HOW THE NATURAL 'GLAZES' ON THE WALLS OF KIMBERLEY ROCK SHELTERS HELP REVEAL THE WORLD THE ARTISTS LIVED IN:

Glaze mineral accretion over painted panel, photograph Cecilia Myers, Green et al.

For some time one dream of rock art researchers has been the development of scientific procedures that can directly date rock art. From Dr. Ronald I. Dorn’s pioneering work with cation-ratio dating in the early 1980s to David Whitley and others who worked with radiocarbon dating techniques in the early 1990s a number of direct dating techniques have been tried on rock art with varying degrees of success. And some of these successes have been notable. Nowadays many pictographs can be dated with C¹⁴ dating based upon carbon in their pigments, in the vehicle used to make the paint, or the binder (if present).

Now, seemingly, a team of scientists in Australia has accomplished direct dating from petroglyph panels. “The Kimberley region is host to Australia’s oldest known rock paintings. But people were carving engravings into some of these rocks before they were creating paintings. – The oldest paintings are at least 17,300 years old, and the engravings are thought to be even older – but they have so far proved much harder to date accurately.” (Green and Finch 2021)

Drysdale River, oxcalate rich accretion in fracture post dates painted figure, photograph Cecilia Myers, Green et al.

This team of Australian scientists has now found datable components in the patina formed on the surface of the petroglyphs allowing them to begin to crack this puzzle.

“Some of the rocks themselves are covered with natural, glaze-like mineral coatings that can help reveal key evidence. These dark, shiny deposits on the surface of the rock are less than a centimeter thick. Yet they have detailed internal structures, featuring alternating light and dark layers of different minerals. Our aim was to develop methods to reliably date the formation of these coatings and provide age brackets for any associated engravings. However, during this process, we also discovered it is possible to match layers found in samples collected at rock shelters up to 90 kilometers apart.” (Green and Finch 2021)

Microscope image of alternating layers, photograph Helen Green, Green and Finch.

The team’s research “supports earlier findings that layers within the glaze structure represent alternating environmental conditions in Kimberley rock shelters, that repeated over thousands of years. Our model suggests that during drier conditions, brush fires produce as, which builds up on shelter surfaces. This ash contains a range of minerals, including carbonates and sulfates. We suggest that under the right conditions, these minerals provide nutrients that allowed microbes to live on these shelter surfaces. In the process of digesting these nutrients, the microbes excrete a compound called oxalic acid, which combines with the calcium in the ash deposits to form calcium oxalate.” (Green and Finch 2021)

“These dark calcium oxalate layers also contain carbon that was absorbed from the atmosphere and digested by the microbes that created these deposits. This meant we could use a technique called radiocarbon dating to determine the age of these individual layers.” (Green and Finch 2021) So, not only is carbon a component of the oxalate, but the oxalate layers possess enveloped carbon particles which can be radiocarbon dated.

With this technology, any rock art with this kind of patina or coating should be a candidate for the estimation of its minimum age by testing the coating next to the surface of the stone.

Engraved grooves within dark oxalate surface, Drysdale River, photograph Cecilia Myers, Green et al.

“Globally, oxalate-rich accretions have been found on rock art panels, with the carbon component of the oxalate mineral providing a clear opportunity for radiocarbon dating of associated motifs. Radiocarbon dating of oxalate accretions has provided minimum and, in some cases, bracketing ages for associated rock art, although concerns have been raised about the source of the dated carbon, the possibility of open-system behavior in the accretions, and possibilities of sample contamination by either older or younger organic constituents. Chemical pretreatment procedures have been used with apparent success in dating studies to isolate pure oxalates from other organic materials present, suggesting that some of these risks can be avoided or controlled by improved analytical protocols and a better understanding of their formation mechanism and is essential in relating radiocarbon dates to the time of mineral formation, which may, in turn, be related to associated rock art.” (Green et al. 2021)

The team was also able to cross-reference dates and layers of deposition from other caves in the region suggesting that this phenomenon could be applied to regional studies, not just to specific samples.

“Radiocarbon dating suggests these layers were deposited around the same time showing their formation is not specific to particular rock shelters, but controlled by environmental changes on a regional scale. Dating these deposits can therefore provide reliable age brackets for any associated engravings, while also helping us better understand the climate and environments in which the artists lived.” (Green and Finch 2021) So, not only is this allowing dating of the petroglyphs, it allows understanding of the “climate and environment” at the time it was produced.

