Rock Art, Cave painting, Great Murals

The images are essentially silhouettes, without representational details inside their outlines. Instead, geometrical patterns such as stripes or bands of different colors are used. A dorsal/ventral (front-facing) perspective is employed for humans, turtles, birds, and most fish, while a lateral perspective is used for deer and most other animals.

The Great Murals occur in the sierras of Guadalupe, San Francisco, San Juan, and San Borja in the central part of the Baja California peninsula. To the north and south their place is taken by other, less spectacular rock art styles. Within the Great Mural area as well, pictographs and petroglyphs belonging to other styles are present.

The Great Murals lie within the ethnohistoric territory of the Cochimí, and they have been commonly linked with the late prehistoric Comondú Complex, although the Cochimí denied to eighteenth-century Jesuit missionaries that they were responsible for the paintings. Recent radiocarbon studies, both on materials recovered from archaeological deposits in the rockshelters and on materials in the paintings themselves, have suggested that the Great Murals may have a time range extending as far back as 7,500 years ago.