24/09/2026
"We have an image that looks like a lion, but in Puerto Rico, we don't have lions," said geophysicist Angel Acosta-Colón, describing a striking cave drawing his team dated to around 1500 CE using radiocarbon analysis on 61 pigment samples across 11 caves. His leading theory: it may have been painted by an enslaved African who'd actually seen a real lion before being forcibly brought to the island by the Spanish, potentially one of the earliest known examples of slave art on Puerto Rico's main island. The find is part of a much bigger picture the study uncovered, cave art spanning centuries, some pieces now believed to predate European colonization by thousands of years, upending long-accepted timelines about who lived on the island and when. Not everyone agrees on the lion theory though, fellow archaeologist Reniel Rodríguez Ramos suggests it could instead be a solar symbol, since similar imagery turns up at other Caribbean sites 👇
🔗 https://dailytopis.com/mysterious-drawing-of-a-lion-in-puerto-rican-cave-may-have-been-made-by-an-enslaved-african/
