MUSIC IN ROCK ART – HORNS:

 There are a number of ways that rock art and music can go together or interact. I have written a number of previous columns on this which can be references through the cloud index at the very bottom of the blog. Music might accompany rites or ceremonies being enacted at rock art sites. Alternatively, the making of music can be the subject of the rock art itself. This column is going to be about representations of the playing of a type of aerophone – the horn. According to Wikipedia “an aerophone is a musical instrument that produces sound by causing a body of air to vibrate.” This includes variations of flutes, whistles and horns.

Field drawing of horn players, Guruve, Zimbabwe. Image from Kumbani and Diaz-Andreu.

A recent report on the rock art of Zimbabwe (Kumbani and Diaz-Andreu 2024) looks at the subject of musicians in rock art. They have designated a panel at Guruve as three men playing what they identify as trumpets. They point to three types of aerophones: trumpets, flutes and bullroarers. “These were probably made of bamboo.” They report that more than ten sites have been recorded displaying trumpet players. The trumpets are distinguished from flutes “primarily based on size or length of the pipes. Trumpets are typically longer than flutes. Flutes generally do not extend beyond thye player’s abdomen. In contrast, images of potential trumpets in rock art show that these instruments often extend past the abdomen and reach close to the knees.” (Kumbani and Diaz-Andreu 2024:15-16) These rock art images are attributed to the San people.

Scandinavian Lurs. Internet image, public domain.

Ancient Scandinavian war bands had a distinctive type of trumpet known as a Lur. Wikipedia describes a Lur as “a long natural horn without finger holes that is play with a brass-type embouchure. Lurs can be straight or curved in various shapes. The purpose of the curve was to make long instruments easier to carry (e.g. for marching, like the modern sousaphone) and to avoid directing the noise at nearby people.” (Wikipedia) There are some examples of Scandinavian rock art that show Lurs being played.

Panel from Kivik burial cairn, and isolated figure of Lur player. Image from The Kivik King's Grave.

One great example can be found in the Kivik burial cairn. “Few burial monuments in Scandinavia have been as well studied as Bredarör on Kivik, a  Bronze Age cairn, located half a mile north of Simrishamn on the southeastern coast of Skåne. Dated to roughly 1600 BC, and perhaps earlier, the site measures 75 meters in diameter. It is the largest mound of its type in Sweden. Systematically plundered for building materials in centuries past, a central stone chamber was uncovered in 1748, containing a central stone-cist, measuring 3.8 meters long by 1 meter wide, formed of upright stone slabs, the size of a human grave.” (The Kivik King’s Grave) On one of the stone slabs a pair of Lur players can clearly be seen, perhaps indicating it had a role in a funeral ceremony. This monument has undergone considerable excavation and reconstruction/restoration since its discovery in 1748. Such efforts, from that long ago, did not measure up to modern standards of archeology so we cannot be sure that what we see today is accurate to its original condition. I am assuming, however, that the petroglyphs of the Lur players are fairly accurate although, as we can see, it has been treated to the Scandinavian practice of paint in petroglyphs.

Lur players from Tanum Petroglyph Site, Bohuslan, Sweden. Internet image, public domain.

A major rock art site, the Tanum Petroglyphs, also includes an illustration of Lur players. “The Rock Carvings in Tanum (Swedish: Hallristningsomradet Tanum) are a collection of petroglyphs near Tanumshede, Bohuslan, Sweden, which were declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1944 because of their concentration. In total, there are thousands of images called the Tanum Petroglyphs on about 600 panels within the World Heritage Area. These are concentrated in distinct areas along a 25 km stretch, and cover an area of about 51 hectares (126 acres or 0.5 km square). While the region was on the coastline when the drawings were made, it is now at an elevation of 25 m.” (Wikipedia)

Moqhith Wilderness, Utah. Photograph by Michael Lau.

Flute player, Mesa Prieta, New Mexico. Photograph by Katelyn Bird.

In the prehistoric New World trumpet-like aerophones were often conch shells pierced at one end and often with a mouthpiece of resin built up. Many of these have been found in the ruins of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, where they may have been used for signaling or for ceremonial purposes. That said, I know of no imagery that might illustrate these. If any reader has examples of Southwestern American rock art of conch players I will be grateful to see such examples. I am struck, however, by the resemblance of the Zimbabwe musicians above to flute-player representations from the Southwest.

NOTE: Some images in this column 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:

The Kivik King’s Grave, https://www.germanicmythology.com/MISCELLANEOUS/KivikGrave.html. Accessed online 20 October 2025.

Kumbani, Joshua and Margarita Diaz-Andreu, 2024, The art of music. The representation of musical instruments in the rock art of Zimbabwe, October 2024, Azania Archaeological Research in Africa (online in ResearchGate). Accessed online 18 October 2025.

