HUMAN INTERACTION WITH GIANT GROUND SLOTHS:

Artist's rendition of human interacting with a Giant Ground Sloth. Image from www.extinctanimals.org.

One of the iconic megafauna of the Paleolithic period is the Giant Ground Sloth with more than a dozen related species of Giant Ground Sloths distributed throughout North and South America. Ground Sloths ranged in size from small, just a few pounds, to the truly giant Megatherium. Interest in Megatherium began centuries ago, President Thomas Jefferson had tasked Lewis and Clark to attempt to locate them in the West on their journey of exploration.

Human with Giant Ground Sloth skeleton. Internet image, public domain.

“Megalonyx, which means ‘giant claw’, was a widespread North American genus that lived past the close of the last Wisconsin glaciations, when so many large mammals died out. Remains have been found as far north as Alaska and the Yukon. Ongoing excavations at Tarkio Valley in southwestern Iowa may reveal something of the familial life of Megalonyx. An adult was found in direct association with two juveniles of different ages, suggesting that adults cared for young of different generations. The earliest known North American Megalonychid, Pliometanastes protistus, lived in the southern U.S. about 9 million years ago and is believed to have been the predecessor on Megalonyx. Several species of Megalonyx have been named; in fact it has been stated that ‘nearly every good specimen has been described as a different species.’ A broader perspective on the group, accounting for age, sex, individual and geographic differences, indicates that only three species are valid (M. leptostomus, M. wheatleyi, and M. jeffersonii) in the late Pliocene and Pleistocene of North America, although work by McDonald lists five species. Jefferson’s ground sloth has a special place in modern paleontology, for Thomas Jefferson’s letter on Megalonyx, read before the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia in August 1796, marked the beginning of vertebrate paleontology in North America. When Lewis and Clark set out, Jefferson instructed Meriwether Lewis to keep an eye out for ground sloths. He was hoping they would find some living in the Western range. Megalonyx jeffersonii was appropriately named after Thomas Jefferson.” (Wikipedia)

"The earliest megatherid in North America was Eremotherium eomigrans whish arrived 2.2 million years ago, after crossing the recently formed Panamanian land bridge. With more than five tons in weight, 6 meters in length, and able to reach as high as 17 feet (5.2 m), it was larger than an African bush elephant bull. Unlike relatives, this species retained a plesiomorphic extra claw. While other species of Eremotherium had four fingers with only two or three claws, E. eomigrans had five fingers, four of them with claws up to nearly a foot long." (Wikipedia)

We now have a number of lines of proof of human interaction with Giant Ground Sloths. Speaking on the PBS Newshour about the recent discovery of Paleolithic footprints at White Sands of both animals (including megafauna) and humans, David Bustos of White Sands National Park stated "We were brushing out a set of sloth prints, and Matthew found the human pring right iside the middle of the sloth print. And that's sort of sealed the deal, Oh, yes, you definitely have the megafauna and humans together. So that's sort of where the the human side of the story all began." (Sy and Jackson 2022)  

"A human footprint is shown above with a raised heel mark inside the larger, curved footprint of a giant sloth. Below, researchers mapped the sloth and human tracks to re-create the chase scene, with 'flailing circles' to mark where the the animal reared up on two feet to defend itself."  Illustration from Garisto, 2018.

"Tests of sediment showed the sloth and human prints were made at the same time. An analysis of the track also suggested the two species were interacting with one another. 'We're getting a view into the past, of an interaction between two species,' says Sally Reynolds, a paleontologist at Bournemouth University in Poole, England. ' This was a moment of action, a moment of drama.' Raynolds, Bustos and their colleagues reconstructed the chase. Humans stalked a sloth, of several sloths, which the hunters surrounded in the open. At seven places, a sloth reared up on its hind legs - towering over the humans - to fendd off an attack. But the chase continued, with the humans in hot pursuit. The encounter 'wasn't luck or happenstance; it was cold calculation,' Reynolds says. 'Our intention was to kill them.' The trail of footprints ends, though, and it's not clear who came out victorious." (Garisto 2018) This would have been a windfall of food for the Paleolithic hunters, although difficult to procure.

