It’s unavoidable that you’ll have some nonzero rate of copying errors. But there are mathematical tricks (most of them fairly simple) you can use to get that rate as arbitrarily low as you like, at very low cost. And even petroglyphs have some unavoidable failure rate: What if your cave collapses in an earthquake, or is flooded with water that corrodes away the rock?
found out, just now, the above mentioned documentary was hosted on discovery’s science-channel series “what on earth” … specific episode being “secret of doomsday mountain”.