VISUAL ESCAPEMENTS IN ROCK ART:

Back in 1979 I described what I call Visual Escapements to describe the clues that artists use to give the illusion of depth in paintings. As we know much of human creative history was accomplished before the creation of perspective in Renaissance Europe, and a whole lot of other creativity ignores the rules of perspective. One example would be the observation that things that are farther away look smaller than things that are closer. That can be explained by the rules of perspective, but one did not have to understand perspective to be aware of this phenomenon.

My phrase, visual escapements, was chosen on the similarity of the visual indications of distance provided by artists in paintings to the escapement mechanism in a mechanical clock  that divides up the time into segments of equal duration.

Ginevra de’ Benci by Leonardo da Vinci, 1474-1478. Internet image, public domain.

In Leonardo da Vinci’s Ginevra de’Benci these steps are comprised of various elements including the landscape behind her. First, her figure establishes the picture plane. The next is the tree behind her head and the left side of the picture. These are followed by hills with trees in intermediate and far ground, culminating in distant mountains blued by atmospheric distance. Each of these steps is definable as a visual escapement.

The Assumption of the Virgin or The Frari Assumption by Tiziano Vecelli (also known by Titian), 1516-1518. Internet image, public domain.

One can do the same sort of analysis for Titian’s Assumption of the Virgin, with figures in the foreground backed up by landscape features into the distance.

 

Both differentiation in size, and in vertical placement according to distance would be examples of my idea of Visual Escapements which I posited in 1979.

"Holy Ghost Panel," Horseshoe Canyon, Utah. Photograph by Peter Faris.

In 2019, Dr. James Farmer presented a webinar for the Colorado Rock Art Association in which he stated that he believes that the Holy Ghost panel in Horseshoe Canyon shows purposeful perspective with the smaller figures receding into the distance. I do not believe that the artists of Barrier Canyon Style panels knew the rules of single point visual perspective, but they would have observed that that are farther away look smaller than things that are closer. But, I would not call their use of this technique perspective, I would call the various sizes of figures apparently receding into the distance as an example of my concept of Visual Escapements. Another example, also illustrated in the Holy Ghost panel is that smaller figures are higher up than the bottoms of the larger figures. If the different figures are purposely sized in relation to the other figures in the panel, then one might indeed infer perspective and the use of visual escapements in the composition.

Horseshoe Canyon, Utah. Photograph by Don I. Campbell, May 16, 1984. 

On the other hand, if the figures were independently created and just scattered over the surface without relation to each other than this analysis may not be accurate. Did the artists know what they were doing, and were they doing it on purpose? And can we even know this?

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:

 

Farmer, James, Dr., 2019, Southwestern Rock Art and the Mesoamerican Connection, 18 April 2019, Colorado Rock Art Association online webinar.

A NEW CANDIDATE FOR THE OLDEST ROCK ART - A 67,000+ YEAR OLD HANDPRINT:

Researcher Maxime Aubert  in a limestone cave called Liang Metanduno on Muna. Photograph Ahdi Agus Oktaviana, 21 January 2026.

Almost a year ago I published a column on RockArtBlog on what was claimed to be the oldest rock art discovered so far, a 66,000+ year old hand print in Maltrivieso Cave in Spain (Faris 2025). Now, a new candidate has emerged from a cave on the Indonesian island of Muna, a handprint dated at 67,800+ years of age.

The islands in the Indonesian archipelago were on the transit route for the early humans who ended up in Australia. Some of these people would have settled locally in their tropical paradise, and this was very early indeed in the chronicles of human migration. “In an Indonesian cave system known for its prehistoric art, the oldest cave art yet found was hiding in plain sight. In a cave full of paintings that were well studied over the years, a faint hand stencil on the ceiling had been overlooked. – A nearby stencil dated to about 60,900 years ago.” (Callaway 2026)

Overlooked because of its location and being faded. It will be very interesting to see what future results of these studies will produce. There may be much more to learn there.

The faint handprint between two other images. Image from Griffith University.

Having found this overlooked handprint, their next step was to date it. “The oldest minimum-age constraint we obtained is for a hand stencil (sample LMET2) from Liang Metanduno in Muna Island. This motif is partly covered by ancient coralloid speleothems. This stencil is in a poor state of preservation, comprising only a 14 × 10 cm patch of faded pigment bearing a portion of the fingers and the adjoining palm area. The tip of one finger appears to have been artificially narrowed, either through the additional application of pigment or by moving the hand during pigment application, a distinct type of hand stencil art thus far identified only in Sulawesi. Dating results show that this stencil was produced at least 67.8  thousand years ago (ka) (71.6 ± 3.8 ka).” (Oktavian et al. 2026) This dating was apparently made with uranium/thorium dating of rock deposited over the surface of the handprint. This means that the higher figure of 71.6 thousand years could, in fact, be close to the accurate date.

Close-up of the handprint. Image from Griffith University.

