( CNN ) -- The paintings and carvings have been scattered around the caves and bluff faces of the Cumberland Plateau for centuries , left behind by the ancestors of the Native American nations of the Southeast . Now a lengthy survey of the works indicates they 're all part of a pattern -- a sweeping , interrelated series that illustrates how the continent 's prehistoric inhabitants saw the universe and their place in it , University of Tennessee anthropologist Jan Simek said . `` What 's part interesting is it spans an area literally from the Kentucky line down into northern Alabama , '' Simek said . Most of them are between 500 and 900 years old , but radiocarbon dating indicates one painting of a hunter in east-central Tennessee was laid down 6,000 years ago . That would make it the oldest representation in North America known to date , he said . See also : Ancient Mayan pyramid destroyed for road fill . `` There is this cosmology being expressed ... and one of the things we 're trying to suggest is the composition has an enormous scale , '' he said . Simek and colleagues from the University of the South , the U.S. Geological Survey and Mississippi State University spent about a decade and a half documenting the rock art of the Cumberland Plateau , which slices across Tennessee between Chattanooga and Nashville . They found common themes , colors and depictions across the 94 sites , 50 of them underground . The aboveground works were drawn largely in red , a color associated with life , and tend to face to the south and west , away from the Appalachian Mountains . Why geologist tasted 2.6 billion year-old water . `` That 's looking into some of the most dramatic parts of the sky , especially in the spring and summer months , '' Simek said . `` And we know their relationship was such that they paid attention to celestial phenomena , but they also believed in a universe that was layered . '' Some of the images suggest an `` upper world , '' where forces of the weather and mythic representations of the sun and stars influenced human life . Those tended to be at higher elevations . Nearer the surface , `` middle world '' imagery featured people , animals and plants . New insight into ancient Americans . `` Very often some of the humans that are depicted outside of caves are doing otherworldly kinds of things , '' he said . `` Very often , their hands and feet are extended , and they have very elongated digits , as if they 're reaching out of the rock or into the rock . '' Many Native Americans believed boundaries between the spirit world and the natural were permeable , and things like rocks , trees and water sources -- including caves -- `` were places those boundaries could be crossed . '' Down in the caves , however , the paintings were `` characterized by darkness and danger , and was associated with death , transformation and renewal , '' scientists wrote . `` The art sites , predominantly found in caves , feature otherworldly characters , supernatural serpents and dogs that accompanied dead humans on the path of souls , '' they wrote . The images are largely painted in black , a color associated with death . `` There 's a small cave in the middle part of Tennessee , a very small cave that contains over 400 engraved images that are extraordinary , '' Simek told CNN . `` Some of them are tiny -- so small that if you did n't know how to look for them , you would never find them . '' Some of the images feature birds a half centimeter ( 1/5 of an inch ) long , Simek said -- yet when you look closely , `` You can see the wing feathers on them . '' The findings were published this week in the British-based scientific journal Antiquity . See also : Oil spill threatens Native American land .
Paintings and carvings stretch across Tennessee 's University of Tennessee . One of them dates back the spring and summer months , Cumberland Plateau researcher says . The images may be a composition of `` enormous scale , '' he says . They reflect a One -tiered view of the world by Many Native Americans of the Southeast .