SHAMANISM AND ROCK ART - REVISITED:

A Siberian shaman. Illustration from behance.net.

I am taking the opportunity to revisit the subject of ‘shamanism’ in rock art because it seems that more and more references to shamanism can be found in books and articles about rock art.

I once had an opportunity to attend a lecture by the great Joseph Campbell, author of so many books on mythology and belief systems. Campbell believed that similarities in myths were of much greater significance than differences, so he had no trouble equating myths from different sides of the globe. At this particular lecture he explained the significance of the dying man/wounded bison panel from the chimney at Lascaux Cave in France in terms of  Australian Aboriginal belief. To my way of thinking this goes way too far afield. These cultures were separated by tens of thousands of years and thousands of miles, with no apparent possibility of reciprocal influencing.

My example from the Campbell lecture is indicative of a problem that I see cropping up all too frequently in rock art studies. The shamanic or neuropsychological model for explaining rock art has become such a fad explanation that it is hard to find people giving credence to any other possibilities. As far as trancing and/or entoptics influencing rock art I really do not need a trance hallucination or entoptic vision to inspire the images I make. Once the pigments or hammerstones are picked up in front of a rock face there are only so many things I can do with them. Trying to reproduce an image from life or create a geometric shape needs no artificial stimuli. There are only so many geometric shapes available, and a reproduction of a living being is inspired by the being itself. To attribute these to anything else is nonsense.

An understandable, but biased interpretation of rock art is found in the tendency of the viewer to attempt to define what they are viewing on the basis of what has been successfully applied to interpretations in the past. An example of this is seen in the case of David Lewis-Williams whose early work with interpreting South African rock art in light of San bushman shamanism so impressed the rest of the rock art community. Since that early success Lewis-Williams seems unable to consider any other possible interpretation no matter what the conditions or location the rock art is found in, or what age it is from. An early success of intellectual application that was thought to approach the genius level seems to have led him to the status of a one-trick pony.

I suggest that Lewis-Williams made the mistake of taking the wrong message away from his earlier work. Instead of learning the lesson that he had succeeded by a rigorous application of reasoning based upon knowledge of ethnographic material for the San people of Africa, he seems to have come away with the message that “shamanism” was the correct answer so it would always be the correct answer. In other words he seems to have subsequently used his mental abilities, knowledge, and reason, to fit other rock art into his shamanic framework instead of using those same gifts and abilities to find a unique answer that would fit the unique conditions of the rock art he was appraising.

“Throughout the book by Clottes and Lewis-Williams, possibilities are presented as ‘evidence’, then used as building blocks for speculation that magically acquires the status of ‘fact’ (Bahn 1997). This is a crucial problem for, in the words of Carl Sagan, if we become ‘self-indulgent and uncritical, when we confuse hopes and facts, we slide into pseudoscience and superstition’ (Sagan 1997: 27). As Hamayon (1997:65-66, my translation) puts it, the book’s ‘approach is devoid of any critical thought: conjectures on one page become, as if by magic, assertions on the next . . . I have rarely seen such reductionism, I have rarely seen such simple-minded determinism.” (Bahn 2010:118-119) This is a phenomenon I see all too often in rock art writings. A concept that is introduced as a possibility on one page will be used as a fact a page or two later to support another surmise. 

A shaman with paraphernalia. Internat image, public domain.

We would do well to remember that the limited remains of the physical cultures studied by archaeologists represent a very small proportion of those cultures. They had a whole world of beliefs, mythology, rituals, and physical knowledge that is not necessarily represented by those physical remains. Rock art represents that world of beliefs, mythology, rituals, etc. aspect of the whole world that these people lived in, and we have no physical artifacts from that world for most of the cultures that we are studying.

In 2011 I wrote “In his 2002 book The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art, David Lewis-Williams revisited the shamanism argument for the dying man panel. Lewis-Williams originally swept the rock art community with his early analysis of much of South African rock art in light of San (bushman) religious practices that he defined as Shamanism. He eventually served as director of the Rock Art Research Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand from which he retired in 2000. He has since published many important books and reached a position of respect world-wide. He has a great ability to organize and analyze data and search for clues and patterns. As might be expected, considering his focus and early success on the interpretation of South African rock art in light of shamanic influences, he tends to find shamanism behind pretty much anything he looks at. At this point I must confess that I believe that the use of shamanism as an explanation of rock art is hugely overdone. I have gotten to the point where I think of shamanism as the “S”-word. It has reached the position where anyone who cannot come up with a better explanation for rock art just calls it shamanic. A few decades ago pretty much all rock art of animals was dismissed as “hunting magic” and much of the early respect afforded Lewis-Williams came from the fact that he very convincingly gave us an alternative to that overused term. We need to be very careful that we now do not just automatically substitute the “S- word” for “hunting magic” and continue to make the same mistake.” (Faris 2011)

Self portrait by Samantha, 1998.

”A number of years ago on a field trip an enthusiastic rock art fan explained to me that all human figures in rock art that have their arms stretched out straight represent shaman figures. Upon return from that trip to the museum where I worked as exhibits curator at the time I was confronted by the illustration above. It turned out that the picture had been done by a young girl named Samantha who had run out of space on the page when signing her name. The resulting picture had been posted on a lobby wall by the institution’s education curator. I kept a copy of the picture because at that time its innocent childishness seemed to sum up so perfectly the statement that “all figures in rock art that have their arms outstretched straight represent shaman figures”; why she even spelled shaman almost correctly. At the very least it represents scientific proof as definitive as some of Lewis-Williams’.” (Faris 2011) In this I have not modified my opinion since.