In ages of lowered sea levels the Indonesian archipelago could have been transited on foot, and at times of higher sea level early rafts or boats would suffice for population movement. “It’s not yet clear whose hands made the prints. They could be from an ancient human group called Denisomans who lived in the area and may have interacted with our Homo sapiens ancestors before eventually going extinct. Or they may belong to modern humans venturing away from Africa, who could have wandered through the Middle East and Australia around this time. Fine details on the cave art, including the intentionally modified fingertips, point to a human hand.” (Ramakrishnan 2026) While we are pretty sure that early humans were here because of their early arrival in Australia, we cannot know for certain that Homo sapiens made these prints. As Ramakrishnan states it is possible that Denisovans also could have been in that area although there is not yet any corroborating data for that. We must remember that “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” (although this quote is usually attributed to Carl Sagan its first uses can be traced back to the 1890s).

Additional examples of handprints with narrowed fingers. Image by Maxime Aubert.

This narrowing of the fingertip is very interesting. “Consistent with a style that has, so far, only been found on Sulawesi, the hand is depicted with pointy, clawlike fingers. Researchers believe the style might serve to emphasize the close connection between humans and animals, which is “something we already seem to see in the very early painted art of Sulawesi, with at least one instance of a scene portraying figures that we interpret as representations of part-human, part-animal beings,’ said study co-author Adam Brumm of Griffith University in a statement.” (Callaway 2026) I am assuming that this part-human, part-animal interpretation is seeing the narrowed fingertips as portrayals of hands with claws. This is something that I have to take with a grain of salt. While therianthropic figures mixing human and animal traits are common in rock art the world over a picture of a handprint with narrow fingers does not strike me as related.

 

REFERENCES:

Callaway, K.R., 2026, Oldest cave art ever found discovered in Indonesia, www.scientificamerican.com. Accessed online 21 January 2026.

Faris, Peter, 2025, A newer candidate for the oldest rock art – a 66,000+ year old hand print, 18 January 2025, RockArtBlog, https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/7760124847746733855/3761715241354171606

Oktavian ,Adhi Agus et al., 2026, Rock art from at least 67,800 years ago in Sulawesi, Nature online, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09968-y.

Ramakrishnan, Adithi, 2026, Indonesian handprints are the oldest cave art found yet, 21 January 2026, Associated Press. Accessed online 2 February 2026.

LEPIDOPTERA IN UPPER PALEOLITHIC CAVE ART AND ROCK ART:

Le Trois Freres Cave, France. Image from Nazari, p. 66.

A few months ago I received a very interesting paper from Canada by a researcher with the name of Vazrick Nazari. Nazari discussed the possibility of some Upper Paleolithic imagery representing Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths). Having written about other insects in RockArtBlog (bees, spiders, centipedes, earwigs – see cloud index below) I have found this a compelling subject and am now ready to tackle it.

Nazari set the scene in this way. “A succession of cultures in the Upper Paleolithic are recognized, mainly based on their stone tools. The earliest, the Aurignacian in Europe, lasted roughly from 45,000–28,000 BP (Wood 2011). The hunter-gatherer Aurignacian culture also included artists who created the magnificent decorations at Chauvet cave in the Ardéche Valley of France, one of the earliest known painted caves in Europe. Several Aurignacian sites with parietal art have been identified in France, Spain, Italy, and Eastern Europe. Subsequent Gravettian (30,000–22,000 BP), Solutrean (22,000–17,000 BP) and Magdalenian (17,000–12,000 BP) tool cultures followed the artistic traditions of Chauvet painters. Before the discovery of Chauvet in 1994, Lascaux (18,000 BP) was thought for a long time as the high point of artistic expression in the Paleolithic. Chauvet also upset the notion that representational effectiveness in art gradually improved over time from the early Paleolithic to the end of last Ice Age.” (Nazari 2021:66) The time span, and the range of cultures is immense by our historical standard of a few thousand years.

Nazari then described the tradition and nature of Paleolithic art. “For an art that lasted more than 20,000 years and over vast distances, it would be naive to expect a solid unity or a linear progression: No precise correlations exist between a culture’s technology and its art, and the age and style of Paleolithic art do not always coincide. Nevertheless, many characteristics are common through all Paleolithic cultures that produced cave art. Artists mostly represented animals and abstract geometric designs. Humans were seldom depicted and when they were, they appeared deliberately sketchy or caricatural, possibly because they did not play the same role as the animals in the myths and religious practices of the time.” (Nazari 2021:66) In this assumption, Nazari is assigning the motive of cave art images to their importance in spiritual beliefs of the culture that created the images. This would suggest that if they did not produce images of butterflies or moths, they must have not had any spiritual significance. It is hard to imagine that the beauty of some butterflies did not provoke some sort of spiritual connections though.