Calcium oxalate, known as oxalate of lime in archaic terminology, is a calcium salt of oxalic acid with a chemical formula of CaC₂O₄(H₂O)x. It is also found in 76% of human kidney stones. (Wikipedia) Could this be the reason for our feelings of connection to rock art? While not every petroglyph panel has such deposits on its surface, the ones that do now can be objectively dated, and that is a gift to all rock art researchers (even if kidney stones are not).

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:

Green, Helen et al., 2021, Dating correlated microlayers in oxalate accretions from rock art shelters: New archives of paleoenvironments and human activity, 13 August 2021, Science Advances, Volume 7, Number 33.

Green, Helen, and Damien Finch, 2021, How the natural ‘glazes’ on the walls of Kimberley rock shelters help reveal the world the artists lived in, 16 August 2021, https://phys.org/news/2021-08-natural-glazes-walls-kimberley-reveal.html

Wikipedia, Calcium Oxalate,  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_oxalate, accessed on 7 October 2021.

CLIMATE CHANGE ILLUSTRATED IN ROCK ART/HISTORIC INSCRIPTIONS - HUNGER STONES REVISITED:

An exposed Hunger Stone inscription. Internet photograph, public domain.

There are various implications in climate change that can be seen in rock art, or ways that the changing climate affects rock art. One of the simplest, and most obvious to illustrate, is drought caused by climatic warming and announced by Hunger Stones.

Readers of RockArtBlog will remember that I include inscriptions on stone as a part of our field of interest. I cannot personally find the dividing line between petroglyphs or pictographs and various forms of writing (which can be pictograms such as Egyptian hieroglyphs). I have recently run across a form of inscription carved in stone that I had been previously unaware of - the “Hunger Stone.” Art historians, and historians in general, will have heard of nilometers, the various inscriptions carved into rock that allowed Egyptians to judge the height of the Nile flood phase each year. These have been used for thousands of years. Hunger Stones (hungersteins) are sort of the opposite of this. The nilometer measures the height of the water in the Nile, a hunger stone indicates that the water level is dangerously low. When the river flow is low enough that the inscription is exposed the inhabitants are, in effect, warned that famine may occur because of water shortage, lack of moisture and crop failure.

"If you see me, weep." Elbe river, Decin, Czech Republic. Internet photograph, public domain.

Hunger stones are “a type of hydrological landmark common in Central Europe. Hunger stones serve as famine memorials and warnings and were erected in Germany and in ethnic German settlements throughout Europe in the 15^th through 19^th centuries. These stones were embedded into a river during droughts to mark the water level as a warning to future generations that they will have to endure famine-related hardships if the water sinks to this level again. One famous example in the Elbe river in Děčín, Czech Republic, has ‘Wenn du mich siehst, dann weine’ (lit. ‘If you see me, weep’) carved into it as a warning.

Many of these stones, featuring carvings or other artwork, were erected following the hunger crisis of 1816-1817 caused by the eruptions of the Tambora volcano. In 1918, a hunger stone on the bed of the Elbe River near Tetschen, became exposed during a period of low water coincident to the wartime famines of World War I. Similar hunger stones in the river were uncovered again during a drought in 2018.” (Wikipedia)

Dry Sangone river, Turin, Italy. Internet photograph, public domain.

The “If You See Me, Weep” warning had been carved in German by boatman and riverside innkeeper Franz Mayer during a period of low water in 1904 while the country was still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. (Marchal 2018) Others have considerably less carving bearing only dates marking the low water levels for that specific year.

Boatmen and rafters had earned their livelihoods by ferrying goods and passengers back and forth over the river, and when the river water was too low their business and income collapsed. “The rafters engraved the dates of those bad years on the soft sandstone boulders typical for this region, hence the name ‘Hunger Stone.’ About 20 such boulders, engraved with markers and dates going back centuries, can still be found on the banks of the Elbe, a major central European waterway running from the Czech Republic through Germany to the North Sea.” (Marchal 2018)

Dry port, Velence, Hungary. Internet photograph, public domain.

