An early mention of the Jolja' Cave is found in the 1939 Atlas of Chiapas, which notes a cave in the vicinity of Joloniel that contained pre-Columbian pottery and human skulls. The paintings of the cave were first brought to the attention of outsiders in 1961. In that year, Wilbur Aulie, a linguist and missionary working in the Tumbala region, learned of their existence from his Ch'ol friends. He and Trudy Blom visited the cave, and Blom photographed the paintings. In Aulie and Aulie's Ch'ol dictionary there are several references to Jolja' Cave that indicate it has had a long history of ritual use. Ten years later, Carlos Navarrete, Eduardo Martinez and Adolfo Munoz documented and mapped the cave. In a brief newspaper article they noted that several of the inscriptions had been damaged, but their report on the cave has not yet been published.