He then continued with some examples of insect portrayal in ancient art. “The oldest unambiguous depiction of a lepidopteran in rock art is Neolithic (~7,000 BP) (Schimitschek 1978) (Fig 3f). The conspicuous absence of Lepidoptera in Paleolithic art maybe explained by the difficulties associated with interpretation of the geometric symbols by which the Paleolithic people may have tried to represent butterflies or moths in their art. Among the many categories of geometric symbols in Paleolithic caves, some of the “aviforms” (motifs resembling birds) and “tectiforms” (motifs made up of straight lines, such as rectangular shapes) seem to resemble schematic insects with two or four wings, similar to moths Antenna in resting position. Züchner (2000) assigned several of these signs to “butterfly-or-bird-type” symbols.” (Nazari 2021: 67-69) Here, we find that Nazari is assuming that there are portrayals of Lepidoptera, we just have not recognized them.

Chauvet Cave, France. Image from Zuchner, 2000, fig. 4.

Nazari cited Zuchner (2000) who wrote about butterfly or birdlike signs in Chauvet “these signs of Grotte Chauvet have no exact parallel in other caves. But anyway they are unique. Most similar are the breastlike sign of Le Portel (Ariege), the reliefs in the Roc de Vezac Cave (Dordogne) and the ivory pendants of the Gravettian site of Dolni Vestonice (Moravia). At least one of Chauvet’s signs has much in common with the red drawings of La Pasiega in northern Spain. The ‘butterflies’ of Chauvet may be the realistic predecessors of the varied family of so-called ‘signes en accolade’ (bracket signs) or of ‘Le Placard type’. Excavations at Le Placard proved them to be Solutrean. But there are firm arguments to assume an earlier origin of the type. (Figure 4).” (Zuchner 2000). It seems hard here to tell if Zuchner is finding some relationship or connection between butterflies and women’s breasts, or just pointing out the similarity. In either case Zuchner is now beginning the process of noticing butterfly-like symbols.

Vezac, France. Image from Nazari, 2021, fig. 8, p. 71.

Nazari sees some of these as butterfly symbols as well. “The reniform symbols in Roc de Vezac may be interpreted as two butterflies in the midst of a mating dance. The tectiform sign in Bernifal may depict a mating pair of Amata moths. These moths and butterflies are still present in Dordogne today. The Paleolithic people would have observed these critters individually and in copula. These early humans, with the same cognitive capacity as us, would have known what the mating pair were doing. For them, this simple act would have represented fertility, generation of new life, and the magic of procreation.” (Nazari 2021:71) What sense does it make to portray a butterfly or moth underground in a cave? I have to wrestle with this question while I write on this subject. Of course, one reason is preservation. The caves are where the images are preserved the best. But then I ran across a paper about species of moths that live in caves in Korea (Kim et al. 2018) If some of them can live in caves, then it would make more sense to portray them there.

North American Plains culture butterfly symbol. Image from legendsofamerica.com.

North American First Nations peoples had symbols for butterflies and moths that were used in their art.

Possible moth image at Three Rivers Site, New Mexico. Photograph by Paul and Joy Foster.

And I have photographed one petroglyphs at the Three Rivers Petroglyph site in New Mexico that might represent a moth based upon the antenna.

Butterfly pictograph from Chhattisgarh, India. Image from Tandan et al., 2026.

Finally, I found a beautifully portrayed butterfly from India. “The first evidence of butterfly on rock painting is reported here from Central India  along with a total of 48 species of butterflies photographed in Putka Hills, Korba district of Chhattisgarh, India. General analysis, including consultation with experts and comparative studies with known butterfly taxa, indicates that the depicted butterfly corresponds to the family Papilionidae. The size and shape of the butterfly in the rock painting are extremely comparable to the Papilionidae butterflies that are still seen in the region today. We noticed that butterflies of family Papilionidae are abundant and most visible in the area. Their abundance and the remarkable beauty, combined with their ease of sight, most certainly drew the attention of ancient humans, motivating them to include these butterflies into their rock art as a form of artistic expression.” (Tandan et al. 2026)

So, are all of these actually meant to be butterflies and/or moths? Probably not, but some are apparently accurate purposeful renditions of lepidopterae.  And the whole subject adds a new area of interest in rock art altogether, and something new to look out for when in the field. See you out there.

NOTE: Some images in this column 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.

PRIMARY REFERENCES:

Kim, Do Sung, Soeng Joon Park, Sang Hoon Han, Don Won Choi, Young Gun Choi, Hyun Jung Kim, Dong Gun Kim, Hoonbok Yi, 2018, Ecological characteristics of a cave-dwelling moth species, Thiphosa dubitata (Lepidoptera: Geometridae), in Baram and Ssang caves in Gwanwon Province, Korea, https://doi.org/10.1111/1748-5967.12254. Accessed online 5 January 2026/

Nazari, Vazrick, 2021, Lepidoptera in Upper Paleolithic Art, pp. 66-72, Antenna 2021: 45 (2), pp. 66-72.