The 2018 exposure of that stone was caused by drought that “affected around 94 percent of the Czech Republic, causing crop damage estimated at nine to 11 billion koruna (350-427 million euros, $408-500 million), according to the Agrarian Chamber.” (Marchal 2018) It would seem that, in spite of modern dams and water control features, the message of the hunger stones is still relevant to modern times, and in the age of global warning, may become ever more pertinent as the current drought in Europe drops water levels to new record lows.

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:

Marchal, Jan, 2018 ‘Hunger Stones’ Tell Elbe’s Centuries-Old Tale of Drought, September 10, 2018, https://phys.org/news/2018-09-hunger-stones-elbe-centuries-old-tale.html

Wikipedia, Hunger Stone, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_stone

BALLCOURT PETROGLYPHS IN MEXICO MARK SACRIFICE SITES:

On 28 August 2021, I posted a column titled “T-Shaped Doorways, Ballcourts, Pipettes, and the Wind” (Faris 2021) which postulated a relationship between the rock art symbols known as pipettes, Ancestral Pueblo T-shaped doorways, the Mayan character for wind, and Mesoamerican ballcourts.

Ballcourt petroglyph from El Gentil site. Photograph Alex Badillo, Figure 6A. page 12.

Now, a concentration of thirty petroglyphs representing the ballcourts themselves has been recorded in Mexico on the north slope of the Sierra Sur. Representations of ballcourts carved in stone have been found throughout a large area of Mesoamerica but this column will visit the thirty newly discovered ones near Quiechapa.

Contour diagram of a cluster of Ballcourt petroglyphs. Diagram by Alex Badillo, from Figure 8. page 15.

“During an archaeological survey in the municipality of San Pedro Martir Quiechapa, Oaxaca, Mexico, archaeologists from the Proyecto Arqueologico de Quiechapa (PAQuie) encountered and documented a number of carved stone elements. Of particular interest are the 30 representations of ballcourts carved into natural rock outcrops at two sites in the region. This is the highest density in which this type of ballcourt representation occurs throughout Mesoamerica.” (Badillo 2022)

Contour diagram of Ballcourt petroglyph from El Gentil site. Diagram by Alex Badillo, from Figure 10. page 18.

These carved ballcourts were found in two groupings. At a location named El Gentil, twenty-two carved ballcourts measured from 8.0 cm to 34.1 cm in length. (p. 13) Eight more carved ballcourts were identified at a location named El Derrumbadero, with more considered possible ballcourts but too eroded for positive identification.

“It’s not clear what the carvings were used for, but the researchers suggested that ancient Mesoamericans may have used them for rituals. The Spanish priest Juan Ruiz de Alarcon (lived 1581 to 1639), who lived in what is now Mexico following Spain’s conquest of the area in the 16^th century, ‘describes certain rituals during which a [Mesoamerican] priest would have people spill blood into small cavities that they had made in stone,’ Badillo wrote in the study, noting that those cavities could include the ballcourt carvings.” (Jarus 2022) This is not the fallback designation of “ritual or ceremonial” for any feature not immediately understood so often indulged in by archaeologists. This is, in fact, a very reasonable proposition given the ritual and ceremonial nature of the hipball game played in the large architectural ballcourts. This could, of course, be tested with blood protein residue testing.

"The Classic Maya ballgame was far more than a frivolous sport: it was, rather, a ritual correlation of war and human sacrifice. - the Classic Maya confirm the nature of the ballgame by the emphasis chosen in their ballgame art and inscriptions: in that art, they saw the ballgame as part of a larger ritual cycle, with a focus on huan sacrifice." (Miller and Houston 1987:63)

Mayan Ballcourt from Monte Alban, view from above. From Badillo, Figure 6B, page 12.

"The association between human sacrifice and the ballgame appears rather late in the archaeological record, no earlier than the Classic era. The association was perticularly strong within the Classic Veracruz and the Maya cultures, where the most explicit of human sacrifice can be seen in the ballcourt panels - for example at El Tajin (850-1100 CE) and at Chichen Itza (900-1200 CE) - as well as on the decapitated ballplayer stelae from the Classic Veracruz site of Aparicio (700-900 CE). The Postclassic Maya religious and quasi-historical narrative, the Popol Vuh, also links human sacrifice with the ballgame. Captives were often shown in Maya art, and it is assumed that these captives were sacrificed after losing a rigged ritual ballgame." (Wikipedia)

So the range of these sacrifices ranged from auto-da-fe in which a participant let some of his own blood as a sacrifice to the gods, to the death by execution of a prisoner. We are told that the gods needed regular infustions of blood to keep the world operating in order.

