Is a South African rock art panel a dicynodont? This is a claim made by South African archeologist Julien Benoit (2024). The dicynodonia lived before the age of the dinosaurs so it is not possible that the artist who created the panel had ever seen one. Benoit believes that the San painter who created this image was influenced by fossils in the area. I have argued, in the past, that some rock art was created under the inspiration of fossils, but I fear I am a touch skeptical in this instance.
“The Horned Serpent panel at La Belle France (Free State Province, South Africa) was painted by the San at least two hundred years ago. It pictures, among many other elements, a tusked animal with a head that resembles that of a dicynodont, the fossils of which are abundant and conspicuous in the Karoo Basin. This picture also seemingly relates to a local San myth about large animals that once roamed southern Africa and are now extinct. This suggests the existence of a San geomyth about dicynodonts. Here, the La Belle France site has been visited, the existence of the painted tusked animal is confirmed, and the presence of tetrapod fossils in its immediate vicinity is supported. Altogether, they suggest a case of indigenous palaeontology. The painting is dated between 1821 and 1835, or older, making it at least ten years older than the formal scientific description of the first dicynodont, Dicynodon lacerticeps, in 1845. The painting of a dicynodont by the San would also suggest that they integrated (at least some) fossils into their belief system.” (Benoit 2024) La Belle France is the name of the farm on which the painted panel is found, and “The Horned Serpent” is the name given to the panel from earlier interpretations of the figure now being tentatively identified as a dicynodont. I have not been able to determine how the dating from between 1821 and 1835 was determined.
“The /Xam speaking San, who made the Horned Serpent painting, occupied the Karoo area, a landscape in which the fossil-richness is mostly due to the overly abundant and often well-preserved dicynodonts, a group of tusked therapsids. In many cases, their skulls are naturally exposed by erosion in spectacular ways, making them easy to find and collect, and their tusks are so conspicuous that their anatomy is not difficult to interpret, even to the untrained eyes. The downturned tusks of dicynodonts resemble those of the tusked animal of the Horned Serpent Panel.” (Benoit 2024) Virtually all sources available seem to agree that the Karoo basin is a virtual paradise for fossil hunters and many of them continue to be exposed by erosion.
“Dicynodontia is an extinct clade of anomodonts, an extinct type of non-mammelian therapsid. Dicynodonts were herbivores that typically bore a pair of tusks, hence their name, which means ‘two dog tooth.’ Members of the group possessed a horny, typically toothless beak, unique amongst all synapsids. Dicynodonts first appeared in Southern Pangaea during the mid-Permian, ca. 270-260 million years ago, and became globally distributed and the dominant herbivorous animals in the Late Permian, ca. 260-252 Mya. They were devastated by the end-Permian Extinction that wiped out most other therapsids ca. 252 Mya. They rebounded during the Triassic but died out towards the end of the period.” (Wikipedia)
“Archaeological evidence directly
supports that the San did find and transport fossils over long distances, and
could interpret them in surprisingly accurate ways. If the San could identify
the fossilised skulls of dicynodonts as belonging to once alive animals, it is
possible that their tusked faces could have contributed to their rock art. In
this respect, it is noteworthy that, to the San of the Koesberg, the animals
depicted on the Horned Serpent panel were real and used to live among them:
‘The Bushmen of the east declare that there were at one time a number of
animals living in the country in the days of their forefathers, which are now
extinct and nowhere to be found in Southern Africa. Some of these are described
as great monstrous brutes, exceeding the elephant or hippopotamus in bulk.’ . .
. the tusked animal is described as an entity distinct from the rain-animal
(referred to as ‘Kou-teign-Koo-rou) and the Serpent (referred to as
‘Koo-be-eng). In addition to its tusks, the extraordinary size of the animal
evokes the heavily mineralised bones and disproportionately enlarged skulls of
some dicynodonts found in abundance in the Main Karoo Basin.” (Benoit 2024) While the body of the
painted image certainly does not come close to modern science’s reconstructions
of a dicynodont, the San would have had to find a fully articulated fossil
skeleton to get an idea about the body shape.
“But there are
precedents: according to Benoit, the most striking example of San palaeontology
is the rock art in Mokhali Cave, in Lesotho. There, the Indigenous people
reproduced a dinosaur footprint and painted three figures similar to these
animals. “These silhouettes have no arms, because there are no hand prints in
the footprints in the area, and they have a short tail because dinosaurs did
not drag their tails,” says the palaeobiologist.
These paintings, Benoit adds, were made before the term dinosaur
was even invented; in San mythology, dinosaurs were equivalent to a creature
called //Khwai-hemm (with two initial slashes), whose name translates as a
disturbing “devourer of all.” And even today, for the Basotho people of
Lesotho, dinosaur fossils are remains of this same fearsome monster, which they
call Kholumolumo.” (Yanes 2024) This mention of San paleontology is very
reasonable. All peoples devise answers to the questions in their world view, and
ancient fossils are no exception. Indigenous paleontology would apply to all
peoples, everywhere. They did not have our modern concept of the Scientific
Method, but they came up with answers that made sense in terms of their world
view.
Now, as I stated above, I have argued, in the past, that some rock art was created under the inspiration of fossils, but I fear I am a touch skeptical in this instance. Admittedly, the strange creature has two lines pendant from the end of the snout area, and the dicynodont has two tusks, and, according to Benoit, this region also has samples of dicynodont fossils that the painters could have seen. So, I have to accept the possibility that there is truth to the theory, but it seems to me to be a stretch, mostly because of the age of the fossils and the poor condition they would be in because of that. So, it is surely possible, but I am not completely convinced.
NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.
REFERENCE:
Benoit,
Julien, 2024, A possible later stone age painting of a dicynodont (Synapsida) from
the South African Karoo. PLoS ONE 19(9):e0309908.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309908. Accessed online 19 September 2024.
Wikipedia, Dicynodont – Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org.wiki/Dicynodontia. Accessed online 19 September 2024.
Yanes, Javier, 2024, How the San people of southern Africa were able to paint an animal that
predates the dinosaurs, 1 October 2024, https://english.elpais.comm. Accessed
online 3 October 2024.
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