“The “shamanism” or “neuropsychological” model proposed by Lewis-Williams and colleagues has had a powerful impact on rock art research, and has significantly added to our knowledge of past foragers lifeways in southern Africa and elsewhere in the world. However, this model is primarily based on the view of shamanism as a universal and unvarying characteristic of foragers over space and time. This paper raises both theoretical and empirical problems with this view. The paper examines the relationship between the specific social roles and practices of shamanism and the overarching cosmological structures on which they are based in both southern Africa and Northern Eurasia. In both cases, the paper argues that many cosmological beliefs are highly persistent and durable, extending into prehistory, while the specific practices and roles of shamans are variable, changing to meet the immediate and local needs of their communities.” (McCall 2006)

Picture of a dancing siberian shaman in full regalia. Image from DALL-E.

This concept of rock art being the product of shamanism had been pushed by the Abbe Breuil. “By Breuil’s death in 1961, the concept of shamanism aligned an idea of universal early religion with the eminence of the painter, the beauty of the cave art, the violence of the imagined ritual, and the political influence of the charismatic leaders. It explained the painter as a shaman too. Like Picasso, Breuil enjoyed what this meant for himself: the painter saw and moved where others could not, and like the shaman he plumbed the animal depths and made them accessible to everyone. The Renaissance of cave painting in the twentieth century was built on this myth. Contemporary artists, confronted with an unpleasant, disenchanted world in their own time, couldn’t resist.” (Geroulanos 2024:302) I, for instance, grew up in the Unitarian church, my wife a Baptist church. If either, or both of us were to paint a picture of a deer on a cliff or cave wall, would it then be shamanic in nature. According to Breuil and Lewis-Williams it would.

Bahn argued basically the same point. “Unfortunately, the claim is often made that ‘shamanism is the religion of all hunting and gathering cultures’, which, as we have seen, is simply not true. For example, there is no shamanism at all in Australia. Trance and ecstasy are not found in many cultures known to have produced prehistoric and historic rock art.” (Bahn 2010)

“There are both theoretical and empirical flaws with the view that shamanism is a universal feature of forager societies, and that forager rock art invariably relates to shamanism. Future rock art research in southern Africa must work to address these flaws in moving beyond past paradigmatic dispositions. This paper has also argued that rock art is (a) class of archaeological remains originating from the process of landscape enculturation. The production of rock art is affected by many short-term and local contingencies, but rock art affects human behavior at scales beyond human lifetimes. The accumulation of rock art on landscapes represents a long-term, inter-generational process. Therefore, this paper has argued that the content of rock art at regional scales is easier to relate to the durable and persistent cosmological structures of forager societies than to the variable, flexible, and transitory social practices of shamanism.” (McCall 2006)

I feel the need to state here (again) that I am not denying that there is shamanistic rock art. I am stating that there are a myriad of potential meanings for a rock art image and reasons for its production, some of it shamanic, some not. Let us not automatically jump to the use of the “S-word” in all instances. It is just not the only answer.

NOTE 1: In some of the quotations I have included above I have left citations that are not listed in my references below. To find these I recommend that you go to the sources listed.

NOTE 2: Some images in this column were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain images.

REFERENCES:

Bahn, Paul G., 2010, Prehistoric Rock Art: Problems and Polemics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Faris, Peter, 2011, The S-Word, Shamanism- or, The Dying Man in Lascaux Revisited, Rock Art Blog, 9 July 2011, https://www.rockartblog.blogspot.com.

Geroulanos, Stefanos, 2024, The Invention of Prehistory, Liveright Publishing Company, a division of Norton and Co., New York.   

McCall, Grant S., 2006, Add Shamas and Stir? A Critical Review of the Shamanism Model of Forager Rock Art Production, 25 September 2006, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, doi:10.1016/j.jaa.2006.09.001

Williams, David Lewis, 2004, The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the origins of Art, 1 April 2004, Thames and Hudson, New York.

BRONZE AGE ROCK ART GAME BOARDS FOUND IN AZERBAIJAN:

Capmali rock shelter (shadows right of center), Gobustan National Reserve, Azerbaijan. Figure 4, Crist and Abdullayev, 2024. 

Readers of RockArtBlog will recognize that one subject I enjoy looking into is board games portrayed in rock art panels (refer to game or game boards in the cloud index at the bottom of this blog). A report in November of 2023 told us about the discovery of a number of boards for the game of ‘58 Holes’ or ‘Hounds and Jackals in Azerbaijan.’

Closeup of Capmali rock shelter (arrow shows location of the game board), Gobustan National Reserve, Azerbaijan. Figure 5, Crist and Abdullayev, 2024. 

“In 2018, archaeologists uncovered ancient game boards on the Absheron Peninsula, located in present-day Azerbaijan. These game boards date  back to the late third to early second millennium BCE, making them among the oldest examples of the Game of 58 Holes. The game boards were found at several archaeological sites, including Çapmalı in the Gobustan National Reserve near the Caspian Sea, as well as Yeni Türkan, Düb əndi, and Ağdaşdüzü.” (Radley 2024) These game boards were engraved onto bedrock in some cases, or onto slabs of stone in other cases.

58-hole game board from Capmali rock shelter, Gobustan National Reserve, Azerbaijan. Figure 6, photograph by Ronnie Galagher, 2024. 

“The game of fifty-eight holes, sometimes known as ‘hounds and jackals’ (so named because the first gaming pieces found feature either a jackal’s or a hound’s head, was played for more than a millennium from the Middle Bronze Age into the Iron Age. Its ancient name is lost, though it could have been the isb from the Middle Kingdom Egyptian Tomb of Khety or the patti-abzu mentioned in a letter from Tushratta to Amenhotep III. Boards have been found in a broad region covering Egypt, the Levant, Mesopotamia, Iran, and Anatolia. Recently, patterns of shallow depressions identified on stone outcrops and portable stone objects indicate that this game was also played during that period in the southern Caucasus. Here we discuss these game boards to show that the Caspian coast was culturally connected to the wider region through playing this game.” (Criss and Abdullayev 2024:1)

Patterns of 58-hole game boards, Azerbaijan. Figure 6, Crist and Abdullayev, 2024. 