"These seemingly inert stone carvings in Quiechapa's landscape may have been part of deeply meaningful and active social performances that included ritual bloodletting for many possible purposes, including mainting balance and agricultural fertility, marking important moments in time, or fomenting intra- and inter-community bonds. However, further studies that attempt to understand the details of these fitual performances are required to go beyond the hypothetical understanding of these features. In the end, many more questions are left unanswered about the meaning of these carvings and how they were understood and used in the pre-Hispanic past by the prople who lived in rural Quiechapa on the northern slope of the Sierra Sur region." (Badillo 2022:27-8)

As I stated above, whether or not sacrificial blood was ever deposited in these ballcourt-shaped carvings could be relatively easily determined with blood protein residue testing of the kind that is performed on stone tools. It would be really interesting to find out on way or another.

Ballcourt at Toninas, Chiapas, Mexico. Illustration from latinamericanstudies.org.

Another aspect of the ritual significance of the Maya ballgame has recently presented itself in excavations at Tonina. "Tonina, meaning 'house of stone' in the Tzeltal language was originally called Po'p, Po or Popo in Classic Maya texts. The city is located in the Chiapas highlands of southern Mexico, east of the town of Ocosingo. The site contains two groups of temple-pyramids set on terraces rising some 71 metres above a central plaza, two ballcourts, and over 100 carved monuments that mainly date from the 6th century through to the 9th centuries AD during the classic period." (HeritageDaily 2022)

In one of the larger temple pyramids researchers discovered a crypt in 2020. A labrynth containing a series of small vaults and rooms connected by stairways led to an antechamber and the crypt at a depth of 8 meters inside the pyramid and dating from the 7th and 8th centuries AD. "The antechamber and crypt have small niches where the researchers found more than 400 vessels filled with organic material such as human ashes, charcoal, rubber and roots. A miicroscopic analysis of the organic material revealed that the human ashes (likely the remains of high-ranking people or Maya rulers) was used in the vulcanization process for hardening rubber, used for making balled used in Maya ritual ball games played in the ballcourts at Tonina." (HeritageDaily 2022)

The discovery that the ball itself used in the sacred Maya ballgame is created with the ashes of sacred ancestors gives a whole new level of meaning to the ritual importance of the game and the rites associated with it.

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:

Badillo, Alex Elvis, 2022, Ballcourt Representations in Quiechapa, Oaxaca, Mexico: Ritual Offerings, Fertility, and Life, 11 January 2022, Cambridge University Press (online), https://www.cambridge.org

Faris, Peter, 2021, T-Shaped Doorways, Ballcourts, Pipettes, and the Wind, RockArtBlog, https://rockartblog.blogspot.com/search/label/pipettes

HeritageDaily, 2022, Maya crypt contains cremation burials used for making rubber balls in ritual ball games, 2 August 2022, accessed 2 August 2022.

Jarus, Owen, 2022, Ancient ritual bloodletting may have been performed at carvings found in Mexico, 3 May 2022, https://www.livescience.com, accessioned 4 May 2022.

Miller, Mary Ellen, and Stephen D. Houston, 1987, The Classic Maya Ballgame and its Architectural Setting, Academia.edu

Wikipedia, Mesoamerican Ballgame, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_ballgame. Accessed on 18 June 2022.

 

PREHISTORIC COLLECTING:

One aspect of art that I have not seen discussed in relation to rock art is collecting. The whole point of having something as non-utilitarian as art is its possession, or collecting it. In this paper I am using the term “collection,” not as the gathering or acquiring of material for utilitarian purposes, but in the sense of keeping it in one’s possession for non-utilitarian purposes (as in a modern stamp collection). Many, although not all, of these collected items were also purposely modified to some extent making them also Paleoart.

