Long before the Spanish colonised South America there was a rich and diverse indigenous population, hundreds of ethnic groups, each with their own language and culture.  The visible signs of these cultures and the artifacts they left behind can be referred to as Pre-Columbian art.

Whilst walking the hills and mountains of Argentina, on a really lucky day, we sometimes come across places such as this lovely valley nestled close to the Bolivian border. In this valley we found a huge boulder, on one side of which were etched Petroglyphs or rock carvings.

 

Even luckier still we sometimes find people who show us artifacts they have found.

 

Like this beautifully crafted head of a mace.

Or this stone axe head, both of which are deadly weapons and would have taken many weeks of hard painstaking work to make.

We like to imagine that somewhere in this green and fertile valley there is a cave where  all those thousands of years ago, people lived.

They would have hunted, slept, eaten, loved each other and spent time making these tools as well as painting sacred rocks with images that were important for them.

They really did live Wild in South America, we are just travellers passing through.