Tandan, Hit Narayan, Ashok Pradhan, Nidgi Singh, Dinesh Kumar, Avinash Yadav, Ravi Naidu and Swati Tandan, 2026, Lemru Elephant Reserve Found First Butterfly Depiction in Rock Painting: A Remarkable Discovery From Korba, Chhattisgarh, Indian Journal of Entomology 88:111-113. doi://10.55446/IJE.2025.2005. Accessed online 5 January 2026.

Züchner, C., 2000, Grotte Chauvet archaeologically dated. Accessed online at: Tracce Rock Art Bulletin, p. 12. http://www.rupestre.net/tracce/?p=2812.

SECONDARY REFERENCE:

Schimitschek, E., 1978, Ein Schmetterlingsidol im Val Camonica aus dem Neolithikum. Anzeiger für Schädlingskunde Pflanzenschutz Umweltschutz 51: 113–115.

ACOUSTICS REVISITED - ECHOES AT ROCK ART SITES:

 

Custom-built raft used for sommertime recording. Photograph by Julia Shpinitskaya.

I have always been a little skeptical of claims that rock art was placed at sites because these sites provide echoes. Not that there can’t have been a relationship between echoes and the art, but that I think that we need more proof than just the presence of echoes at rock art sites. Remember, the best sites for echoes – large, smooth cliff faces- are also probably the best sites for placing rock art. Ethnographic references would certainly help strengthen such claims.

Motifs at Värikallio, Finland. Photograph by Julia Shpinitskaya.

A study (Rainio et al. 2024) has now been conducted in the lake district of Finland by a team from the University of Helsinki which attempts to relates echoes to their rock art. “In this study, we have sought to recapture the sonic practices and sensory experiences of prehistoric hunter-gatherers by examining the acoustic characteristics of their rock art sites. The sites consist of vertical granite cliffs and boulders, located on the shores of lakes, with paintings of humans, boats, and animals. The impulse response measurements indicate that the unchanged cliffs (those whose relation to the water level was the same as in ancient times) reflect sound more efficiently, strongly, and accurately than the nearby reference rocks, or the painted rocks where the water levels have changed. The psychoacoustic criterion and auralization demonstrations indicate that these reflections generated clearly distinct single-repeat echoes, which endowed sounds and noises produced in front of the cliffs with their auditory mirror images.” (Rainio et al. 2024) While their study is certainly scientific, with frequency and volume measurements recorded, I do not believe that their interpretation is correct, and the use of scientific sounding terminology such as “psychoacoustic criterion and auralization” does not make their conclusions accurate or correct. I have referred to this before as hypervocabulation - the use of these scientific sounding words to make a statement come across as important.

Handprint, and an elk with handprint antlers at Astuvansalmi, Finland. Photograph by Julia Shpinitskaya.

“In such an acoustic space, a person approaching the cliff could hear a voice similar to themself responding faster and louder from the direction of the paintings, while the virtual source of the voice moved from inside the cliff to its surface, exactly where the painted images were. Thus, the auditory and visual images overlapped, merging into one multimodal experience.” (Rainio et al. 2024) It seems to me to be common sense that as you get closer to the cliff the echo would return more quickly and somewhat louder. And, I have no idea what would prompt a phrase like “the virtual source of the voice moved from inside the cliff to its surface.”  I cannot see the circumstances that would make one think that the echo was coming from inside the cliff instead of bouncing back from the surface.

“Although the exact sounds or noises produced by the hunter-gatherers are beyond our reach, the study shows that the physical environment participated strongly, actively, and vividly in their sonic activities, communicating and co-vibrating with them and creating encounters based on reciprocity between the human and more-than-human worlds.” (Rainio et al. 2024) Although Rainio et al. are correct here that we cannot know the “exact sounds or noises produced by the hunter-gatherers” I think we can make some pretty good guesses. First, I would expect to hear vocalizations, either singing or calls of some sort. Second, I would think that percussive sounds would have been very effective, either the clapping of hands or banging sticks or rocks together to make an echo.

Human holdin a snake at Keltavuori, Finland. Photograph by Julia Shpinitskaya.

And in summation they write “These specific results only apply to the rock art sites in Finland, but similar acoustic environments may also be found elsewhere, especially at rock art sites comprising vertical smooth cliffs by the water. For the history of sound and music, the research provides an example of how different the role and significance of sound reflections could have been in past societies.” (Rainio et al. 2024) The operant phrase in this quotation is ‘could have been.’ None of this really proves anything.

All in all, I think this is much ado about very little. Yes, echoes bounce back at rock art sites, but that does not mean they are related. Many rock art sites do not produce an effective echo, and if there was a relationship, what about all of the places where you can get an echo but there is no rock art? While I am sure that some sites illustrate a connection between the acoustics and rock art I think that applying this explanation, like archeoastronomy, is probably somewhat overdone. I have been in Horseshoe Canyon, Utah, and found someone running around in front of the Holy Ghost panel hitting rocks with a piece of elk antler. I have also been to sites in western Colorado where a ‘researcher’ was snapping a rat trap to record echoes. It is, however, nice to see actual science applied in this case.