So, we now have evidence of humans tracking and hunting Giant Ground Sloths, is there any other evidence of interactions? "The Santa Elina rock shelter in Central Brazil shows evidence of successive human settlements from around the last glacial maximum (LGM) to the Early Holocene. Two Pleistocene archaeological layers include rich lithic industry associated with remains of the extinct giant ground sloth Glossotherium phoenesis. The remains include thousands of osteoderms (i.e. dermal bones), three of which were human modified." (Pansani et al. 2023)

Giant Ground Sloth osteoderms drilled and polished for use as adornment. Images from Pansani et al., 2023.

In this case the term modified means holes drilled in the osteoderms, apparently for use as jewelry. The modifications include the drilling of the holes as well as polishing. "We document the smoothing of the surface; traces of stone tool interaction with bone, including incisions and scars, scraping marks, scratches, percussion notches; polish and gloss; use-wear smoothing of the rim and the attachment systems. - Unmodified mylodontid osteoderms show a naturally rough external surface, notably different from the smooth polished surfaces of the three human-modified osteoderms. Among the thousands of fossil osteoderms on the site, the perforated and polished state of the three osteoderms studied here is exceptional." (Pansani et al. 2023)

So now, in addition to apparent hunting of Giant Ground Sloths by early human inhabitants, we have the use of parts of the animal for adornment. 

Panel and close-up of the image from La Lindosa, Colombia of what is assumed to represent an adult and juvenile Giant Ground Sloth interacting with humans. Online image, public domain.

My final example of human interaction with Giant Ground Sloths comes from a painted cliff in Colombia. Among the recently recorded pictographs at the remarkable site of La Lindosa in Columbia is a figure that has been identified as a Giant Ground Sloth. "The animal is accompanied by an offspring and surrounded by animated miniature men, some of whom extend their arms towards the painting. The relationship of the animal with the men appears to be central to the artist's message." (Irarte et al. 2020) This could almost be considered a visual illustration of the interactions recorded at the White Sands track site of human interaction with one or more ground sloths. Identification of this animal as a Giant Ground Sloth is apparently based on body and head shape, the relative length of front and rear legs, and an emphasis on the toes and claws projecting from the feet. It is being shown with an offspring is reminiscent of the Iowa discovery of an adult skeleton with two juveniles referenced above from Wikipedia.

Given the size of these creatures, and the length of their claws, they would have been formidable prey for early human residents in the New World.

NOTE 1: 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.

NOTE 2: I have recollections in the past of having seen a photograph of a petroglyph of an animal in Brazil somewhere that had been identified as a Giant Ground Sloth. But, apologies, I have been unable to relocate it. If anyone knows of such a picture please share it with me for posting on RockArtBlog.

REFERENCES:

Garisto, Dan, 2018. Footprints prove humans hunted giant sloths during the Ice Age, 25 April 2018, https://www.sciencenews.org. Accessed online 3 January 2024.

Irarte, Jose, et al., 2022, Ice Age megafauna rock art in the Columbian Amazon?, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0496.

Pansani, Thais R. et al., 2023, Evidence of artefacts made of giant sloth bones in central Brazil around the last glacial maximum, Published online by Royal Society Publishing, 12 July 2023, DOI:10.1098/rspb.2023.0316. Accessed online 20 Novmeber 2023.

Sy, Stephanie, and Lena I. Jackson, 2022, Ancient Footprints in New Mexico raise questions about when humans inhabited North America, 4 April 2022, PBS Newshour, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/ancient-footprints-in-new-mexico-raise-questions-about-when-humans-inhabited-north-america#transcript. Accessed online 9 February 2024.

