Most images appear to be strategically placed, usually within natural depressions, either cutting into the rock surface or in eroded hollows. Occasionally, the panel fills the whole length of the naturally formed rock-shelter or overhang. Each panel (or canvas) usually takes the form of a long linear block of images, arranged about 0.5m to 2m above the original floor, and extending some tens of metres long. This ‘perilous’ rock art tends to be painted in various shades of red using ochre (haematite), which naturally bleeds from the surrounding exposed rock outcropping though occasionally yellow (limonite) and grey pigments were also used. In ancient times, this inaccessibility must have heightened the importance of the sites, and indeed those who painted on the rocks. Prior to the area’s designation as a National Park, the rock art sites were difficult, and often dangerous to enter. This is where much of the recording and dating work has been undertaken and coordinated. The nearby town of Sao Raimundo Nonato is home to the scientific research centre and museum, The Fundaçäo Museu do Homem Americano (The Museum of American Man Foundation), founded in 1986 by French and Brazilian scientists. It is within these natural cathedral-like places that the rock art sites have been found. Hidden at the base of this giant massif is a series of rock shelters and overhangs. In geological terms, the sandstone massif was formed some 430 million years ago when it was a warm sea the sediments within the sandstone formed the seabed and the extensive pebble conglomerate deposit above it, representing a later overlying ancient beach. Within the hinterlands between the sandstone massif and the plateau is scrub forest, known as caatinga. This semi-arid landscape surrounds a dramatic upland massif of exposed and weathered Silurian sandstone, worn smooth first by water then by wind over geological time. The peripheral areas of the National Park comprise a flat, partially cultivated brushwood plateau known as Sertâo. Bhimbetka, set in the Vindhyan range of central India, is about ten. They were discovered and revealed to the world by V.S. It covers 129,140 hectares, and has at least 1,300 archaeological sites within its bounds, in addition to its diverse wildlife and outstanding geology. The Bhimbetka rock art sites that we saw next, about 45 kilometres south-east of Bhopal, have become famous: they are the ones that are always mentioned whenever Indian rock art is alluded to. The National Park of the Serra da Capivara in the state of Piauí, northeast Brazil, became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1991.

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