Cueva de las Manos, Patagonia

Hundreds of human hands stencilled on the rock of a Patagonian canyon, layer over layer, the oldest of them nine thousand years old. The people who made them held a hand flat to the wall and blew pigment through a hollow bone, so every one is a negative, the space where somebody stood. Around them are guanacos, hunting scenes and geometry. The colours are minerals: iron oxide for red and purple, kaolin for white, natrojarosite yellow, manganese black, copper oxide green. The work runs from about 7,300 BC to AD 700, which is roughly eight thousand years of people returning to the same wall. A National Historic Monument since 1993 and UNESCO World Heritage since 1999, in Santa Cruz province 163 km south of Perito Moreno. PUBLIC, guided.