These discoveries considerably expand the area in which the game is known to have been popular, and provides earlier examples as well.

“The game of fifty-eight holes was played in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Iran, and the Caucasus during the late third– early second millennium BC. While all these regions have boards without lines connecting holes, those with lines show that there are regional differences in the arrangement of these lines. In Egypt, the lines only connect holes in the same track, while in Anatolia, Iran, and Azerbaijan the lines connect holes in different tracks.” (Criss and Abdullayev 2024:15) Slight regional variations are only to be expected such an early time. Without mass marketing and social media to submerge ideas to the lowest common denominator their spread and uses would depend on individual criteria. “Hey, I learned this great game on my trip. I cannot remember all the details but we can improvise a little.” Indeed, many game players like to create variations in their favorite games.

58-hole game board. Photograph by W. Crist, Courtesy of the director of the Gobustan State Historical and Cultural Preserve.

“The evidence from Azerbaijan shows that people played the game of fifty-eight holes there during the late third–early secondmillennium BC, and that they participated in regional interactions that ranged throughout south-western Asia. To date, six patterns with the distinctive geometry of the game have been identified on the Abşeron Peninsula and to the southwest of it, in the Gobustan National Reserve. One each was found at Çapmalı, Yenı Türkan, and Dübəndi, and three came from Ağdaşdüzü.” (Criss and Abdullayev 2024:4) This game was obviously quite common and popular. Perhaps, at one time it would have been the national game, remember, they didn’t have television.

 “Clearly, further early evidence for the game from precisely dated contexts is required to credit a specific culture for inventing this game. Whatever the origin of the game of fifty-eight holes, it was quickly adopted and played by a wide variety of people, from the nobility of Middle Kingdom Egypt to the cattle herders of the Caucasus, and from the Old Assyrian traders in Anatolia to the workers who built Middle Kingdom pyramids. The fast spread of this game attests to the ability of games to act as social lubricants, facilitating interactions across social boundaries. Games are particularly amenable to building relationships between traders because games are one way that people use to judge trustworthiness, informing future social and economic relationships. At certain times in antiquity, particular games were regionally popular, suggesting that they helped to connect cultures that regularly interacted with one another, as has been documented in more recent times. The game of fifty-eight holes probably served this purpose in the second millennium BC in Egypt and south-western Asia, because it was the only game that was played throughout the region. Indeed, the game was particularly embedded into the social lives of people living in towns involved in the Old Assyrian karum system, of which all of the Anatolian sites producing Middle Bronze Age games were a part. Other games were only locally popular.”  (Criss and Abdullayev 2024:16)

Since the term ‘Karum System’ is not commonly used in rock art studies it is explained in the following. “During the first centuries of the second millennium BCE, Assyrian merchants originating from Assur, on the Upper Tigris, organized large-scale commercial exchanges with central Anatolia. They settled in several localities called karums. This Akkadian word, which usually designates the quay or port in Mesopotamian cities, refers in Anatolia to the Assyrian merchant district and its administrative building. Thus, the karum period – which comprised the Old Assyrium period – covers the time during which the Assyrians traded in Anatolia, from the middle of the twentieth to the end of the eighteenth century BCE; it corresponds, more or less, to the Middle Bronze Age. In Anatolia, this period is characterized by an important phase of urbanization, with a flourishing material culture mixing native and foreign styles.” (Michel 2012) Perhaps a more recent analogy for this would be the British East India Company and the enclaves they established for trade in the colonies.

Abbas Islamov and Ronnie Gallagher indicating the location of the two Ağdaşdüzü boards in the centre of the settlement. Reproduced by permission of Ronnie Gallagher

There is, however, a deal of uncertainty in the dating of these. “The authors caution that it can be complicated to achieve precise dating for this period. "Clearly, further early evidence for the game from precisely dated contexts is required to credit a specific culture for inventing the game," they wrote. Regardless of the game's origin, "it was quickly adopted by a wide variety of people.... The fast spread of this game attests to the ability of games to act as social lubricants, facilitating interactions across social boundaries." (Oullette 2024)

Along with serving as a social lubricant as stated above, the playing of board games goes has a role to play in socializing children into the families and societies that they must grow up with. Like baby bighorn sheep practice butting heads, and baby wolves practice play fighting, children playing board games are learning how to navigate social interactions and appropriate emotional responses.

NOTE 1: I have omitted citations from the quotes above. To see all secondary references I would refer you to the original publications. 

NOTE 2: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

Crist, Walter, and Rahman Abdullayev, 2024, Herding with the Hounds: The Game of Fifty-eight Holes in the Abseron Peninsula, European Journal of Archaeology, 2024, pp. 1-29. Doi.10.101/eaa.2024.24. Accessed online 3 September 2024.

Michel, Cecile, 2012, The Karum Period on the Plateau, pp. 313-336, from The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia (10,]000 – 323 BCE), Gregory McMahon and Sharon Steadman editors, published 21 November 2012.

Oullette, Jennifer, 2024, Archaeologists believe this Bronze Age board game is the oldest yet found, published online by Ars Technica, https://arstechnica.com. Accessed online 17 September 2024.

Radley, Dario, 2024, Bronze Age game board in Azerbaijan challenges Egyptian origin of ‘Hounds and Jackals’, 2 September 2024, Archaeology Magazine online, https://archeologymag.com. Accessed online 3 September 2024.

 

 

EDITORIAL – A reply to a comment just left added by Anonymous to my column on 6 April 2013, “Kaneikokala – A Hawaiian Shark Deity.”