THE OLDEST KNOWN ROCK PAINTING IN AUSTRALIA:

17,300 year old kangaroo dated with mud dauber wasp nests. Illustration from Finch et al.

Back on 20 June 2020, I wrote a column titled “Dating Australian Rock Art With Mud Wasp Nests” about using small samples of mud wasp (or mud dauber) nests that overlay old pictographs to date them using optically stimulated luminescence dating. This practice has now produced dates for an image in the Kimberly region in Australia as old as 17,300 BCE.

17,300 year old kangaroo dated with mud dauber wasp nests. Illustration from Finch et al.

“In two of the most extensive provinces for painted rock art in Australia, the Kimberley and Arnhem Land, naturalistic animals are the most common subjects in the oldest stylistic period on the basis of superimposition analysis, but there is debate about their antiquity and the adequacy of the definitions of these earliest styles. The same or similar animals are also depicted in more-recent art periods, but using different stylistic techniques (for example, solid or regular infill rather than irregular infill, and solid infill of the extremities of the head, tail and limbs); further evidence is therefore required to test these ideas as no old, radiometric age constraints have been published for any of these motifs. In the Kimberley region, it is now known that paintings from the superimposed and inferred to be more-recent Gwion stylistic period proliferated around 12 ka18, so the generally agreed relative rock art sequence predicts that the earlier paintings of naturalistic animals should be older than this.” (Finch et al. 2021)

12,700 year old kangaroo pictograph. Ian Waina nspecting the painting. Photo via Peter Veth, Balanggarra Aborigina Corporation. Illustration by Pauline Heney and Damien Finch.

Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating relies on the transfer of energy from cosmic rays to crystalline materials. If these materials are in the light the energy bleeds back out but, if they are in complete dark the energy accumulates and is stored up until it can release. If this small piece of material is hidden underground (or incorporated into a mud wasp nest) it can be taken back to the archeologists lab and handled under controlled conditions. Then, when hit with a pulse from a laser the energy is released at once, its intensity indicating how much had built up and thus how long it was in the dark. If the mud wasp nest was taken from the surface of a rock art image, the date found in it represents the possible minimum age of the image. It can be older, but not younger, then the OSL date.

The team recording rock art. Image from www.bbc.com.

“In the Kimberley rock art stylistic sequence, these naturalistic animals belong to the earliest known phase of painted rock art, the Irregular Infill Animal Period (IIAP). Notwithstanding the abovementioned debate about the classification of similar motifs in the Arnhem Land region (some 700 km to the east), we adopt the comprehensive definition of the Kimberley IIAP by Walsh and Welch as a starting hypothesis. This definition of IIAP motifs includes some styles of hand stencils, hand prints, stencils of boomerangs and other objects, and some freehand depictions of plants (such as yams), animals (particularly kangaroos but also echidna, birds, goannas, fish and possum) and, more rarely, anthropomorphs. Here we report radiocarbon ages determined from 27 mud wasp nests, which were collected from 8 separate sandstone rock shelters, that constrain the ages of 16 IIAP motifs. Fifteen nests overlay ten IIAP motifs and six nests were underneath a further five motifs. Importantly, three overlying and three underlying nests were dated from one further IIAP motif, thereby providing a bracketed age constraint for that individual painting.” (Finch et al. 2021) These bracketed ages give maximum and minimum ages for that particular image narrowing down its date.

“The age estimates for 27 mud wasp nests in contact with 16 different rock paintings of the Kimberley IIAP style suggest that these motifs were painted between 17.2 and 13.1 cal kBP. The age of one IIAP macropod motif is well-constrained by six radiocarbon dates on three overlying and three underlying wasp nests to be between 17,500 and 17,100 years old, corresponding to the middle of the age range for the European figurative motifs.

Rock shelter containing the 17,300 year old painting. Image from University of Melbourne, Australia.

