I ran across a photograph of the Cave of Swimmers in Egypt and thought it would be fun to do a column on the subject of swimming illustrated in rock art but the subject quickly grew on me.“The Cave of Swimmers is a cave with ancient rock art in the mountainous Gilf Kebir plateau of the Libyan Desert Section of the Sahara. It is located in the New Valley Governorate of southwest Egypt, near the border with Libya. The cave and rock art was discovered in October 1933 by the Hungarian explorer Laszlo Almasy. It contains Neolithic pictographs (rock painting images) and is named due to the depictions of people with their limbs bent as if they were swimming. The drawings include those of giraffe and hippopotamus. They are estimated to have been created as early as 10,000 years ago with the beginning of the African Humid Period, when the Sahara was significantly greener and wetter than it is today.” (Wikipedia)
Now, as to how this subject grew on me, I quickly remembered portrayals in Paleolithic art of reindeer swimming so that had to be added. But first “The earliest humans swam. Neanderthals living in Italy about 100,000 years ago swam confidently. Their ear bones show they suffered from swimmer’s ear from diving 3 – 4 meters to retrieve clamshells they then shaped into tools.” (Messer 2022) And, although there are now cave paintings that are attributed to Neandertals none that I am aware of show anything related to swimming.
Next, there are a few portrayals of reindeer that may show them as swimming. Reindeer are excellent swimmers and the Paleolithic hunters who relied on them would certainly have known this. Additionally, when they were in the water they would have been more vulnerable to the hunters.
From Abri Montastruc, in southwest France, comes this 13,000-year-old carving on mammoth ivory of two reindeer that have been interpreted as swimming. I am not too sure about this one, the positions of the legs may depend more on the dimensions of the material than an attempt to portray swimming, but for the record this is what it is called.
Then, from the Grotte de Lortet in the Haute Pyrenees, France, comes this Magdalenian (17,000 to 12,000 BCE) Period carved reindeer antler. The remaining images engraved on it comprise a group of reindeer with salmon around and between their legs. This one is often described as reindeer swimming with the salmon under the water among their legs.
And my last example of swimming reindeer comes from 17,500 years ago in Lascaux Cave, France. Drawn on the cave wall is a row of five reindeer shown mostly as just neck and head with a line of the upper back on the last one. None of them show lower body and legs. Additionally, three of them have their heads tilted up exactly as if they were swimming across a river. One problem with the identification of these five reindeer as swimmers is the possibility that the missing bodies are due to erosion of the cave wall instead of purposeful omission, but, since I cannot prove that I will go along with swimming reindeer for now.
Then we come to the Cave of the Swimmers. “Rock paintings depicting swimmers appear about 9000 BCE on cliff walls at Tassili n’Ajjer, in southern Algeria, far out in the Sahara desert. – Painted images on the rock walls at Tassili n’ Ajjer show people hunting, sitting and dancing. A few figures are painted parallel to the ground with their arms outstretched. These painted figures may be swimming. - - About a thousand years after that, and a little further east, somebody painted more such figures on another wall, in the Cave of the Swimmers at Wadi Sura in western Egypt. By 8000 BCE the people living near this cave were settling down in villages. They farmed wheat and barley, or herded cattle and sheep. In their paintings, little red figures float more or less horizontally on the creamy background of the rock, holding out their arms in front of them. It seems pretty clear that the figures are doing the breaststroke, or a dog-paddle. Their legs are folded as if they were doing a frog kick, and they raise their heads to keep them out of the water. Although it is possible that these figures represent spirits floating in the air, or people sleeping on the ground, swimming is the most plausible explanation.” (Carr 2022:19)
The Cave of the Swimmers “is so named due to the human figures painted on its walls with their limbs contorted as if swimming. It has since become world-renowned, particularly as a key location in the feature film The English Patient (1996), based on Michael Ondaatje’s novel of the same name. The book and film feature fictionalized versions of the cave and its real-life discoverer, Laszlo Almasy, as the title character. These paintings have been dated at between 9,000 and 6,000 years ago, although some researchers have suggested both earlier and later dates.” (British Museum)
“In 1932 Almasy and (Patrick A.) Clayton, together with a similarly-named young Englishman, Sir Robert Clayton East Clayton, organized a major expedition to survey the unknown western side of the Gilf Kebir, and for the first time the surveying equipment included an aeroplane – a Gypsy Moth belonging to Robert Clayton. The gypsy Moth revealed three hidden valleys with vegetation in the northern Gilf Kebir. All previous attempts to reach them over land had failed, but in 1933 Almasy and Clayton, on separate expeditions, succeeded in entering them – Clayton the two to the east, Wadi Hamra and Wadi Abd el Melik, and Almasy to the west, Wadi Talh. On the same 1933 expedition Almasy went on to reach Regenfeld and the rock paintings of Ain Doua at Uweinat. Later that year, on a separate expedition, he discovered the painted caves at Wadi Sora – he had found the swimmers.” (Bradshaw Foundation)
Dating to considerably later is this decorated pebble from the mouth of the Klassies River in South Africa. Showing a human figure swimming above a group of four dolphins, this was dated at 400 - 300 BCE by dating a pile of seashells it was found with. (Carr 2022:27)
And finally, a drawing from 1904 in Wyoming showing a group of Cheyenne children swimming, including one doing a somersault dive off of the river bank. (Carr 2022:321)
I had originally expected that this would be the end of this thread but, while doing background research online, I ran across material that cried out to be a separate column – purported pictographs painted of mermaids in South Africa. This will be covered soon in another episode.
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:
Bradshaw Foundation, Exploring the Rock Art of Gilf Kebir, The Cave of Swimmers, Bradshaw Foundation, https://www.bradshawfoundation.com/africa/gilf_kebir_cave_of_swimmers/index.php. Accessed online 13 January 2023.
British Museum, Cave of Swimmers, Egypt, https://africanrockart.britishmuseum.org/country/egypt/cave-of-swimmers. Accessed online 14 January 2023.
Carr, Eva, 2022, Shifting Currents, A World History of Swimming, Reaktion Books, London.
Challis, Sam, Jeremy C. Hollmann and Mark McGranaghan, 2013, Rain snakes from the Senqu Rover: New light on Qing's commentary on San rock art from Sehonghong, Lesotho, Azania, Archaeological Research in Africa, 24 July 2013, DOI: 10.1080/0067270X.2013.797135. Accessed online on 18 March 2023.
Messer, Jane, 2022, The earliest humans swam 100,000 years ago, but swimming remains a privileged pastime, 26 December 2022, online at https://theconversation.com. Accessed online on 13 January 2023.
Wikipedia,
Cave of Swimmers, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_Swimmers.
Accessed on 15 January 2023.
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