Serra da Capivara isn’t your typical national park. Though the nature here is certainly majestic with enormous boulders, a circular arch, cliffs covered in greenery, and hiking trails weaving through it all, there’s an even bigger draw than the great outdoors. The park is home to the oldest traces of art in the Americas.
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Monique Vidal Pires quotes UNESCO to explain that “over 300 archaeological sites have been found within the park, the majority consisting of rock and wall paintings dating from 50,000–30,000 years before present.” Thanks to carbon dating, scientists are having new debates about when people first settled in the Americas, since this area has potentially “revolutionized classical theories regarding the entry route into the Americas by human populations along the Bering Strait.”

There are tens of thousands of the rock paintings that visitors can see with the assistance of a guide, such as in Toca do Boqueirão da Pedra Furada and Desfiladero da Capivara, where you can also see the iconic hole-punch-shaped arch. Be sure to hike the Baixão da Pedra Furada Circuit, which passes impressive pillars of rock, canyons, a site with sherds of ancient pottery, and the location of an ancient bonfire that is the central carbon-dated evidence of scientific debates. All over the park, ladders and stairs could take you into depths that cavemen potentially lit with some of the first fires of American civilization.