🇪🇸 Spain · Rock art
Altamira Cave
Solutrean–Magdalenian ~18–14 ka BP · Solutrean/Magdalenian Cantabrian
Great Ceiling of polychrome bison — the Paleolithic Sistine Chapel at Santillana del Mar.
🇪🇸 Spain · Rock art
El Castillo Cave
Mousterian to Magdalenian ~150–11 ka BP · Neanderthal then Aurignacian to Magdalenian
Monte Castillo reference sequence cave with 40 ka red disks and 150 kyr stratigraphy.
🇮🇹 Italy · Rock art
Valcamonica Rock Engravings – Naquane National Park
Epipalaeolithic to modern with Iron Age peak · Camunni (Rhaetic-adjacent Alpine) and predecessors
140,000 figures on 2,000 Alpine slabs—world's densest European rock art valley (UNESCO 1979 No.1 Italy).
🇫🇷 France · Rock art
Lascaux Cave
Upper Paleolithic (Solutrean/Magdalenian, ~17,000–15,000 BCE) · Cro-Magnon hunter-gatherer (Magdalenian)
Sealed Upper Paleolithic cave on the Vézère renowned as the 'Sistine Chapel of Prehistory' for about 600 parietal paintings and nearly 1,500 engravings executed with astonishing naturalism.
🇿🇦 South Africa · Rock art
Drakensberg uKhahlamba Rock Art
Later Stone Age ~4000 BP–1800 CE · San (Bushman) hunter-gatherer
35,000 San paintings in 600 Drakensberg shelters - shamanic eland dance archive.
🇦🇷 Argentina · Rock art
Cueva de las Manos
Early Holocene to late Patagonia (~9300 BCE – 700 CE) · Patagonian hunter-gatherer (Tehuelche ancestors)
Canyon sandstone cave whose walls retain over 800 negative hand stencils made by spraying pigment through bone pipes around hands, interspersed with guanaco hunts, bola weapons and geometric discs.
🇪🇸 Spain · Rock art
La Pasiega Cave
Middle Paleolithic to Magdalenian ~64–11 ka BP · Neanderthal and later Solutrean/Magdalenian
Monte Castillo cave with 64 ka Neanderthal ladder motif and 700 parietal figures.
🇲🇳 Mongolia · Rock art
Tsagaan Salaa North — Bayan-Ölgii Baga Oigor Panels
Upper Palaeolithic to Medieval · Palaeolithic Altai, Afanasievo, Chemurchek, Turkic
North bank of Tsagaan Salaa-Baga Oigor UNESCO valley, 7000 petroglyphs including 12000 BCE mammoth-hunt.
🇦🇿 Azerbaijan · Rock art
Gobustan Kichikdash South Petroglyphs
Upper Palaeolithic to Iron Age · Gobustan hunters, Kura-Araxes, Classical (Roman contact)
South slope of Kichikdash with 1100 boat and aurochs hunt cupule petroglyphs.
🇹🇩 Chad · Rock art
Ennedi Plateau & Niola Doa Rock Art
Neolithic to Islamic (6000 BCE–16th c CE) · Saharan herders (Bovid, Horse, Camel groups)
600-km Saharan massif with Niola Doa 200-m cattle-horse frieze and 3,000 images 6th millennium–16th c.
🇪🇸 Spain · Rock art
Siega Verde Rock Art
Gravettian to Magdalenian ~20–11 ka BP · Upper Paleolithic Iberian
2 km open-air schist engravings paired with Côa Valley, 443 Paleolithic pecked figures.
🇩🇿 Algeria · Archaeological wonder
Tassili n'Ajjer
Epipaleolithic to Late Pastoral (c.8000 BCE–1000 CE; major painting phases Round Head 6000 BCE–5000 BCE, Pastoral 4500–2000 BCE) · Kel Tamasheq predecessor hunter-gatherer / Pastoral Neolithic / Garamantes
72,000 km² sandstone plateau with one of world's largest rock art concentrations: 15,000 engravings and paintings spanning 6000 BCE–first centuries CE – Bubalus, Round Head (10,000–6000 BCE,…
🇨🇳 China · Rock art
Zuojiang Huashan Ningming — Luoyue Serpent Cliff
Warring States to Eastern Han (403 BCE – 220 CE) · Luoyue (proto-Zhuang) Boyue culture
Serpent-bend cliff with dragon and drum motifs 8 km upstream from main panel.