“Paleoart of the Lower Paleolithic period seems to have been found for well over 150 years but it has remained largely ignored, misinterpreted, or its existence was fundamentally denied. Most archaeologists and paleoanthropologists of recent decades attempt to refute anthropogenically modified objects located in Lower and Middle Paleolithic contexts as being taphonomic accidents or ‘natural’ in origin. Their presumption is that all Lower and Middle Paleolithic humans (including Homo habilis, H. rudolfensis, H. ergaster, H. georgicus, H. erectus, H. heidelbergensis, and H. sapiens neanderthalensis) were cognitively incapable of expressing themselves through ‘art’ or exograms. They ‘know’ these hominins were cognitively incapable of expression because they were not modern humans; they have been convicted of mental deficiency by negative evidence (Speth 2004). This is despite the clear evidence that these hominins have engaged in maritime colonization since approximately a million years ago, and have crossed sea barriers of up to 189 km to reach over twenty islands and one continent prior to having ‘Upper Paleolithic’ technology (Bednarik 1999).” (Bednarik 2015:1)

So, with the existence of items that have been gathered and modified, or not, to have in the possession of these early humans, we find the earliest known instances of collecting.

Australopithecus:

Makapansget Cobble: South Africa, north of Mokopane, found in 1925.

Makapansget cobble, north of Mokopane, South Africa, found in 1925. Illustration www.donsmaps.com.

 “Collection of fossils and ‘curious’ or unusual objects, which were transported to the inhabited areas and probably became the object of interest and observation, if not invested with other value and meaning – certainly difficult to define – by the archaic human forms and then they were apparently abandoned on the paleosols that constitute the same archaeological deposits and which are distributed over a long chronological arch, from about 3.0 Ma BP to the entire middle Paleolithic. It should be noted that in some cases these objects were transported several kilometers away from their place of collection. As an example, we can mention the diasprite pebble from the cave of Makapansget (South Africa), probably collected by an Australopithecus africanus between 2.95 and 2.6 Ma BP (Bednarik 2013:8-9, Harrod 2014:136-137, 142).” (Mussi and Rossi 2018:313) Presumably, and austrealopithecene recognized the resemblance to a face in the rock and picked it up and carried it for curiosities sake.

Homo erectus:

Tan-Tan Figurine: Morocco, discovered in 1999.

Tan-Tan figurine, Morocco, discovered in 1999. Internet photograph, public domain.

“The object, which is around six centimeters in length, is shaped like a human figure, with grooves that suggest a neck, arms and legs. On its surface are flakes of a red substance that could be remnants of paint.

The object was found 15 metres below the eroded surface of a terrace on the north bank of the River Draa near the town of Tan-Tan. It was reportedly lying just a few centimeters away from stone handaxes in ground layers dating to the Middle Acheulian period, which lasted from 500,000 to 300,000 years ago.” (Rincon 2003) So this object resembling a human figure was definitely from the time of Homo erectus. It was undoubtedly ‘collected’ because of its resemblance to the finder and was then apparently modified somewhat to improve the illusion.

“The object, including its ‘arms’ and ‘legs’, was created by natural geological processes. The horizontal grooves on both sides of the object seem to be formed partly naturally partly artificially (by percussion). The object also contains traces of pigment, which seems to be iron and manganese according to preliminary study.” (Wikipedia)

Berekhat-Ram Figurine: Found at Berekhat-Ram on the Golan Heights, 1981.

Berekhat-Ram figurine, Golan Heights, Israil, 1981. Internet photograph, public domain.

Berekhat-Ram figurine, Golan Heights, Israil, 1981. Internet photograph, public domain.

“Excavated and first described by Naama Goren-Inbar from the Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The artifact is a scoria pebble, 35mm long, 25mm wide, and 21mm thick. – It was excavated in 1981 at the Acheulian site of Berekhat Ram, Golan Heights. The object is dated 280,000 – 250,000 BP. Goren-Inbar reported several artificial grooves on the object: one is a transversal groove in the upper third, others are longitudinal grooves on the sides below the transversal groove.

Goren-Inbar and Marshak suggested that the object resembled a female body and was artificially modified by hominids to emphasize its anthropomorphic features.” (Wikipedia)

The Erfoud Manuport: Eastern Morocco, 1984.

The Erfoud Manuport, Eastern Morocco, found in 1984. Photograph from Bednarik, 2002.

