15,800 YEAR OLD IMAGE OF PALEOLITHIC AGE NET FISHING:

Fish in a net, engraved-plaquette, Gonnersdorf, Germany. Illustration from archaeology.org.

By far the earliest depiction of catching fish with a net has been discovered on a stone plaque at Gonnersdorf, Germany. “Scientists from the Leibniz Zentrum für Archäologie and Durham University have examined a collection of 406 engraved schist plaquettes found at the Magdalenian site of Gönnersdorf in Germany. The ancient engravings provide valuable insights into the fishing techniques and tools used by Paleolithic peoples, and how these practices were translated into visual culture through the depiction of nets characterized by interlaced diamond-shaped and square meshes.” (Prostak 2024)

Drawing of fish in a net, engraved plaquette, Gonnersdorf, Germany. Illustration from archaeology.org. Blue lines represent the fish, black lines are the net.

“The ~15,800 year-old Magdalenian site of Gönnersdorf, in Germany, has produced 406 engraved schist plaquettes which have been extensively studied in the past. The introduction of advanced imaging technologies, notably Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), has now precipitated a re-evaluation of these artifacts, uncovering nuanced depictions of fishing practices previously unrecorded for the Upper Palaeolithic. Our investigation harnesses RTI to elucidate fine engraving details on the plaquettes, revealing depictions of fish and accompanying grid motifs. The analytical process enabled by RTI has exposed an intricate link between the grid patterns and fish figures, showing that they were a deliberate combination portraying the use of fishing nets. This discovery posits a significant departure from earlier interpretations of the site’s iconography, which predominantly emphasized more naturalistic representations of fauna. Furthermore, these findings illuminate aspects of Magdalenian cultural praxis, suggesting that representations of aquatic life and fishing technologies were not merely utilitarian in nature but were embedded within a broader symbolic framework. This study enhances our comprehension of Magdalenian peoples’ interaction with the aqueous milieu, revealing a sophisticated symbiosis between ecological adaptation and artistic expression.” (Robitaille et al. 2024)

Salmon figure, Abri du Poisson Cave, France. Internet image, public domain. The rectangular lines are saw cuts remaining from an illicit attempt to remove the carving.

Illustrations of fish have been discovered in a number of the Paleolithic painted caves of Europe, and elsewhere such as Lortet, Mas d’Azil, and Abri du Poisson.

 “Unlike the more celebrated sites known for their vivid fish depictions, Gönnersdorf’s abstract and minimalist style offers a fresh perspective on the socio-cultural dynamics of Magdalenian communities. Fishing with nets, deriving from a broad spectrum economy, reveals the diversity, adaptability and creativity of prehistoric communities, showcasing their proficiency in utilizing a variety of fishing techniques to sustainably exploit aquatic resources.” (Prostak 2024)

Ancient bone fish hooks have been discovered, as well as barbed harpoon points carved from bone, antler, or ivory.

“Prehistoric fishing deployed a diverse range of technologies and techniques, including various strategies for obtaining fish that can be summarised as active fishing, which requires direct human involvement with or near the fishing equipment, passive fishing, involving trapping methods, or a combination of both,” said Dr. Jérôme Robitaille of the Leibniz Zentrum für Archäologie and colleagues. Some methods were developed for individual catches, such as angling, while others were refined to maximize yields through the use of collective nets and traps. The selection of a particular method was influenced by the target fish species, as well as the distinct habitats and terrains where specific aquatic resources thrived. Although evidence for fishing in the Upper Plaeolithic (20,000 to 14,500 years ago) is not abundant, there is sporadic direct and indirect evidence of several fishing techniques, such as barbed points or harpoons, bows and arrows, traps, and fishing nets.” (Prostak 2024)

While we did know that Paleolithic peoples had cordage, and we knew that they ate fish from bones found in excavations, this is probably the first illustration of net fishing from that period. In a way this makes them more human and relatable. Imagine them sitting around their fire telling lies about the one that got away.

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:

Nitzsche, Christina, 2024, Oldest depictions of fishing discovered in Ice Age Art: Camp site reveals 15,800 year old engravings of fish trapping, 7 November 2024, Phys.org, https://phys.org/news/2024. Accessed online 7 November 2024.

Prostak, Sergio, 2024, 15,800 Year Old Engraved Plaquettes Shed Light on Paleolithic Fishing Techniques, 11 November 2024, https://www.sci.news/archaeology. Accessed online 11 November 2024.

Robitaille, Jerome, et al., 2024, Upper Palaeolithic fishing techniques: Insights from the engraved plaquettes of the Magdalenian site of Gonnersdorf, Germany, 6 November 2024, Plos, https://journals.plos.org. Accessed onlne 7 November 2024.

1.4 MILLION YEAR OLD STONE SPHERES?

Limestone spheroids, Ubeidiya, Israel. Illustration from phys.org.