“Anonymous has left a new comment on the post "KANEIKOKALA - A HAWAIIAN SHARK DEITY - All of the other photos I took in the museum turned out just fine, but when I went back into my phone to search for the photo of Kaneikokala, it's just all black... I understand that many people believe that sacred spiritual energy (mana) can interact with electronics or discourage photos from turning out, particularly if permission wasn't asked or if the object is traditionally respected by not being photographed. Is this what happened? Also, does anyone have any advice for apologizing for my ignorance and correcting my disrespect? I am not of Polynesian descent and I feel guilty.”

RockArtBlog’s Answer – Anonymous, thank you for your comment. Comments come to me without an attached e-mail address so I cannot reply directly to you, yet your comment interests me and deserves some response. You bring up an interesting point. I also am not of Polynesian descent and yet my photographs turned out fine. As an art historian who specializes in rock art my feelings when in front of this sort of thing do approach a kind of reverence. To me it is incredibly special and fascinating. This is, of course, completely different from the reverence based on spiritual belief held by an ancient Hawaiian approaching Kaneikokala, but if you believe that there is any credibility to the tradition that reverence is needed when approaching the statue, then perhaps my feelings were a satisfactory substitute.

WAS A SOUTH AFRICAN ROCK ART PANEL INSPIRED BY A DICYNODONT FOSSIL?

Dicynodont illustration by Oleg Kluzman, artstation.com.

Is a South African rock art panel a dicynodont? This is a claim made by South African archeologist Julien Benoit (2024). The dicynodonia lived before the age of the dinosaurs so it is not possible that the artist who created the panel had ever seen one. Benoit believes that the San painter who created this image was influenced by fossils in the area. I have argued, in the past, that some rock art was created under the inspiration of fossils, but I fear I am a touch skeptical in this instance.

Horned Serpent Panel, photograph by Julien Benoit, journal.pone.

Horned Serpent Panel, close-up of figure, photograph by Julien Benoit, journal.pone.

“The Horned Serpent panel at La Belle France (Free State Province, South Africa) was painted by the San at least two hundred years ago. It pictures, among many other elements, a tusked animal with a head that resembles that of a dicynodont, the fossils of which are abundant and conspicuous in the Karoo Basin. This picture also seemingly relates to a local San myth about large animals that once roamed southern Africa and are now extinct. This suggests the existence of a San geomyth about dicynodonts. Here, the La Belle France site has been visited, the existence of the painted tusked animal is confirmed, and the presence of tetrapod fossils in its immediate vicinity is supported. Altogether, they suggest a case of indigenous palaeontology. The painting is dated between 1821 and 1835, or older, making it at least ten years older than the formal scientific description of the first dicynodont, Dicynodon lacerticeps, in 1845. The painting of a dicynodont by the San would also suggest that they integrated (at least some) fossils into their belief system.” (Benoit 2024) La Belle France is the name of the farm on which the painted panel is found, and “The Horned Serpent” is the name given to the panel from earlier interpretations of the figure now being tentatively identified as a dicynodont. I have not been able to determine how the dating from between 1821 and 1835 was determined.

Fossilized dicynodont skull. From journal.pone.

“The /Xam speaking San, who made the Horned Serpent painting, occupied the Karoo area, a landscape in which the fossil-richness is mostly due to the overly abundant and often well-preserved dicynodonts, a group of tusked therapsids. In many cases, their skulls are naturally exposed by erosion in spectacular ways, making them easy to find and collect, and their tusks are so conspicuous that their anatomy is not difficult to interpret, even to the untrained eyes. The downturned tusks of dicynodonts resemble those of the tusked animal of the Horned Serpent Panel.” (Benoit 2024) Virtually all sources available seem to agree that the Karoo basin is a virtual paradise for fossil hunters and many of them continue to be exposed by erosion.

Dicynodont skeleton, South Africa. Photograph from North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

“Dicynodontia is an extinct clade of anomodonts, an extinct type of non-mammelian therapsid. Dicynodonts were herbivores that typically bore a pair of tusks, hence their name, which means ‘two dog tooth.’ Members of the group possessed a horny, typically toothless beak, unique amongst all synapsids. Dicynodonts first appeared in Southern Pangaea during the mid-Permian, ca. 270-260 million years ago, and became globally distributed and the dominant herbivorous animals in the Late Permian, ca. 260-252 Mya. They were devastated by the end-Permian Extinction that wiped out most other therapsids ca. 252 Mya. They rebounded during the Triassic but died out towards the end of the period.” (Wikipedia)

Drawing by George Stow and Dorothea Bleak. From journal.pone.

“Archaeological evidence directly supports that the San did find and transport fossils over long distances, and could interpret them in surprisingly accurate ways. If the San could identify the fossilised skulls of dicynodonts as belonging to once alive animals, it is possible that their tusked faces could have contributed to their rock art. In this respect, it is noteworthy that, to the San of the Koesberg, the animals depicted on the Horned Serpent panel were real and used to live among them: ‘The Bushmen of the east declare that there were at one time a number of animals living in the country in the days of their forefathers, which are now extinct and nowhere to be found in Southern Africa. Some of these are described as great monstrous brutes, exceeding the elephant or hippopotamus in bulk.’ . . . the tusked animal is described as an entity distinct from the rain-animal (referred to as ‘Kou-teign-Koo-rou) and the Serpent (referred to as ‘Koo-be-eng). In addition to its tusks, the extraordinary size of the animal evokes the heavily mineralised bones and disproportionately enlarged skulls of some dicynodonts found in abundance in the Main Karoo Basin.” (Benoit 2024) While the body of the painted image certainly does not come close to modern science’s reconstructions of a dicynodont, the San would have had to find a fully articulated fossil skeleton to get an idea about the body shape.