NOTE: For further information you should read the original report listed below.

REFERENCE:

Rainio, Riitta, Julia Shpinitskaya, Paavo Rinkkala, Jami Pekkanen, Perttu Kesäniemi & Mikko Ojanen, 2024,  Reflected encounters at hunter-gatherer rock art sites by the water, Sound Studies, 24 Nov 2024. DOI: 10.1080/20551940.2024.2419293. Accessed online 25 November 1924.

TRAINING AI TO DETERMINE THE GENDER OF THE MAKERS OF FINGER FLUTING ON CAVE WALLS:

Finger fluting at Gargas Cave, France. Image from Clottes, 2002.

We are all probably aware of the existance finger fluting in caves, it is found all over the world, but it has always been somewhat peripheral to the subject of cave art itself. It is, however, purposeful markings made by people on the cave walls so it needs to be covered in any consideration of cave art. Various examples have been attributed to Neandertals, as well as Homo sapiens men, women and children. Now, a team in Australia is using artificial intelligence to try to clarify the makers of these marks.

“Flutings have the potential to reveal information about age, sex, height, handedness and idiosyncratic markmaking choices among unique individuals who form part of larger communities of practice. However, previous methods for making any determination about the individual artist from finger flutings have been shown to be unreliable4. Accordingly, we propose a novel digital archaeology approach to begin understanding this enigmatic form of rock art by leveraging machine learning (ML) as a tool for uncovering patterns from two datasets, one tactile and one virtual, collected from a modern population. We aimed to determine whether ML can reveal subtle differences in the sex of the artist based on their finger-fluted images.” (Jalandoni et al. 2025:1) In other words they will attempt to have machine learning programs learn to distinguish information like gender and age by analyzing finger fluting created by volunteers. If successful, this could then be applied to finger fluting in cave walls to learn more about the persons who originally created the marks.

Finger fluting attributed to Neandertals, Noire Valley, France. Image from Jean Claude Marquet.

“Experiments were conducted - both with adult participants in a tactile setup and using VR headsets in a custom-built program – to explore whether image-recognition methods could learn enough from finger fluting images made by modern people to identify the sex of the person who created them.” (Lock and Egan 2025:1) The team had participants actually make finger flutings in clay as well as virtually while being videotaped. “Two controlled experiments with 96 adult participants were conducted with each person creating nine flutings twice: once on a moonmilk clay substitute developed to mimic the look and feel of cave surfaces and once in virtual reality (VR) using Meta Quest 3. Images were taken of all the flutings, which were then curated and two common image-recognition models were trained on them. (Lock and Egan 2025:1-2)

Disappointingly, the tests did not produce reliable results. “The VR images did not yield reliable sex classification; even when accuracy looked acceptable in places, overall discrimination and balance were weak. But the tactile images performed much better. ‘Under one training condition, models reached about 84% accuracy, and one model achieved a relatively strong discrimination score.’ Dr. Tuxworth said. However, the models did learn patterns specific to the dataset; for example, subtle artifacts of the setup, rather than robust features of fluting that would hold elsewhere, which meant there was more work to be done.” (Lock and Egan 2025:1-2) Doctor Gervase Tuxworth is one of the experimental team that conducted this study. His statement suggests that the test results were highly variable.

Paleolithic finger fluting from Rouffignac Cave, France. Online image, public domain.

“Overall, the deep learning models achieved high accuracy during training, with AUC values exceeding 0.85 for certain tactile image conditions. These results suggest that the models effectively learned patterns within the tactile dataset and demonstrated strong discrimination between male and female-generated finger fluting images. However, the relatively lower AUC values for virtual images, coupled with their unstable test accuracy, indicate that they do not provide sufficiently distinct features for reliable sex classification. This discrepancy highlights the greater robustness of tactile images over virtual images in capturing relevant classification features. Despite the promising performance on tactile images, deep learning models exhibited a pronounced disparity between training and test performance. While training accuracy consistently increased, reaching near-perfect levels in the later epochs, test accuracy remained unstable and showed no substantial improvement over time. This pattern indicates overfitting, where the models effectively learn dataset-specific features but fail to generalize to unseen test data.” (Jalandoni et al. 2025:10) I find the previous paragraph somewhat confusing. It states “accuracy consistently increased, reaching near-perfect levels” and “accuracy remained unstable and showed no substantial improvement” in two contiguous sentences. In any case, the team did not get reliable results.

Finger fluting made by children, Rouffignac Cave, France. Online image, public domain.