This is a period during which sea levels in the nearby Joseph Bonaparte Gulf began to rise from a low of ~125 m below present sea levels during the Last Glacial Maximum (21±3 ka) but mostly before the rapid rise in sea levels between 14.6 and 8 ka. By 12 ka, the coastline to the northwest had advanced by around 300 km over the continental shelf toward the area in which our study was undertaken. Many generations of Kimberley coastal Aboriginal populations experienced a continuing loss of territory over these millennia. At around the same time, from 14 to 13 ka, a paleo-environmental record from a nearby mound spring and other Kimberley climate proxies indicate an improving climate with an increase in monsoonal activity and precipitation.”  (Finch et al. 2021) With a 300 kilometer advance of the coast during that period one has to wonder how many wonderful sites have disappeared.

In summary, the study found what they are pronouncing as the oldest rock art yet discovered in Australia. “These Pleistocene ages for naturalistic animal motifs from the earliest known period of Australian rock painting position this creative human activity at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum. The initial results from eight rock art sites in the northeastern Kimberley suggest an extended period for the Irregular Infill Animal style, from 17 to 13 ka. Many more dates from this period are required before the full chronological extent of the paintings still visible today can be determined. For now, a robustly dated, approximately 17,300-year-old painting of a kangaroo is the oldest in situ rock painting radiometrically dated in Australia.” (Finch et al. 2021) This is such a fortuitous and clever way to date rock art, working in a team with an insect to learn marvelous facts.

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, 2020, Dating Australian Rock Art With Mud Wasp Nests, 20 June 2020, https://www.blogger.com.

Finch, Damien et al., 2021, Ages for Australia’s oldest rock paintings, March 2021, Human Nature Behavior, doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-01041-0. Accessed online 17 June 2023.

ROCK ART FROM THE LOWER SAND CANYON IN THE MESA VERDE REGION, SOUTHWESTERN COLORADO, USA – IT TURNS OUT THERE IS ROCK ART THERE AFTER ALL – SURPRISE!

Sand Canyon petroglyph panel. Photograph from the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland.

On September 19. 2018, I received an e-mail communication from one Mariette Eaton of the BLM who informed me that there wasn’t really much rock art in Canyon’s of the Ancients National Monument in southwestern Colorado. Her exact statement was “unfortunately there is not a great deal of rock art that is easily accessible.” This struck me as very strange because any canyon you enter in that part of Colorado (Montezuma County) is loaded with rock art and ancient ruins. I was also informed that Canyon of the Ancients was closed to visitation. On 1 October 2018 I posted a column titled “Public Access/Public Servants/Responsiveness/and Responsibility” in which I expressed dissatisfaction and disappointment at being turned away like that, let alone with Mariette Eaton’s lie. Incidentally, while we were at the Monument Headquarters one very nice park ranger confirmed that there was a huge amount of rock art there, and had no idea why I would have been denied visitation rights.

Now, I have found out that literally at the same time that I was being turned away with this brush off, a team of researchers from Poland was in there doing archaeological work, and recording Rock Art. Now, I have no objections to foreign visitors in our National Monuments, indeed I welcome them up to a point, that point being when Americans are being lied to and turned away. This Polish team was led by Radoslaw Polonka who has published a number of papers and chapters on the rock art of Canyon of the Ancients.

Palonka’s comments about Winter Solstice observation in December 2018 and Spring Equinox observation in March 2019 (page 251) would seem to prove that he was there at the same time that I was told that there is really not much rock art in Canyon of the Ancients. Additionally, Palonka’s three pages of References includes; David Breternitz, Kenneth Castleton, Sally Cole, Scott Ortman, Polly Schaafsma, Dennis Slifer, and Mark Varien as well as many others who seem to have thought that there was rock art in the area. But enough of my whining about Mariette Eaton’s lies, let’s look at some of the things that Palonka found in Sand Canyon of Canyon of the Ancients National Monument.

Sand Canyon petroglyph panel. Photograph from the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland.