“But there are precedents: according to Benoit, the most striking example of San palaeontology is the rock art in Mokhali Cave, in Lesotho. There, the Indigenous people reproduced a dinosaur footprint and painted three figures similar to these animals. “These silhouettes have no arms, because there are no hand prints in the footprints in the area, and they have a short tail because dinosaurs did not drag their tails,” says the palaeobiologist.

These paintings, Benoit adds, were made before the term dinosaur was even invented; in San mythology, dinosaurs were equivalent to a creature called //Khwai-hemm (with two initial slashes), whose name translates as a disturbing “devourer of all.” And even today, for the Basotho people of Lesotho, dinosaur fossils are remains of this same fearsome monster, which they call Kholumolumo.” (Yanes 2024) This mention of San paleontology is very reasonable. All peoples devise answers to the questions in their world view, and ancient fossils are no exception. Indigenous paleontology would apply to all peoples, everywhere. They did not have our modern concept of the Scientific Method, but they came up with answers that made sense in terms of their world view.

Now, as I stated above, I have argued, in the past, that some rock art was created under the inspiration of fossils, but I fear I am a touch skeptical in this instance. Admittedly, the strange creature has two lines pendant from the end of the snout area, and the dicynodont has two tusks, and, according to Benoit, this region also has samples of dicynodont fossils that the painters could have seen. So, I have to accept the possibility that there is truth to the theory, but it seems to me to be a stretch, mostly because of the age of the fossils and the poor condition they would be in because of that. So, it is surely possible, but I am not completely convinced.

NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCE:

Benoit, Julien, 2024, A possible later stone age painting of a dicynodont (Synapsida) from the South African Karoo. PLoS ONE 19(9):e0309908.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309908.  Accessed online 19 September 2024.

Wikipedia, Dicynodont – Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org.wiki/Dicynodontia. Accessed online 19 September 2024.

Yanes, Javier, 2024, How the San people of southern Africa were able to paint an animal that predates the dinosaurs, 1 October 2024, https://english.elpais.comm. Accessed online 3 October 2024.

PORTABLE X-RAY FLUORESCENCE ANALYSIS OF PIGMENTS IN CAVE PAINTINGS:

Entrance to Font du Gaume cave, France. Photograph by Don Hitchcock, Donsmaps.com.

An important development in the potential dating of European cave art has been made by the use of portable x-ray fluorescence equipment to analyze the pigments used in the paintings. If the black paint is based on Manganese dioxide there is no possibility of radiocarbon dating it, however, if black paint is based on charcoal can be identified, then the possibility of radiocarbon dating does exist. The scientific team carried this analysis out in Font de Gaume Cave in France.

A variety of photographic techniques were used to enhance variations in black pigments in the paintings. These small variations were assumed to be perhaps related to the use of different black pigments which could then be analyzed with the portable x-ray fluorescence (pXRF), and micro-raman spectroscopy.

Painted bison, Font du Gaume, France. From Leroi Gourhan.

“From a technical and a stylistic perspective, two types of animal representations can be distinguished. On the one hand, we have lifelike painted bison treated with bi- or polychromy, where painting and engraving are associated with the relief effects of the wall for an exceptional rendering. Different shades can be observed, ranging from black to brown and from red to yellow as well as the designs being mainly done in black and red. The archetype of “hyperbison” is found in many of these individuals. There are also drawn naturalist bison with black lines. On the other hand, there are graphical entities of different animals as well (bison, horse, deer) that are drawn and exhibit a more schematic style. Capitan et al. hypothesized at least two different styles of representations right after the discovery of the cave art in Font-de-Gaume. Leroi-Gourhan also stated that at least two creation steps are noticeable from the outset in the Font de Gaume cave. Evidence of different creation steps of the ornamentations have also been provided for the Bull Rotunda in the Lascaux cave and Pech-Merle, Lot, France–Henri Moissan, a French Nobel prize winner, identified in 1902 Fe and Mn oxides in the coloring matter samples from the Font-de-Gaume decor. Today, this UNESCO world heritage site is protected and sampling is only allowed by authorities in highly exceptional cases. The awareness of the fragility of decorated cave sites has led to a transition from micro-sampling to non-invasive analyses, carried out in-situ. Scientific imaging was used to record figures and panels of the Font-de-Gaume cave. Areas of interest could be selected for in-situ point analyses by portable X-ray fluorescence analyses (pXRF) and micro-Raman spectroscopy.” (Reiche et al. 2023:1-2)

Figures photographed in different spectra of visible light. Font du Gaume, France. Photographs by A. Maigret.

Along with the pXRS and micro-Raman spectroscopy, the rock art was photographed with a range of color filters which also helped enhance the analysis of some pigment differences. “Photographic imaging allows observing coloring matters at the scale of the panels and figures in the cave. The points for chemical analyses by pXRF and for mineralogical analyses by portable micro-Raman Spectroscopy can be judiciously chosen. This also limits the number of analyses required per figure and allows extrapolating the results of the physico-chemical analyses to the whole figure or at least the remaining visible part of it. The results of the analysis can therefore be read and discussed in the prehistoric context at the scale of a figure, a panel or even an area in the cave.” (Reiche et al. 2023)

“Portable XRF analyses were conducted in-situ in the cave with the portable ELIO device of the brand XG-Lab/Bruker® of the C2RMF fixed on a tripod with two axial translations (forward and backwards as well as left to right) and three rotation axes. This standardized device holds a 50 kV X-ray tube with a Rh anode that can deliver a power of 4 W. The detector is a 17 mm2 SDD whit an energy resolution of 140 eV at the Mn Kα line. It is also equipped with a collimator able to focus the beam into a 1 mm spot, two lasers, a positioning system and a tripod. The distance between the measuring head and the wall is 5 mm. It also benefits of a camera for the observation of the measurement spot. The experimental conditions were 600 s of acquisition time with 40 kV and 40 μA delivered by the X-ray tube.” (Reiche et al. 2023) The first known use of pXRF equipment to analyze pictographs was by Bonita Newman and Lawrence Loendorf in 2005. (Newman and Loendorf 2005)

Font du Gaume reindeer, France. Image from Pinterest.

