They look like aliens. On the stone cliffs of the Amazon discovered drawings of amazing animals and mysterious inscriptions

Deep inside the Amazon rainforest, prehistoric wall paintings have been found. They depict animal-human hybrids and alien-like creatures.

This slate from the rock walls of Cerro Azul Hill is believed to date back as far as 10,500 BC. However, the art has not yet been formally dated, The Sun writes.

According to a new study conducted by the University of Exeter in collaboration with other schools, the Colombian Amazon contains some of the "richest" rock art collections in the world.

The red ochre drawings depict deer, birds, lizards, turtles, tapirs and other animals. Although some animals have human features, such as penises, and stand on their hind legs with their arms spread out in human form.

"Penises often depicted on human figures are virtually absent on animal figures. However, the only examples of penises on animal figures are on potential therianthropes that include both human and animal components," the researchers noted in their study.

Therianthropes refer to shape-shifting animal humans, which are common concepts in mythology and folklore.

These types of hybrid images were common in the Amazon, especially at Cerro Azul Hill, where the researchers excavated. Images of bird-men were found near Las Dantas, as well as lizards with human heads at Currunchez.

Drawings of bird-plant-human and deer-human hybrids have also been found in Principal.

And engravings of sloths were found in Demoledores, while an unknown four-legged creature with a tail and penis was found in Reserva.

"They certainly offer more nuance to our understanding of the power of myths in indigenous communities. These drawings are particularly revealing when it comes to the more cosmological aspects of Amazonian life, such as what was considered taboo, where power was held and how negotiations with supernatural forces were conducted," Jose Iriarte, an Exeter professor who worked on the study, said in a statement.

Researchers found animal remains nearby and compared them to the drawings, finding that the artists didn't just draw what they ate. There were plenty of fish remains nearby, but they appear in the painting. Big cats, which would have been plentiful in the rainforest, were also absent from the drawings.

Although researchers speculate that these ancient people did not get close enough to predators to depict them on a regular basis.

The researchers noted that the shamans and elders of local communities, whose job it was to classify and catalog flora and fauna, had an "ambiguous" and "constant" categorization of animals and people. This is what may have led to supernatural transformations of people and animals in art.

"These rock art monuments contain the oldest evidence of human existence in the western Amazon, dating back 12,500 years ago," added Dr. Mark Robinson, Associate Professor of Archaeology at the Department of Archaeology and History of Exeter.

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