Thousand-Year-Old Sketches Mark Humanity's Transition from the Bow to the Hoe

Life-sized, towering, and even miniature figures sprawled across Horseshoe Canyon's "Great Gallery" have been found to be a lot younger than previously thought, placing them in a pivotal time in human history.

The Great Gallery's world-renowned rock art consists of carvings and paintings sketched along the red rock cliff of Canyonlands National Park. Through previous archeological studies, the rock art panel was originally dated back to the Late Archaic period - from 2000 BC to AD 500 - when nomadic hunter-gatherers made Horseshoe Canyon their seasonal home.

According to the National Park Service, the gallery is best known for panels depicting tapered, life-size figures, lacking arms and legs and frequently containing intricate designs characteristic of the Barrier Canyon style.

However, a team of researchers recently used modern luminescence dating techniques to analyze when the art actually went up, and were surprised at what they found.

According to the Associated Press (AP), the rock art was only created a mere 1,000 to 2,000 years ago - half the age of what was original thought.

That's exciting news for anthropology expert Steven Simms, who told the AP that the younger age of the paintings places them right around the time nomadic hunters were slowly transitioning to a more sedentary and agricultural lifestyle - explaining why these twisting and dry canyon homes were eventually abandoned.

"It puts it in a very momentous time," Simms said.

Studying this art with newly-opened eyes could also help reveal undiscovered secrets about Ancient Barrier Canyon style, which remains relatively mysterious compared to the short period of art from the Fremont and ancestral Puebloan cultures who briefly inhabited the region.

David Whitley, one of the foremost experts on rock art in North America, added that he's very excited that such scientific work was done to more concretely date this important art. He told the AP that scientists and art experts traditionally don't think much about working towards the same end, and anthropology suffers for it.

"I'm very happy they did this," he added.