“The mobile Raman measuring device used was developed by Jobin–Yvon HORIBA and consists of components that can be easily moved during a measurement campaign. The device is equipped with a “Superhead SH 532” measuring head with an Olympus “long working distance” objective. In-situ Raman measurements require an arrangement with high flexibility and high stability at the same time. A working distance of 10 mm between the head and the wall guarantees the safety of the painted wall.” (Reiche et al. 2023) Raman spectroscopy detects the vibrational frequency of molecules, and since the molecules of each element vibrate at different frequencies the various elements can be distinguished. Micro-raman spectroscopy is raman spectroscopy through a microscope so a very small area can be analyzed, like a painted line or dot.

These studies determined that some black lines, dots, and areas were created using charcoal as the black pigment meaning that these could also be dated using radiocarbon (C¹⁴) dating. These techniques could be reasonably expected to be reliable in other instances of painted pictographs as well.

NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

Baum, Stephanie, 2023, First discovery of carbon-based cave art in France's Dordogne region could pave way for precise radiocarbon dating, 18 December 2023, https://phys.org/news/2023-12-discovery-carbon-based-cave-art-france.html. Accessed online 29 December 2023.

Reiche, Ina, Yvan Coquinot, Antoine Trosseau and Anne Maigret, 2023, First discovery of charcoal based prehistoric cave art in Dordogne, 14 December 2023, Nature Portfolio, Scientific Reports, 13:22235, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-47652-1. Accessed online 29 December 2023.

SECONDARY REFERENCE:

Newman, Bonita, and Lawrence Loendorf, 2005, “Portable X-Ray Fluorescence Analysis of Rock Art Pigments.” Plains Anthropologist, vol. 50, no. 195, pp. 277–83. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25670828. Accessed 9 Sept. 2024.

CANARY ISLAND ROCK ART AND LITHOPHONES:

 

Canary islands. Graphic - M. HersherScience; Data - Ancient World Mapping Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

I have written about lithophones, as well as music and rock art, in previous columns (please check the cloud index at the bottom of the blog to see those articles). In this column I am going to discuss the relationship of lithophones to rock art panels on the Canary Islands.

El Hierro Petroglyphs ,Rock Art on the Canary Islands, Spain.

In a study of the rock art and lithophones of the Canary Islands, lead author Marco Merlini explained “Rock carvings are one of the most significant expressions of Guanches, the aboriginal stone age population that disembarked at the Canary archipelago during the first millennium BCE. It was formed by Paleo-Berbers with roots in the Mediterranean North African koine and with close links to the Libyan-Punic milieu.” (Merlini 2019:1) In linguistics, a koine or koine language or dialect is a standard or common dialect that has arisen as a result of the contact, mixing, and often simplification of two or more mutually intelligible varieties of the same language. (Wikipedia) Lithophones have been found all over the world and from a great many cultures, both ancient and modern. These musical rocks consist of many different minerals from limestone, lavas and granites to jade and stalactites.

Petroglyph rock on the Canary Islands. Online image, public domain.

In the Canary Islands “lithophones are located alongside petroglyphs, drawings and inscriptions incised into rocks of archaeological sites that are often astronomically significant. The sound rock sites and their use from prehistorical times until recent times are recalled by oral tradition too. In several instances, we know only the toponyms of the lithophonic sites, their location, and a generic oral memory emphasizing their special (and sometimes reputed magic) sonorous effects. The collective, although feeble, reminiscence maintained in the Canary Islands generation after generation represents the fundamental base of the investigation on the music of the stones. It includes: explication of toponyms; association of the lithophones with the ancestral meaning of rock carvings, channels, cup-marks, and other types of rock art in the surrounding areas; their relationship with engraved texts; connections of the ringing stones with legends and related traditions as places of worship, and/or of performing special rituals, and/or of supernatural interest and consecration.” (Merlini 2019:246) The authors included no actual factual evidence of astronomic significance of either petroglyphs or lithophones, but the possibility is not out of the question.

“Canary Archipelago possesses an atout (asset) for our chances to understand the pre-historical exploitation of rock art sites for music-making. If we get to know that a natural “rock gong” produces sounds on a musical scale, then the subsequent question is to understand how it was used in the past, and even if it was actually in use. Association with musical instruments, petroglyphs, cave paintings and archaeological remains give only partial hints. The lithophones of the Canary Islands were alive in the troglodyte pre-Hispanic period and sometimes even after it. Part of the question concerning their exploitation is therefore solvable thanks to oral traditions or legends about their role in ceremonies or in creating an alert. The Canary Islanders, descendants from the Guanches, keep memory about certain stones and rock surfaces that were in use even in historical times to produce a peculiar metallic sound when being struck, and their peculiar association with rock art engravings.” (Merlini 2019)

Petroglyph rock on the Canary Islands. Online image, public domain.

Robert Bednarik (2010) wrote about lithophones being useful for long distance communication. “Judging from the few recorded instances it seems the utilitarian role of lithophones or rock gongs relates primarily to the communicating or carrying ability of the produced sound, and the metallic sound of effective lithophones can carry over distances of several kilometres. as mentioned above, in one report it serves to communicate with ancestors.” (Bednarik 2010:117)

Rocking lithophone on Canary Islands, Image from tenerifeweekly.com.