Palonka and team apparently did some very good work during their time in Canyons of the Ancients. They report on a number of sites we did not have records of up to now.

“Since 2011, archaeologists from the Institute of Archaeology at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow have been taking part in the Sand Canyon-Castle Rock Community Archaeological Project in the central Mesa Verde region. This research focuses on the reconstruction of settlement structure and documentation of rock art at dozens of sites that may have functioned as one Puebloan community. In particular, the project explores the inter-relationships between particular settlements, and the role of the towers and shrines as a means of visual communication in the functioning of this system.” (Palonka et al. 2020:492) This Krakow university must have one heck of an archeology program, references to it keep popping up in papers from all over the world.

“The team has also obtained dates from dendrochronological samples and pottery analysis that are more accurate than previously achieved. This evidence has allowed us to speculate that, contrary to some earlier research (or at least questioning if some or most), small sites may have functioned contemporaneously with the community centre. The community centre was the largest site in the community that also comprised public buildings, such as plazas or large kivas (ritual buildings). Together, these sites may have formed a community that was connected by strong religious and social ties.

Additionally, we have collaborated with the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, the Maryland Institute College of Art and the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office to gather more comprehensive information concerning past landscape use, based, in part, on the Pueblo oral tradition. Taken together, these findings illuminate the

Operation and final days of one of the largest communities of Ancient Pueblo culture in the Mesa Verde region in the thirteenth century AD.” (Palonka et al. 2020:492)

Three warriors, Castle Rock Pueblo community, Sand Canyon, Montezuma County, Colorado. Photograph from Radoslaw Polonka, 2019, Jagiellonian  University, Krakow, Poland.

They work focused on Castle Rock community in Sand Canyon of the Canyons of the Ancients.

”We documented ancient Pueblo rock art at 15 Castle Rock Community sites, represented by both petroglyphs and paintings, including warriors fighting with bows and arrows (a well known panel from Castle Rock Pueblo), concentric circles, spirals, zig-zag lines, bird tracks and foot- and handprints. Other motifs could be interpreted as being connected with astronomical observations. The rock art can be roughly dated to the Pueblo III period (AD 1150–1300), and was probably created sometime in the thirteenth century AD, based on stylistic comparison to other well-dated rock art panels. There are, however, a few cases where we can observe much older rock art within these Late Pueblo III settlements, including anthropomorphic figures with triangular or trapezoidal bodies that are either pecked (at site 5MT127: Vision House) or painted with red and white (at site 5MT264: The Gallery). They are often included in the so-called San Juan Basketmaker Anthropomorphic Style, examples of which are also present in nearby Mancos Canyon, and as far as Durango to the north-east. At least two sites in the Community, The Gallery and Two Story House, have surviving plaster murals on the building walls. These were placed in the buildings’ second storey, while the first storey could have served as storage rooms, based on its masonry, which is roughly shaped with no plaster or paintings on the wall, while the second storey has been done with more care and often contains plaster and murals. The example at Two Story House comprises brown/reddish and white murals, including what appear to be three roughly preserved triangles. Similar triangles are found in Cliff Palace and other sites from the Mesa Verde National Park. They may represent the mountains (perhaps different peaks of the Ute Mountains) and might have been important religious symbols for the local Pueblo society. As with most of the cliff-dwelling sites in the area, Two Story House faces south, with a clear view of Sleeping Ute Mountain range.” (Palonka et al. 2020:504) I have previously published about the three triangle depiction of mountains on RockArtBlog (see the cloud index at the bottom) and while Palonka suggests they may represent Sleeping Ute Mountain, my vote is for Huerfano Butte in northern New Mexico or San Francisco Peaks. But it might even be the case that all three are correct. Perhaps the ancestral pueblo peoples who found significance in the Three Mountain theme applied it to nearby features that they were familiar with, so at Mesa Verde the Huerfano Butte had this significance to them, and at Chevelon pueblo it might well have been the San Francisco Peaks while in the Canyons of the Ancients the Sleeping Ute range may have been their inspiration.

