the excavated layers confirm that guanaco were by far the most important prey, with rheas also eaten. The scenes may record real hunting strategies, or they may have had a ritual purpose connected with ensuring successful hunts.

Other motifs include rheas, human figures, feline-like animals, and many geometric designs such as zigzags, dots, lines, spirals and sun-like circles. The later phases of painting are dominated by these abstract patterns.

A long sequence of styles

Gradin and his colleagues divided the art into stylistic groups, linked to the dated layers of the cave. Their dating was based on radiocarbon results from the excavated deposits rather than on the paintings themselves.

The earliest group, associated with dates of around 9,300 radiocarbon years ago, consists mainly of naturalistic hunting scenes with guanaco and human figures, often in dynamic poses. A later group, from several thousand years later, shows more stylised guanaco and many of the hand stencils. The latest group, ending around 1,300 years ago, is dominated by geometric designs and red-painted motifs.

Researchers continue to refine this sequence. Pigments are difficult to date directly, and some scholars argue that hand stencils were made through much of the site’s history rather than in one phase.

By the numbers

Life in the canyon

The excavated deposits in the cave show that it was not only a place for painting. People made and repaired stone tools there, butchered animals and lit fires. Scrapers used for working hides are common, reflecting the importance of guanaco skins for clothing and shelters in the harsh Patagonian climate.

The canyon itself offered shelter from the strong westerly winds, as well as water and grazing that attracted guanaco. Over thousands of years, the groups who used the site would have moved between the canyon and the open steppe according to the seasons and the movements of the herds.

Around Cueva de las Manos, many other painted shelters are known along the Río Pinturas and in the wider region. Together they show that rock art was a widespread practice among Patagonian hunter-gatherers, and that Cueva de las Manos was one especially important place within a much larger painted landscape.

Protection, status and comparisons

Cueva de las Manos was declared a National Historic Monument of Argentina in 1993. In 1999 UNESCO inscribed it on the World Heritage List as “Cueva de las Manos, Río Pinturas”, citing it as an exceptional testimony to the culture of the earliest hunter-gatherer societies of South America.

The site has suffered some damage from visitors, including graffiti, and from natural weathering. Today visits are made on guided walks along a fenced path, and a visitor centre provides information. Its remoteness has helped protect it, but tourism to Patagonia has increased pressure on the site.

Comparisons around the world

Hand stencils are among the most widespread forms of rock art, found in Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa. Some of the oldest are in caves such as Cueva de El Castillo in Spain and in Sulawesi in Indonesia, where stencils date back tens of thousands of years.

Cueva de las Manos is younger than these, but it stands out for its density of hands, its well-preserved hunting scenes and its very long span of use. Hand stencils also appear at other sites in Patagonia and elsewhere in South America, showing that the practice was widespread on the continent, but few places preserve so many in a single setting. It shows a single place being returned to and painted for some 8,000 years.

Timeline

• By c. 14,500 years ago: People are present in southern South America.
• c. 9,300 years ago: Earliest dated occupation layers at the site; naturalistic guanaco hunting scenes are linked to this phase.
• c. 9,000-3,000 years ago: Hand stencils and stylised guanaco figures are added over a long period.
• c. 1,300 years ago: Last major phase of painting, dominated by geometric designs.
• 1940s: The paintings are described in print, notably by Alberto María de Agostini.
• 1960s-1970s: Carlos J. Gradin and colleagues begin systematic research.
• 1993: Declared a National Historic Monument of Argentina.
• 1999: Inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Why it matters

Cueva de las Manos is one of the clearest records of how early hunter-gatherers in the Americas lived, hunted and expressed themselves. Its hands, left by many individuals over thousands of years, are a direct and personal trace of people who otherwise left no written record.