The government has sponsored a study of Canary Island lithophones. “Through the work promoted by the General Directorage of Cultural Heritage in Tenerife, La Gomera and El Hierro, three types of lithophones have been documented: percussion, aerophones and rocking. The latter has only been found on the island of El Hierro and, as its name suggests, the sound is produced by rocking.” (Europa Press 2022) Someone standing on the top stone with one foot on each side can, by shifting weight, start a rocking motion on the top stone. The friction between the shifting top stone and the rock beneath causes the vibration that makes the sound. I wonder if the top stone would also ring if just struck like the other lithophones?

Canary island lithophones showing striking points. Online image, public domain.

“Sometimes Guanches shaped the acoustic space. In certain cases, they arranged the stone blocks to empower their sonority. For example, lithophones have been oriented to empower the sounding board effect of the surrounding space. In other cases, the natural sound of the rocks was accentuated by artificial layout and configuration of the place (Ulbrich 2003). 

Lithophones are located alongside petroglyphs, drawings and inscriptions incised into rocks of archaeological sites that are often astronomically significant. The sound rock sites and their use from prehistorical times until recent times are recalled by oral tradition too. In several instances, we know only the toponyms of the lithophonic sites, their location, and a generic oral memory emphasizing their special (and sometimes reputed magic) sonorous effects. The collective, although feeble, reminiscence maintained in the Canary Islands generation after generation represents the fundamental base of the investigation on the music of the stones. It includes: explication of toponyms; association of the lithophones with the ancestral meaning of rock carvings, channels, cup-marks, and other types of rock art in the surrounding areas; their relationship with engraved texts; connections of the ringing stones with legends and related traditions as places of worship, and/or of performing special rituals, and/or of supernatural interest and consecration. However, still nowadays the ancestral sonorous rocks are affected by suspicions that chains them to "pagan culture and spirituality". Lithophones have a diversity of forms, structures, geological frames and sounds, but they share a gloomy common denominator: most of them have been vandalized, plundered, but never Christianized, i.e. reformulated and taken under control by the Catholic Church and its liturgy. Contrariwise, the lithophones had a social and cultural solid place in the Canary native world.”  (Merlini 2019)

Lithophone playing in the Canary Islands. Online image, public domain.

In the statement by Bednarik above (2010) he speculates that the primary utilization of lithophones is for communication. This generalization seems based on the fact that any form of sound produced and then heard is, in some sense, communication. “Most likely, their ancient function was multiple, taking advantage of their sonority and the exceptional loudness that benefit the sites in which they are embedded. Prehistoric and protohistoric manifestations firstly inserted the lithophones among the natural sites that anchored animism and attested the magic-ritual features of the sound of the volcanic stones. Music had not only a playful character, but also ceremonial in association with crops, cures, and offerings to divinities and deceased. Spanish conquerors and their chroniclers inform about rites of the ancient Canarians, mainly hinged on the request for rain. They included fasting of the entire village, processions with their livestock to certain elevated places or to the ocean, lamenting invocations by humans and even cattle and flocks (that Europeans misunderstood as yelling and barking), round dances, beating the ocean with sticks, sink palms and branches into the sea to make them weep, etc. Lithophones offered support for rhythmic or a-rhythmic sound production within the proscenium for the sacred acts aimed to gain the divinities’ pity (Ulbrich 2003).” (Merlini 2019) Again, the purpose is assumed to be communication, in this case with the divinities.

Of course tapping or pounding a boulder with another rock will eventually make marks, especially since reportedly many of the lithophonic boulders make different notes what struck in different locations. The question then should be are these marks also petroglyphs although they are a result of making a sound, not an image? Unfortunately, Merlini’s paper (2019) neglects to establish any relationship between the lithophones and certain petroglyphs, although a few may be discerned from illustrations.

NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

Bednarik, R. G., 2010. About lithophones. In R. Querejazu Lewis and R. G. Bednarik (eds), Mysterious cup marks: proceedings of the First International Cupule Conference, pp. 115-118, BAR International Series 2073, Archaeopress, Oxford. Accessed online 18 June 2024.

Europa Press, 2022, Documented a new typology of lithophones in El Hierro, 15 June 2022, Tenerife Weekly, https://tenerifeweekly.com. Accessed online 11 February 2024.

Merlini, Marco, 2019, The Sound of Rock Art: Canary Lithophones, https://www.academia.edu. Accessed online 17 June 2024.

Wikipedia, Koine language, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/koine_language. Accessed online 16 September 2024.

SECONDARY REFERENCE:

Ulbrich, H. J., 2003, Frequenzanalyse eines Lithophons auf Lanzarote (Kanarische Inseln), Almogaren XXXIV, Wien, p. 331-346.

IS THERE A WOOLY RHINOCEROS PETROGLYPH IN THE GRAND CANYON?

Wolly rhinoceros. Online image, public domain.

On 10 January 2015 I published a column on RockArtBlog about the Doheny Expedition to the Grand Canyon to record petroglyphs of dinosaurs. In this column I wrote “This expedition was led by Samuel Hubbard, director of the expedition and an honorary curator of archaeology at the Museum (The Oakland Museum, Oakland, California), and accompanied by Charles W. Gilmore, Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the United States National Museum. The report on this expedition was written by Hubbard and published on January 26, 1925.” (Faris 2015) I tend to be quite critical of creationists and all of their claims such as ‘dinosaurs and humans living together in history.’ In order for there to be a petroglyph of a dinosaur most people would expect that dinosaurs had to be alive at the same time that there was a human artist to record it. Although there is the possibility that the petroglyph could have been the result of a prehistoric interpretation of fossil remains, that strikes me as unlikely.

The Moab petroglyph, Doheny expedition report, p. 27. Photo by Mr. Kelly of Grand Junction, Colorado, 1925.

The Moab petroglyph as seen today showing re-pecking. Photograph Dell Crandall, 2004.