Sand Canyon mural painting. Photograph from the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland.

Also recent articles in popular sources have been trumpeting some of their discoveries as newly recorded archeoastronomical sites.

“Some Pueblo period rock art iconography documented by our project may be connected with astronomical observations and could have served as a kind of calendar or solar/lunar markers, such as the petroglyphs at the sites 5MT129, 5MT261, 5MT1803, 5MT1823, and 5MT1843 and maybe the mural at the site 5MT264. These representations, with a fairly large potential for research, can shed new light on, for example, knowledge of celestial bodies and astronomical phenomena by the Ancient Pueblo communities once inhabiting these canyons. The observations conducted during the Winter Solstice in December 2018 and Spring Equinox in March 2019 at the Site 5MT129 in Sand Canyon brought very interesting results of light-shadow interactions with the particular sections of rock art panel, suggesting that it was some kind of solar marker or calendar, although further observation in the field and additional ethnographic analogies as well as consultations with different Pueblo groups elders are needed. It seems that, in addition to accurate documentation, visualization using new technologies like laser scanning and the photogrammetry may provide invaluable help. Conducting this documentation and later analysis in different graphic programs and a virtual environment (for example, using the RTI- Reflectance Transformation Imaging) allowed us to reveal many details and entire depictions that are not visible using only traditional documentation. Using these techniques we were able to document colored plaster and murals found on the walls of buildings at two sites of the surveyed area, The Gallery in the East Fork of Rock Creek Canyon, and Two Story House in Graveyard Canyon. They were done in reddish brown, white and yellow, and placed on two opposite walls of the second floor of Room B at The Gallery site, where even several layers of multicolored plaster have been preserved. The paintings on this mural include geometric images that have been preserved, such as dots, zig-zag lines or depictions of a snake and three birds, probably turkeys. At the Two Story House, along with the white/reddish brown plaster, there are geometric motifs, probably in the form of several triangles that might symbolize mountains. The rock shelter where the Two Story House site is located faces directly south to the highest summit in the area (Sleeping Ute Mountain), which rises to a height of around 3000 m above sea level, and is 3–4 km away from the site. It is a sacred mountain for the contemporary Ute Indians, who have a reservation there today, and it almost certainly had special significance for the ancient Pueblo Indians (modern Pueblo groups, like the Hopi, claim that this mountain certainly had a sacred meaning for their ancestors, who built stone settlements in rock niches). This may be just one example of the relationship of architecture, settlement location and rock art iconography to the surrounding landscape and probably religious practices associated with it – an aspect that is still being studied by our project.” (Palonka 2019:251) I think that the archeoastronomical conclusions have to wait for considerably more research.

Sand Canyon petroglyph panel. Photograph from the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland.

“The chronological and cultural associations of the Ancestral Pueblo petroglyphs are well established, based on style, content and associated archaeological data by previous research in the region. The oldest Ancestral Pueblo petroglyphs (c. 1000–1300 AD) include pecked and/or incised human figures with upraised arms and a few abstract motifs. They are located on the lowest section of the wall and have endured rough treatment by wind, soil deposits, sheep and cattle. Older Ancestral Pueblo petroglyphs may well be buried underground: our geophysics and test-pit excavations revealed the possibility that some structures are located approximately 1.6–2.0m deep (such accumulation of soil is probably due to catastrophic floods that occurred in the past).” (Palonka 2023:6)

Sand Canyon, Montezuma County, Colorado. Photograph by Radoslaw Polonka, 2019. - Listed as two "serpentine forms" these are probably rabbit sticks or fending sticks for fending off atlatl darts.

All in all this work provides considerable new data on an area that still has a great deal to tell us. Good work Radislaw Palonka. I’ll bet you can tell that I am jealous.

