Using 3-D digital technology, scientists were for the first time able to assemble a representation of 16,000 glyphs found on the ceiling of a cave in Alabama, including at least three images of humanoid beings, Business Insider reports.
The physical characteristics of the cave made it impossible to gauge the massive find: with the cave just three feet high in some locations–and no more than six feet high–the visual effect of the drawings could not be appreciated until a digital composite was assembled and the drawings could be artificially distanced from the viewer.
Photographers Stephen Alvarez and Alan Cressler worked with archeologist Jan Simek to take more than 16,000 photographs of the caves. “It took like years for my knees to recover. It’s just kneeling and stooping for hours and hours and hours in days and days and days on end,” said Alvarez, who had started photographing the glyphs in 1999.
The scale of the drawings astounded researchers. One of the drawings of a humanoid measured nearly six feet long. The figures of humanoids resemble drawings from a similar era–1,000 to 1,500 years ago–found in the American southwest.