The European Southern Observatory owns several sites in South America like the Paranal Observatory where the VLT has been built, and La Silla Observatory. In the frame of the EROS collaboration, I stayed in La Silla for some "shifts" and at this occasion I took some pictures of rock engravings. A few millenia ago, the chillean desert of Atacama (where is located La Silla) was not a desert and people were living here. They left artworks on stones which are still visible nowadays. These prehistoric rock engravings bring to us touching evidences of ancestral human activity. I am proposing here some photos of these rocks. Nice explanations about La Silla archeology can be found here.

The map below shows the location of some stones: