Great Mural Rock Art consists of prehistoric paintings of humans and animals, often larger than life-size, on the walls and ceilings of natural rock shelters in the mountains of northern Baja California Sur

Baja California Sur

Baja California Sur , is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. Before becoming a state on October 8, 1974, the area was known as the South Territory of Baja California. It has an area of , or 3.57% of the land mass of Mexico and comprises...

 and southern Baja California

Baja California

Baja California officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is both the northernmost and westernmost state of Mexico. Before becoming a state in 1953, the area was known as the North...

, Mexico. This group of monuments comprises the site Rock Paintings of Sierra de San Francisco

Rock Paintings of Sierra de San Francisco

The Rock Paintings of Sierra de San Francisco is the name of the prehistoric rock art pictographs found in the Sierra de San Francisco region of Baja California Sur, Mexico.-History:...

, which is included on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Characteristics

The rock art

Rock art

Rock art is a term used in archaeology for any human-made markings made on natural stone. They can be divided into:*Petroglyphs - carvings into stone surfaces*Pictographs - rock and cave paintings...

 may be either monochrome or polychrome. Red and black were the colors most frequently used, but white, pink, orange, and green also occur.

The most common figures are humans and deer, but a variety of other animals, such as rabbits, bighorn sheep, birds, fish, and snakes are also represented. The human images often include stylized headdresses. A minority of human images are shown with sexual characteristics, such as male genitalia or female breasts. A minority of human and animal images are overlain with depictions of projectiles (presumably arrows or atlatl

Atlatl

An atlatl or spear-thrower is a tool that uses leverage to achieve greater velocity in dart-throwing.It consists of a shaft with a cup or a spur at the end that supports and propels the butt of the dart. The atlatl is held in one hand, gripped near the end farthest from the cup...

 darts

Dart (missile)

Darts are missile weapons, designed to fly such that a sharp, often weighted point will strike first. They can be distinguished from javelins by fletching and a shaft that is shorter and/or more flexible, and from arrows by the fact that they are not of the right length to use with a normal...

).

The images are essentially silhouettes, without representational details inside their outlines. Instead, geometrical patterns such as stripes or bands of different colors are used. A dorsal/ventral (front-facing) perspective is employed for humans, turtles, birds, and most fish, while a lateral perspective is used for deer and most other animals.

Overpainting of earlier by later images is very common. Some murals seem to show intentional composition in their arrangements of multiple images, but in many cases the figures seem to have been painted individually, without regard to other nearby (or underlying) images.

Distribution

The Great Murals occur in the sierras of Guadalupe, San Francisco, San Juan, and San Borja in the central part of the Baja California peninsula. To the north and south their place is taken by other, less spectacular rock art styles. Within the Great Mural area as well, pictographs and petroglyph

Petroglyph

Petroglyphs are pictogram and logogram images created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, and abrading. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions of the technique to refer to such images...

s belonging to other styles are present.

The Great Murals lie within the ethnohistoric territory of the Cochimí

Cochimi

The Cochimí are the aboriginal inhabitants of the central part of the Baja California peninsula, from El Rosario in the north to San Javier in the south....

, and they have been commonly linked with the late prehistoric Comondú Complex

Comondú Complex

The Comondú Complex is an archaeological pattern dating from the late prehistoric period in northern Baja California Sur and southern Baja California. It is associated with the historic Cochimí people of the peninsula....

, although the Cochimí denied to eighteenth-century Jesuit

Society of Jesus

The Society of Jesus is a Catholic male religious order that follows the teachings of the Catholic Church. The members are called Jesuits, and are also known colloquially as "God's Army" and as "The Company," these being references to founder Ignatius of Loyola's military background and a...

 missionaries that they were responsible for the paintings. Recent radiocarbon

Radiocarbon dating

Radiocarbon dating is a radiometric dating method that uses the naturally occurring radioisotope carbon-14 to estimate the age of carbon-bearing materials up to about 58,000 to 62,000 years. Raw, i.e. uncalibrated, radiocarbon ages are usually reported in radiocarbon years "Before Present" ,...

 studies, both on materials recovered from archaeological deposits in the rockshelters and on materials in the paintings themselves, have suggested that the Great Murals may have a time range extending as far back as 7,500 years ago.

Interpretations

No consensus exists about the motivations that led to the painting of the Great Murals. Among the contexts suggested for their production have been hunting magic, warfare, shamans' traces, weather control, and ancestor veneration.

Studies

The existence of the Great Murals was noted by Jesuit missionaries in the eighteenth century. The first scientific studies were made between 1889 and 1913 by a French chemist, Léon Diguet. Mexican journalist Fernando Jordan and archaeologists Barbro Dahlgren and Javier Romero reported on Great Mural sites in the early 1950s.

The Great Murals came to popular attention in the United States through a 1962 Life magazine article by mystery writer Erle Stanley Gardner

Erle Stanley Gardner

Erle Stanley Gardner was an American lawyer and author of detective stories, best known for the Perry Mason series, he also published under the pseudonyms A.A. Fair, Kyle Corning, Charles M. Green, Carleton Kendrake, Charles J...

. Since then, numerous investigators have documented and analyzed the sites. Particularly notable have been the extensive contributions from Clement W. Meighan, Campbell Grant, Harry W. Crosby

Harry W. Crosby

Harry W. Crosby is an American historian and photographer. His parents moved to La Jolla in 1935. He graduated from La Jolla High in 1944, and studied math and science at Occidental College in Los Angeles, completing a double major, pre-med, and psychology...

, Enrique Hambleton, Justin R. Hyland, and María de la Luz Gutiérrez.