There are a number of possible sources of inaccuracy in the test results.“The instability in test accuracy further suggests that the models struggle to extract robust and generalizable patterns from the finger fluting images, ultimately limiting their reliability for sex classification. A possible contributing factor to this challenge could be individual variation in hand size and fluting characteristics. For example, some females may have larger hands and exhibit stronger fluting patterns resembling those of males, while some males may have smaller hands and display lighter, less pronounced fluting strength. This variability could confuse the model, making it difficult to accurately differentiate between sexes and ultimately hindering its performance on the test set. These results underscore the critical need to increase the dataset size to alleviate overfitting and improve the model’s generalizability. Moreover, the inherent variability in finger fluting images may impose fundamental limitations on the feasibility of using deep learning for sex classification, suggesting that alternative approaches or additional contextual data may be necessary to enhance classification accuracy. The limited success of the tactile data in sex prediction underscores the importance of material-based approaches in understanding finger flutings. While the VR data failed to provide useful results, it opens up new and exciting possibilities for exploring the dynamic aspects of fluting and artistic intent in the future. While a modest achievement, this study highlights the potential of ML to enhance traditional archaeological methods”. (Jalandoni et al. 2025:10) Not every try is guaranteed success.

Koonalda Cave finger flutings, Australia. Photograph Robert Bednarik, 1979.

So, this test did not manage to display reliable accuracy, too many variables in the creation of finger fluting seemingly overwhelmed the software. Also, the experiment apparently did not include children, and it is thought that much finger fluting, at least in European cave contexts, was created by children. If successful, this project would have been a really wonderful development but, alas, it was not. Better luck next time.

NOTE: Some images in this column 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:

Andrea Jaladoni, Robert Haubt, Calum Farrar, Gervase Tuxworth , Zhongyi Zhang , Keryn Walshe and April Nowell, 2025, Using digital archaeology and machine learning to determine sex in finger flutings, Scientific Reports, 15:34842. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-18098-4. Accessed online 12 October 2025.

Lock, Lisa, and Robert Egan, 2025, VR experiments train AI to identify ancient finger-fluting artists, 16 October 2025, The GIST, by Griffith University, https://phys.org/news/2025-10-vr-ai-ancient-finger-fluting.html.

MUSIC IN ROCK ART – REVISITED AGAIN – AEROPHONES:

 

Pictograph panel (digitally enhanced), Cedarburg, South Africa. Photograph by Neil Rusch.

RockArtBlog has had a number of columns in the past about music and rock art. This column is to present a painted panel from Cedarburg, South Africa (Matjes River), that seems to show a group of four anthropomorphs who are whirling bull-roarers. Neil Rusch and Sara Wurz published a paper (2022) on this panel and the sounds made by reconstructions of the instruments portrayed.

In 2020, Joshua Kumbani called for more research into ancient music in archeological contexts. “Research in music archaeology in southern Africa has just begun. Available evidence dates back from around 10,000 years ago, from the Later Stone Age up to the Iron Age. The artifacts fall into two groups, namely aerophones, where sound is produced by vibrating air, and idiophones, where sound is produced by solid material vibrating. These artifacts include spinning disks, bullroarers, bone tubes that could have been used as flutes or whistles, clay whistles, keys from thumb pianos (also called lamellophones or mbiras), musical bells and an ivory trumpet. The list is not exhaustive and more research needs to be conducted.” (Kumbani 2020) This actually strikes me as a pretty comprehensive list. Kumbani has certainly been doing his homework.

Pictograph panel (digitally enhanced), close-up of two central figures, Cedarburg, South Africa. Photograph by Neil Rusch.

 “These music-related or sound-producing artifacts are made from various materials, including bone, ivory, metal and clay. The artifacts show how integral sound and music production was in the socio-cultural practices of people in the past, most likely for entertainment and rituals. Sound production and music making is a sign of being fully human. Recent experimental work established that some Later Stone Age bone implements from the Klasies River Mouth and Matjes River sites are a spinning disk and a bullroarer respectively. Their replicas produced powerful whirring sounds and they can be referred to as sound-producing implements even though the purpose of the sound or their use cannot be clearly ascertained. They could have been used as signalling implements, toys, in ritual settings or in musical contexts, among others. Nowadays these implements are seldom found in the region.” (Kumbani 2020) Music making – yes. But, the manufacture of these implements to control sound, yes, that is pretty human. There is, of course, the Australian Palm Cockatoo that breaks off a stick to drum on a limb or tree trunk. This is, in fact, apparently a case of non-human intentional music making – but it is a really isolated example (see Heinsohn et al. 2017).