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:

Faris, Peter, 2018, Public Access/Public Servants/Responsiveness/and Responsibility, 1 October 2018, https://rockartblog.blogspot.com.

Milligan, Mark, 2023, Archaeologists have discovered Pueblo astronomical carvings and paintings in Colorado, 13 December 2023, https://www.heritagedaily.com. Accessed 16 December 2023.

Palonka, Radoslaw, et al., 2023, Digital documentation and analysis of Native American rock art and Euro-American historical inscriptions from the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, Colorado, Antiquity, Vol. 97 (393), 1-9. Accessed online 16 December 2023.

Palonka, Radoslaw, 2019, Rock Art from the Lower Sand Canyon in the Mesa Verde Region, Southwestern Colorado, USA, KIVA, 85:3, 232-256, DOI:10.1080/00231940.2019.1643071

Palonka, Radoslaw, et al., 2020, Ancestral Pueblo settlement structure and sacred landscape at Castle Rock Community, Colorado, Antiquity, Vol. 94 (374), 491-511. Accessed online 16 December 2023.

THE ROLE OF PAREIDOLIA IN CAVE ART:

Spotted horses, Pach Merle Cave, France. Online image, public domain.

The history of rock art research is replete with good ideas that get over-applied. From the original interpretation of “hunting magic” to David Lewis-William’s “shamans” interpretations that can be applied to some of the original examples are often then taken up and overused time and time again. Now a paper attributing the inspiration for painted caves in Spain to pareidolia seriously threatens to cause another run on that particular bank.Perhaps the first reference to the phenomenon of pareidolia in cave art involves the bison ceiling at Altamira Cave in Spain where rounded humps on the ceiling of a chamber seemingly inspired images of reclining bison.

Bison ceiling, Altamira Cave, Spain. Online image, public domain.

“The influence of pareidolia has often been anecdotally observed in examples of Upper Palaeolithic cave art, where topographic features of cave walls were incorporated into images. As part of a wider investigation into the visual psychology of the earliest known art, we explored three hypotheses relating to pareidolia in cases of Late Upper Palaeolithic art in Las Monedas and La Pasiega Caves (Cantabria, Spain). Deploying current research methods from visual psychology, our results support the notion that topography of cave walls played a strong role in the placement of figurative images—indicative of pareidolia influencing art making—although played a lesser role in determining whether the resulting images were relatively simple or complex. Our results also suggested that lighting conditions played little or no role in determining the form or placement of images, contrary to what has been previously assumed.” (Wisher et al. 2023) Sorry gentlemen, I totally disagree with your suggestion that lighting conditions played no role. The lighting conditions would have controlled the appearance of the features that you are attributing the pareidolia to.

Horse on cave wall, Las Monedas Cave, Spain. Image from cambridge.com.

“Pareidolia—the psychological phenomenon of seeing meaningful forms in random patterns, such as perceiving faces in clouds—is a universal feature of our visual system. It is likely a consequence of the evolution of our visual system adapting to allow partial or obscured profiles of potential predators to be rapidly identified through the conferral of meaning, and hence to minimize risk.” (Wisher et al. 2023)

Horse on cave wall, Las Monedas Cave, Spain. Image from cambridge.com.

“This process has been the subject of extensive psychological study, with existing debates regarding the particular cultural mechanisms that may cause pareidolia, e.g. do modern Western people see faces relatively frequently because our visual system has evolved to treat the visual stimuli of faces as ‘special’, or merely because we have visual expertise in face perception?” (Wisher et al. 2023) An obvious example of this is represented by the spotted horses of Pech Merle Cave in France where the shape of a horse’s head at the edge of a rock face suggested the panel of spotted horses.

Bison on cave wall, La Pasiega Cave, Spain. Image from cambridge.com.

