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Painted Rock

This view is looking west toward Painted Rock toward an alcove that is home to a variety of prehistoric rock art and other natural features.

The earliest known inhabitants of the Carrizo Plain area were an aboriginal population many thousands of years ago. Sometime between 500 to 1000 years ago, a sophisticated native population flourished and produced most of the distinctive rock art at Painted Rock and elsewhere in the region. The early cultures that used the Carrizo Plain were surely affected by great earthquakes, and may have even departed because of one. The Chumash, Yokot, and other coastal and inland Native American tribes gathered seeds and nuts and hunted animals attracted to the Carrizo Plain in wet times and traded in the area.

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