Then, I continued “On page 27 of the report is the astonishing claim that the petroglyph found along the Colorado River near Moab, Utah, and often called the “Moab Mastodon” is really the picture of a wooly rhinoceros. Hubbard wrote: ‘A PREHISTORIC GAME TRAIL: From the Grand Canyon in southern Utah comes another remarkable petroglyph. This was photographed and sent to me by Mr. George Kelly of Grand Junction, Colorado. The outline of the figure was so faint that he was obliged to chalk it in to secure a satisfactory photograph. There is not the slightest question in my mind that this was intended to represent a rhinoceros. All the ‘rhino’ character is present. The menacing horn; the prehensile upper lip; the short tail; the heavy body and short legs, all suggest a ‘rhino’ about to charge. This is the first time it has ever been known that prehistoric man in America was contemporary with the rhinoceros. I have before me an outline of a wooly rhinoceros sketched by an artist-hunter on the limestone wall of the Cavern of Les Combarelles in France. The difference between the two is that the Cro-Magnon hunter shows the ears of his ‘rhino’ erect and pointed forward, while the American artist shows the ears turned over. I venture the prediction that there was that difference in the two animals.’ The photograph illustrating this claim shows the “Moab Mastodon” as it was prior to 1925. How much prior we cannot know because Hubbard does not reveal when he actually received the photo from Mr. Kelly of Grand Junction, Colorado. What I find very interesting is that this early photo allows us to compare with the same petroglyph as it is presently found. The first time I visited the “Moab Mastodon” I suspected that the figure had been seriously re-pecked as the patina across its torso seemed to me to show a suspicious variability. Indeed, comparing a new photo of that image with the pre-1925 photo suggests that the torso has indeed seen a major episode of touchup. This could possibly be a relic of the conditions under which it was originally photographed, so I cannot claim this to be any kind of definitive proof. The other major problem that I found with the “Moab Mastodon” was that it shows definite toes or claws. Checking those features in the 1925 photo they seem to be even slenderer and more defined. These are definitely not the feet of either an elephant or a rhinoceros.” (Faris 2015) I have elsewhere stated that while I do not believe we will ever be sure, I think that the so-called ‘Moab Mastodon’ is likely a bear with a large fish in its mouth.

So-called Wooly rhinoceros petroglyph in the Grand Canyon. Photograph by Jennifer Hatcher.

Now we have another report of a petroglyph of a wooly rhinoceros, this one actually from the Grand Canyon. In 2020 Ray Urbaniak wrote in Pleistocene Coalition News: “Jennifer Hatcher is a high stamina Grand Canyon, Arizona, rock art photographer whose pictures of rarely-depicted animals I have featured in two earlier articles, with what resembled a saiga antelope and with what resembled a peccary. Jennifer recently sent me a couple of new photos also taken in the Grand Canyon. One photo, which she described as a ‘bison,’ caught my attention right away. However, it didn’t strike me as a bison but I wasn’t sure what else it could be until I noticed what appeared to be a small horn near the middle of what is the presumed ‘head.’ I then thought it looked strikingly like a wooly rhinoceros – and extinct animal known for one long horn on the snout and a smaller horn farther back.” (Urbaniak 2020) The photograph in question shows what appears to be a quadrupedal animal of some sort although quite crudely done as no legs are shown. In the area presumed to be the head on the right there are two projections; a large curled on at the end, and a smaller one a little way in from the right end. I assume Hatcher called it a bison thinking the larger projection was a horn and the smaller an ear.

Wooly rhinoceros from Chauvet Cave, France. Online image, public domain.

Another Wooly rhinoceros from Chauvet Cave, France. Online image, public domain.

We now have one major problem in this identification. All of the references I could I could find agree that the wooly rhinoceros never lived in the Americas. “By the end of the Riss glaciations about 130,000 years ago, the woolly rhinoceros lived throughout northern Eurasia, spanning most of Europe, the Russian Plain, Siberia, and the Mongolian Plateau, ranging to extremes of 72˚to 33˚ N. Fossils have been found as far north as the New Siberian Islands. Even during the very warm Eemian interglacial, the range of the woolly rhinoceros extended into temperate regions such as Poland. It had the widest range of any rhinoceros species. It seemingly did not cross the Bering land bridge during the last ice age (which connected Asia to North America), with its easterly-most occurrence at the Chukotka Peninsula, probably due to the low grass density and lack of suitable habitat in the Yukon combined with competition from other large herbivores on the frigid land bridge.” (Wikipedia)

Wooly rhinoceros image from Les Combarelles Cave, France. Online image, public domain.

So, it would seem that we are faced with two possibilities; either there were wooly rhinoceroses in the Americas and we have just not found the fossil evidence yet, or this is another misidentification of a Grand Canyon petroglyph. For the first possibility, if there were actually wooly rhinoceroses in the Americas people would have arrived before their disappearance so they would have been able to see them, but, lacking any fossil evidence to back that up, I have to assume that this just is another case of misidentification. I will add another possibility to the mix, perhaps, as in the case of the Moab Mastodon, this is also meant to be a bear eating a fish and the smaller projection is meant to be an ear. All in all, it is an interesting question, but I am pretty sure it would not be accepted as proven in a court of law.

NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

Faris, Peter, 2015, Is There a Wooly Rhinoceros Petroglyph Near Moab, Utah?, 10 January 2015, https://rockartblog.blogspot.com.

Urbaniak, Ray, 2020, Possible Wooly Rhinoceros Petroglyph, Pleistocene Coalition News, edited by John Feliks, Volume 12, Issue 6, November/December 2020. Accessed online 30 September 2024.

Wikipedia, Wooly Rhinoceros, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wooly_rhinoceros. Accessed online 30 September 2024.