Hyperspectral scans pulled a three-eyed figure out of two faded cave walls in Xinjiang

Two natural caves at Tangbaletasi, in the Altai Mountains of Xinjiang, hold 19 identifiable figures in the first chamber and 51 painted compositions in the second. Researchers working there used hyperspectral imaging to read pigment that the naked eye can barely register, and the results stretch from the Bronze Age to the Mongol-ruled Yuan era. Among the images is a bearded, three-eyed figure that the study leaves unexplained. The work makes Tangbaletasi a rare place where several thousand years of ritual activity can be read from a few walls of painted rock, and it shows how much a faded surface can still say once the right camera is pointed at it.

Tangbaletasi: Two Caves, 19 Figures and 51 Compositions

The site sits in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, about 70 kilometres from Fuyun County, and consists of two natural caves labelled C1 and C2. C1 held 19 identifiable figures and C2 held 51 compositions.

According to HeritageDaily’s report of October 2026 on the work, C1 yielded 19 identifiable figures, among them a three-eyed anthropomorphic face, a bell-shaped figure and several geometric motifs. C2 produced 51 compositions, including horned human-like figures, X-shaped symbols and animals. The counts belong to separate caves, so they are not one site total, and they come from a study published in npj Heritage Science under DOI 10.1038/s40494-026-02433-7. About 100 metres from the caves stands a circular stone burial mound roughly 10 metres across, though the report says its relationship to the paintings has not been established. The report does not name the research team or its institutions, so no individual scientist is quoted here. That gap matters for readers weighing the claims, because the interpretations below come from the study as summarised by a secondary outlet, and the full paper is the place to check any specific attribution, measurement or pigment result before citing it elsewhere.

What Hyperspectral Imaging Recovers From Weathered Rock

Hyperspectral imaging records a scene across many narrow bands of light rather than the three a conventional camera uses, which lets analysts separate faint mineral pigments from the stone beneath them. At Tangbaletasi the technique revealed two previously invisible motifs, according to the HeritageDaily summary. The count of 19 and 51 therefore describes identifiable figures documented across both caves, while the scans themselves are credited with the two newly visible motifs.

The team did not rely on imaging alone. Iconographic comparisons, historical records and comparisons with rock art from Mongolia and the wider Altai region all fed the interpretation, and the analysis of overlapping pigments was used to establish which paintings came first. Where one layer of paint lies across another, the lower layer is older, and that simple rule is what lets a faded wall be read as a sequence rather than a single scene. Differences in pigment composition also matter: the report says they suggest the Buddhist imagery was added in several separate periods instead of one campaign, though it names no specific pigment types. Each of those findings rests on comparison, and none of them depends on a single dramatic image.

From the Chemurchek Culture to Yuan-Era Tibetan Buddhism

The oldest images may be tied to the Chemurchek culture, which emerged in the third millennium BC. Some of the human-like figures also resemble imagery attributed to the Karakol, Okunev and Samus cultures, all Bronze Age comparisons drawn from elsewhere in Inner Asia. The later layer includes inscriptions in Tibetan script and a crossed vajra symbol. The Tibetan Buddhist motifs may date to the Yuan dynasty, AD 1271 to 1368, when Tibetan Buddhism spread across Inner Asia under Mongol imperial patronage.

That span, from roughly the third millennium BC to the 14th century AD, is the central finding. The study concludes that Tangbaletasi was “repeatedly used by different communities,” with later generations adding imagery alongside earlier paintings and producing layered artistic traditions rather than a single episode of decoration. In practice that means the walls work less like one artwork and more like a long, shared notebook kept by people who never met.

Groups of horned figures arranged around X-shaped symbols may depict collective rituals rather than everyday scenes, the report says. That reading is an interpretation of arrangement and context, with no written record to confirm it, and the evidence available so far does not tie any single scene to a named ceremony.

The Bearded Three-Eyed Figure Nobody Can Place

The image that drew the most attention is a bearded figure with three eyes and radiating lines extending from its head. Similar representations appear across Central Asia and southern Siberia, where they have sometimes been linked to shamanic traditions. The researchers say its precise meaning “remains uncertain.” Its weathered look suggests it predates the Tibetan Buddhist imagery, which would place it among the earlier phases of use at the caves. That ordering is a judgment drawn from the condition of the paint, not a laboratory date, and the report presents it as a suggestion.

One caution applies to the wording of the story. The HeritageDaily summary does not clarify whether the bearded figure is the same image as the three-eyed face listed among the 19 figures in C1, and it does not say the scans alone brought this figure into view. Only two motifs are described as previously invisible.

For now the cave walls offer a long chronology, a set of cross-regional comparisons and one face that resists a confident label. Further comparison with Altai and Mongolian rock art is the route the researchers took, and it is the one that could eventually narrow the figure’s meaning. Until then the image stands as a reminder of how many communities passed through these caves, each leaving marks that later visitors painted beside, and sometimes over, without erasing what came first.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

More from Morning Overview