About one kilometre to the southwest of the Marwateri cave is the famous Isco rock paintings brought to international attention by me in l99l. Over one hundred feet in length this mammoth rock art ( 15 'x 18.7'; 15' x 14.10'; 15' x 16.10'; 15' x 8.10'), in four separate interconnected sections resembling the hook of a cobra is called kohbara by the local Munda tribals and Oraon tribals whose mud houses come right up to within a few hundred yards of it. Located deep in a cleft of a sandstone sheet several hundred yards wide and over a kilometre in length the kohbara divides the jungle from the village. The rock art has been dated by the leading expert on India's prehistoric rock art, Dr.Erwin Neumayer of Vienna, to the meso-chalcolithic period or in his dating as I understand it, the period between the appearance of microliths technology on the one hand and the appearance of copper on the other, so it is anywhere between 7,000 and 4000 BC.

In Isco, microliths of the  Vindhyan type, the socalled “surgical microliths” have been found in large numbers, including hammer stones and core stones. In the  floor of the cave a finely polished neolithic celt was picked up by my wife Philomena, an Oraon tribal from the jungle village of Dato. This , as well as other shouldered celts in the region have been consistent with the straight shouldered form of the Timor-Australia group identified by Heine-Geldern during the ‘Fifties as an inter-connected type. Isco isalso a site from which copper objects have been found during rice cultivation, and the houses are in some instances located on deep iron slag beds. In the hills near the village (three kilometers southwest of the village) are huge mines gouged into the hills, reminiscent of the Bargunda copper mines sixty-five kilometers to the east, which are India’s oldest copper mines). Even till today a rich copper smelting tradition and production of copper figurines continues in these jungle villages with the unique copper work of the Malar tribe. This complex of copper figurines and their sacred representations continues from the Hazaribagh plateau and Damodar valley to the hill ranges of Bastar in Chhatisgarh. It is the pre-Harappan copper smelting culture of India, standing on a Neolithic, as well as earlier Mesolithic and palaeolithic bases. The cultural and sacred history of India springs in the fountainhead of these two most threatened tribal regions of modern India. Copper objects retrieved from Isco were handed over by me to the Bihar Archaeology Department (P.C.Prasad,Director,l992) .Isco has been described by Dr.Neumayer as the oldest, most perfect example of prehistoric rock art in eastern India .Throughout the area a bright red pottery, some with traces of hand coiling, have been found. In the hills about Isco a pebbled shoreline is suggested, with support from similar levels dozens of kilometers across the valley, hinting at a large glacial period lake, and here pebble single and biface choppers have been found. At the uppermost level, on the plateau, huge handaxes and pebble choppers have been found at Chapri, while a  wonderful series of flake tools have been found in the Dudhi Nala, a small cataract  flowing to the east. Today, the entire region has become famous for the painted houses of the  Kurmi and Ganju tribals which have been traced to their origin in the sacred tradition of the rock paintings

Isco presents a petroglyph of a rhinoceros (extinct here for 200 years), the bull and “wild” cattle, stylized human figures, cryptic writing in pictograms as well as forms of script still undeciphered, mandalas, concentric circles, sun, yoni, rainbow serpent, votive designs and patterns still used in the art of the local tribals.