“The object in question is from Site No. A-84-2, a surface cluster of Acheulian tools in the vicinity of the townships Erfoud and Rissani, eastern Morocco. – The region is essentially a desert of small pebbles and sand, and the site consists of a dense cluster of numerous late Acheulian stone tools measuring about six-metres across. It includes the apparent remains of a dwelling consisting of a pile of stones forming and enclosed space of a few square metres, adjacent to a rock outcrop. – Within what appears to be the foundation of an Acheulian dwelling at Site A-84-2, Professor Lutz Fiedler from Marburg University collected in 1984 and object called here the Erfoud manuport. The manuport consists of a silicified fragment of a cuttlefish fossil cast dating from the Devonian or Carboniferous period (Orthoceras sp.). Such fossils are very common in other parts of Morocco, but they do not occur naturally in the region of the find site. – The object’s surface condition suggests that it was deposited in the same period as the stone tools found with it. An explanation is required for why it became a manuport, having been brought from some distance, and considering its apparently unworked, non-artefact status. This is readily found in its shape, being that of a perfectly naturalistic and life-size, non-erect human penis. The only realistic explanation for the curation of this object is that this clear similarity was perceived by a hominid.” (Bednarik 2002:138-9)

Neandertal: I have previously written about a number of instances of Neandertal produced art (available through the index at the bottom of the page) dating back to 65,000 years BP, but producing art is not collecting. If, however, we have some sort of accumulation of images in a location that can be thought of as a collection.

Neandertal manuport, patterned limestone, found in Croatia. Photograph Smithsonian magazine, Daley, 2017.

There is also a manuport, found in Neandertal context in a cave in Krapina, Croatia. “According to a press release, a group of international researchers re-examining material excavated from a cave where archaeologists found 900 Neandertal bones between 1899 and 1905, came across an unusual split limestone rock. It stood out from the other 1,000 pieces of stone collected because of its composition and the interesting black lines spidering across its face. – The researchers believe that the Neandertals brought the rock to their home cave simply because they thought it was interesting. In other words, whoever picked it up was rock collecting.” (Daley 2017)

So here we have a number of instances of pre-modern hominids who have been demonstrated to have acquired something for the purpose of collecting, keeping it in their possession for intellectual pleasure, not for utilitarian use. This is an immensely human trait that we can all identify with, and should give us a new perspective on pre-modern humans. I believe that it was just this sort of impulse which eventually gave rise to the creation of art and the magnificent palimpsests in the painted Stone Age caves, and thus, to the study of Art History and Rock Art which fascinates us all.

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, Robert G., 2002, An Acheulian palaeoart manuport from Morocco, Rock Art Research Vol. 19, number 2, pp. 137-139.

Bednarik, Robert G., 2013, Pleistocene Palaeoart of Africa, Arts, 2, 6-34.

Bednarik, Robert G., 2015, Paleoart of the Lower Paleolithic, January 2015, ResearchGate, accessed on 17 April 2022.

Daley, Jason, 2017, Did Neanderthals Like Pretty Rocks?, 23 January 2017, Smithsonian.com, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news-did-neanderthals-pretty-rocks-180961865/#IJCeswdiLPg3FICF.99

Goren-Inbar, Naama, 1986, A figuring from the Acheulian site of Berekhat Ram, January 1986, Mitekufat Haeven:Journal of the Israel Prehistoric Society, reprinted by Jstor, https://www.jstor.orb/stable/23373142, accessed 12 January 2022.

Harrod, James, 2014, Palaeoart at Two Million Years Ago? A Review of the Evidence, Arts, 3, 135-155.

Mussi, Piero and Pietro Rossi, 2018, You Snooze, you win: Perception, dream and symbolization in pre-sapiens Evolution, NeanderART 2018 (proceedings), pp. 311 – 349.

Rincon, Paul, 2003, ‘Oldest sculpture’ found in Morocco, 23 May 2003, BBC Science, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3047383, accessed 17 May 2022.

Wikipedia, Venus of Berekhat-Ram, https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Berekhat_Ram, accessed on 10 June 2022.

Wikipedia, Venus of Tan-Tan, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Tan_Tan, accessed on 10 June 2022.

SECONDARY REFERENCES:

Bednarik, Robert G., 1999, Maritime navigation in the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic, Comptes Rendus de l’Academie des Sciences Paris, Volume 328, pp. 559-563.

Speth, J. D., 2004, Newsflash: negative evidence convicts Neanderthals of gross mental incompetence, World Archaeology, Volume, 36, No. 4, pp. 519-526.