Rock Paintings of Sierra de San Francisco
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How it came to be
The Sierra de San Francisco is a range in Baja California Sur, Mexico, inside the El Vizcaíno Biosphere Reserve, where prehistoric paintings cover the walls and ceilings of rock shelters in the ravines. According to UNESCO, they were made by a people who lived here from about 100 BCE to 1300 CE and have since disappeared.
The paintings survive at more than 250 sites and show people and many animals, among them deer, rabbits, pumas, whales, turtles and pelicans, often larger than life. The dry climate and the remoteness of the shelters have kept them in remarkable condition. The area lies in Cochimí territory; 18th-century Jesuit missionaries recorded the paintings, but the Cochimí told them they had not made them, and a tradition that giants painted them was also noted.
Mexico declared El Vizcaíno a biosphere reserve in 1988, bringing the 183,956-hectare Sierra de San Francisco area under federal protection. The rock paintings were nominated in 1989 and inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1993.
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