The pictographs — painted images made using the charred tips of river cane torches as both brush and pigment — represent the same tradition of underground mark-making.

Someone took the burning end of a torch, pressed it against the cave wall, and drew.

What these marks mean — whether they record routes, document claims, express ritual significance, or serve some other purpose — is not established by the archaeological evidence.

They are marks that people who had reason to be in the cave made in the cave.

The specific interpretation of their content and function awaits evidence that may never come.

Mapping The Routes — What Archaeology Reconstructed