🇪🇸 Spain · Rock art
Siega Verde Rock Engravings – Águeda River
Upper Palaeolithic (Solutrean–Magdalenian) · Solutrean–Magdalenian hunter-gatherers of western Iberia
443 Palaeolithic figures on Águeda schist—UNESCO trans-frontier extension of Côa Valley (20–10k BCE).
🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia · Rock art
Jubbah Rock Art – Jebel Umm Sinman
Holocene: Neolithic to Bronze Age to Thamudic · Successive Arabian Holocene cultures (hunter-herder to caravaneer)
10,000-year petroglyph palimpsest at Jebel Umm Sinman—UNESCO rock art on a vanished lake shore.
🇸🇪 Sweden · Megalith
Tanum Rock Carvings (Hällristningar Tanum)
Bronze Age · Nordic Bronze Age (Bohuslän rock art tradition)
UNESCO Bohuslän rock art — 600 panels / 2500 pecked figures (ships, sun, ploughs) on granite, 1700–500 BCE.
🇧🇷 Brazil · Rock art
Pedra Furada Rock Art
Pleistocene to Early Holocene · Nordeste Tradition (early Amerind)
Capivara arch shelter heart of 1,150-painting Nordeste tradition with pre-Clovis debate hearths.
🇦🇺 Australia · Rock art
Ubirr Rock Art
Late Pleistocene to present (~4000 BCE – contemporary) · Bininj/Mungguy (Aboriginal Australian)
Five main sandstone galleries on the Nadab floodplain edge of the Arnhem escarpment display the classic X-ray style: translucent kangaroo, emu, long-necked turtles and thylacine (Tasmanian tiger)…
🇧🇷 Brazil · Rock art
Serra da Capivara Rock Art
Upper Paleolithic to early Holocene (~25,000 BCE – 2000 BCE disputed; art ~9000 BCE onward) · Paleoindian / early Nordeste tradition; Pedra Furada phase
Semiarid caatinga plateau with over 400 painted shelters bearing perhaps 30,000 figures, among the densest and most narrative rock-art landscapes in the Americas.
🇳🇴 Norway · Rock art
Alta Rock Art
Late Stone Age to Early Iron Age (~7000 BCE – 0 CE) · Finnmark hunter-gatherer/fisher to early Sami ancestors
Northern Europe's largest petroglyph field preserves some 6,000 carved figures along the Alta Fjord raised shorelines, tracking post-glacial rebound chronology.
🇳🇦 Namibia · Rock art
Twyfelfontein Rock Engravings
Late Stone Age to early pastoral (6000 BCE – 1000 CE) · San hunter-gatherer (Ju/'hoansi ancestors)
Namibia's sole UNESCO World Heritage site besides Brandberg, Twyfelfontein holds over 2,500 engravings pecked into a 600-m sandstone outcrop of Etjo formation.
🇰🇿 Kazakhstan · Rock art
Tamgaly Kungei Ridge Sanctuary — Aiyrtau Sun Shrine
Bronze Age to Turkic (1400 BCE – 800 CE) · Andronovo to Saka to Turkic
Ridgetop with shaman drum and deer-headdress plus Saka kurgans.
🇨🇳 China · Rock art
Zuojiang Huashan West Chongzuo Rock Art
Bronze Age to Han · Luoyue / Lạc Việt (ancient Zhuang ancestors), Dian periphery
West bank cliff opposite main Hua Mountain with bronze-drum anthropomorph sequence.
🇯🇴 Jordan · Rock art
Wadi Rum Petroglyphs and Thamudic Inscriptions
Neolithic to Islamic (Thamudic–Nabataean–Islamic) · Neolithic pastoralists, Thamudic tribes, Nabataean caravan masters, early Arabs
Wadi Rum desert cliffs with 25,000 petroglyphs and Thamudic texts, UNESCO landscape.