When we are talking about art history we often overlook the importance on non-visual arts: music, poetry, etc. Rusch and Wurz have focused on the instruments indicated in the rock art panel from Cedarberg. “Our archaeoacoustic research is focused on bringing to life sounds made by people living in the past. No aural record remains but people did dance, sing and clap. Instruments either no longer exist or are extremely rare. One exception are the gong rocks, known as lithophones, which ring when struck and produce purposeful, percussive sounds. Occasionally, unfamiliar and rare musical instruments are depicted in rock paintings. In a new study we turned our ears to a rock painting in the Cederberg Mountains in South Africa’s Western Cape province. The human figures in this painting have previously been interpreted as healers holding fly-whisks and doing a trance-dance. Fly-whisks were an important accessory for the dance because they were thought to keep arrows of sickness at bay.” (Rush and Wurz 2022) Concerning ‘gong rocks’ (lithophones) I have previously written a number of columns on RockArtBlog. Go to the cloud index at the bottom and look for the word ‘lithophone.’ But this is about bull-roarers.

Bull-roarers. Online image, public domain.

Rusch and Wurz interpreted what they observed on the panel as what in western sources are known as bull-roarers. I have to agree with this. Given that the figures seem to be waving slender cords with something on the end bull-roarers would seem to be the logical interpretation. “But our results suggest that the fly-whisks are in fact musical instruments of a type known as a !goin !goin – a name that only exists in the now extinct ǀXam language that was spoken by hunter-gatherers in central southern Africa. The !goin !goin is an aerophone; these instruments produce sound by creating vibrations in the air when they are spun around their axes. To reach this conclusion we combined digital image recovery techniques with instruments created from life-size templates based on our findings. The eight instruments were played in a Cape Town sound studio and the sounds were recorded. Sound produced by the recreated instruments convincingly matches the sound spectrum (90 – 150 Hz) produced by a similar 19th century model of the !goin !goin aerophone, which is archived in the Kirby Collection of Musical Instruments, curated by the University of Cape Town’s College of Music.” (Rush and Wurz 2022) So, this particular panel is the group of figures with bull-roarers.  

West African fly whisk. Online image, public domain.

Noticing that the pictograph panel shows multiple musicians playing the !goin !goin aerophone Rush and Wurz also recorded multiple examples played at the same time. They found that by varying the speed of one or the other instrument they could create a number of different sound effects. They call this ability ‘compositional.’ “This compositional aspect of the instrument was not well known at all so we delved deeper. In the Special Collections archive at the University of Cape Town we found an obscure description of the !goin !goin which confirmed, as does the Cederberg painting, that groups did play the instruments together. ‘An instrument consisting of a blade of wood attached to a little stick, which is held in the hand. The performer grasping the little stick whirls the blade about in the air, producing a whirring sound. It is used by both !sexes among the Bushmen [another name used for the San and today considered derogatory by some] and, at times, by a number of persons together with the view to causing rain.’ ǀXam-speaking hunter gatherers associated the sound of the !goin !goin with honey bees  They even went so far as to say that with the !goin !goin  they could “move bees”. This complements the previous statement linking the instrument’s sound with “causing rain”. The archive statement also confirms that both men and women worked with rain, using the sound of the !goin !goin  for this purpose.” (Rush and Wurz 2022) It is really very easy to imagine the sound of multiple bull-roarers sounding like a swarm of bees.

Kumbani's "spinnin discs." Kumbani et al., 2019.

Kumbani et al. (2020) also refers to a second type of aerophone which he calls simply a ‘spinning disc.’ Kumbani’s ‘spinnin disc’ is a piece of bone with two holes drilled near the center. A loop of cord is tied through those holes, held between both hands,  and by rhythmically pulling the ends apart and then relaxing to let it spin and wind up the other way, one can achieve pulses of a whirring sound. But I know of no examples of these pictured in ancient rock art. So we turn our focus and attention back to the bull-roarers.

Such in-depth analysis of the recorded sound frequencies of !goin !goins goes past the point of my interest in the panel, but, I have frequently written about music related to rock art, and this is a marvelous example. Their identification of the instruments involved gives us a whole new aspect to appreciate. And, their innovation of playing more than one at the same time opens new areas of experimental archaeology of music.

NOTE: Some images in this column 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.

PRIMARY REFERENCES:

Kumbani, Joshua, 2020, What archaeology tells us about the music and sounds made by Africa’s ancestors, 24 August 2020, https://theconversation.com. Accessed online 2 January 2025.

Kumbani, Joshua et al., 2019, A functional investigation of southern Cape Later Stone Age artifacts resembling aerophones, Journal of Archaeological Science Reports, April 2019, DOI:10.1016/j.jasrep.2019.02.021. Accessed online from Researchgate, 26 August 2025.

Rusch, Neil, and Sara Wurz, 2022, How the music of an ancient rock painting was brought to life, 29 June 2022, https://theconversation.com. Accessed online 2 January 2025.

SECONDARY REFERENCE:

Heinsohn, Robert et al., 2017, Tool-assisted rhythmic drimming in palm cockatoos shares key elements of human instrumental music, 28 June 2017, Science Advances, Vol. 3, Issue 6. DOI:10.1126/sciadv.1602399. Accessed online 13 November 2025.