“This discussion has focused on how heightened sensory awareness and the ambiguous nature of visual stimuli, induced by the darkness of caves, would have likely caused Palaeolithic people to experience visual imagery, priming them to depict the same animals they had perceived. There has also been extensive previous discussion pertaining to the integration of the rock support and its role in determining the placement of depictions within a cave, for example with the rock used to frame depictions or add depth and dimensionality to an animal motif.” (Wisher et al. 2023)

Aurochs in niche on cave wall, La Pasiega Cave, Spain. Image from cambridge.com.

“Hypothesis 1: The majority of figurative depictions should integrate natural topographic features of cave walls.

Secondly ( and building on Hypothesis 1): As pareidolic imagery of animals generally does not incorporate detail beyond salient outline form or the natural features that triggered the pareidolic image, we further propose that simpler depictions of animals that are incomplete in form and/or feature no additional details beyond the outline should integrate natural features. By contrast, detailed depictions, i.e. those complete in form and/or featuring internal detail such as pelage, hair, eyes, and particularly those with stylistic features consistent with other contemporaneous depictions, may thus reflect pareidolia having no or minimal influence over the form and placement of depictions. It may therefore be expected that detailed depictions are less likely to be scaffolded onto natural topographic features when compared to simple depictions.

Horse on cave wall, La Pasiega Cave, Spain. Image from cambridge.com.

Hypothesis 3: Simpler depictions should have a stronger relationship to natural topographic features of the cave wall than detailed depictions.” (Wisher et al. 2023) While I can understand the reasoning behind their second and third hypotheses, I do not agree with them that having a bump on the cave wall or a crack in the rock will keep me from adding more detail. While the authors assume that the viewer will rely on the change of contour to imply whatever details were supposedly suggested by the rock feature, that would be no reason to keep me from touching it up to “improve” it. And, as the light source moves the appearance of the feature may change so it cannot be relied on to imply the details.

"Dr. Wisher and colleagues found that as many as 71% of images studied in the Las Monedas caves, and 55% in the La Pasiega caves, showed a strong relationship to the natural features of the cave wall, suggesting pareidolia may havew been a partial influence on the artists. Examples included where curved edges of the cave wall were used to represent the backs of animals such as wild horses, or where natural cracks were used as bison's horns. The archaeologists found that of those drawings with a strong relationship to natural features on the cave wall, the majority (80% in Las Monedas and 83% in La Pasiega) lacked additional details such as eyes or hair, which correlates with the simplistic nature of imagery influenced by pareidolia." (sci.news 2023) But the question is - how subjective or objective were these judgements? Without many more pictures illustrating concrete examples of images that they claim were influenced by pareidolia, I have to wonder how subjective their evaluations were - would you or I agree with their judgements?

Las Monedas, Spain. Image from cambridge.com.

Many cave walls are, by their nature, pretty rough. The rock surface can be smooth but it will still be contoured with swellinngs, low areas, projections, etc. It would be hard to place an image on many cave walls without having it interact with some kind of changes of contour. But, are those changes of contour the reason the image was placed where it was?

While I totally agree that some cave art was probably inspired by pareidolia (remember the Altamira bison and the Peche Merle horses), as usual I believe that this goes a little too far. Once someone saw a crack, or a bump, or whatever on the cave wall reminded him or her of an animal and then pictured it there, the idea of making pictures on the cave walls has been established and proliferated from there. They no longer needed pareidolia to prompt them to create cave art. So, some cave art was certainly inspired by pareidolia, I just cannot believe that the influence was this extensive.

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:

News Staff sci.news, 2023, Pareidolia May Have Stimulated Paleolithic Humans to Make Cave Art, 25 September 2023, https://www.sci.news/archaeology/paleolithic-pareidolia-12293.html. Accessed online 25 September 2023.

Wisher, Izzy, Paul Pettit and Robert Kentridge, 2023, Upper Palaeolithic Conversations with Caves: The Role of Pareidolia in the Figurative Art of Las Monedas and La Pasiega (Cantabria, Spain) 21 September 2023, Published online by Cambridge University Press. Accessed online 22 September 2023.