This column is not about rock art, per se, but a fascinating phenomenon found at early hominin sites. Carefully manufactured stone balls or spheres. These discoveries come from a number of Acheulean sites spread over much of the world.

“Acheulean tools were produced during the Lower Paleolithic era across Afriica and much of West Asia, South Asia, East Asia and Europe, and are typically found with Homo erectus remains. It is though that Acheulean technologies first developed about 2 million years ago, derived from the more primitive Oldowan technology associated with Homo Habilis. The Acheulean includes at least the early part of the Middle Paleolithic. Its end is not well defined, depending on whether Sangoan (also known as “Epi-Acheulean”) is included, it may be taken to last until as late as 130,000 years ago. In Europe and Western Asia, early Neanderthals adopted Acheulean technology, transitioning to Mousterian by about 160,000 years ago.” (Wikipedia)

Spheroid sites in Israel including Ubeidiya. Illustration from royalsocietypublishing.org.

A publication authored by Antoine Muller of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem recently presents his team’s analysis of a number of limestone spheroids retrieved from an Early Acheulean site in Israel known as Ubeidiya dating to ca. 1.4 million years ago. “Excavations at the Early Acheulean site of ‘Ubeidiya have yielded a large number of stone balls offering a unique opportunity to conduce quantitative and objective three-dimensionsl (3D) analyses to explore how and why these curious artifacts were made. ‘Ubeidiya is situated in the Dead Sea Rift Valley, at the northern margin of the Red Sea – East African Rift System. Dated to ca 1.4 Ma, the site presently constitutes the oldest evidence of the Acheulean outside of Africa. Its geographical position in the southern Levant makes it a key site for exploring the first Acheulean hominin forays out of Africa.” (Muller et al. 2023)

Known spheroid sites worldwide. Illustration from royalsocietypublishing.org.

Muller and team performed a detailed analysis of the stone spheres to investigate whether they were intentionally created stone balls, or if this was essentially an accidental result of their being used as hammerstones.

Limestone spheroids, Ubeidiya, Israel. Illustration from phys.org.

“If spheroids represent hammerstones or percussors, then they should become both smoother and more spherical. If spheroids represent expedient cores, then we expect to see some pattern in the removal of scars. This pattern could take the form of scars of regular size, orientation or distribution over the surface. The spheroids may even become smoother during a final stage of battering attempts to remove flakes. However, we do not expect them to become more spherical. While even random flaking can mimic intentional artifact shaping, this strategy is unlikely to approach anything as unnatural as a true sphere. Due to the limits on the fracture mechanics of flaking that govern detachable platform angles, the high-angled flake removals necessitated by a spherical form would require much more effort and shaping than is involved in expedient flaking.” (Muller et al. 2023) In the end the Muller paper does not give a conclusion as to why these (or any other) stone spheroids were laboriously created.

A large number of stone spheres were also recovered from Qesem Cave, of roughly the same age as the Ubeidiya site, also in Israel.

Fremont figure at Balanced Rock, Nine Mile Canyon, Utah. Photograph Peter Faris, 1993.

On 4 April 2021 I published a column on RockArtBlog titled “The Enigmatic Figure at Balanced Rock, Utah – Bolas, Juggling or Rattles” in which I mentioned that some have interpreted the stone balls found in Fremont cultural contexts might have been used to create bola or boleadero, the implement commonly associated with South American gauchos. The Fremont culture is roughly dated to a span the ran from AD 1 to AD 1301 and has no connection to the Acheulean period at all so this is just a coincidence.

Fremont stone sphere. Illustration from Madsen, 1989.

“For a long time stone balls commonly found at Fremont village sites were thought to be part of a game, but recent work suggests that they may have been used with metates.” (Madsen 1989:33) and “Some stone balls, such as this highly polished specimen from the Old Woman site, suggest a use other than as a grinding tool.” (Madsen 1989:66) I also concluded that the Balanced Rock petroglyph was likely carrying a rattle, not a boleadero so this throws no light on the frequent occurrence of stone balls at Fremont sites at all. As I said above, this is just a coincidence, but a very interesting one.

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, 2021, The Enigmatic Figure at Balanced Rock, Utah – Bolas, Juggling or Rattles, 4 April 2021, RockArtBlog, https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/7760124847746733855/1434956800556132596.

Madsen, David B., 1989, Exploring the Fremont, University of Utah Occasional Publications No. 8, Utah Museum of Natural History, Salt Lake City.     

Muller, Antoine et al., 2023, The limestone spheroids of ‘Ubeidiya: intentional imposition of symmetric geometry by early hominins?, Royal Society Open Science, Volume 10, issue 9, September 2023. Accessed online 6 September 2023.

Wikipedia, Acheulean, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acheulean. Accessed online 10 Sept. 2024.

 

Wikipedia, Qesem Cave, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qesem_cave. Accessed online 14 October 2024.

SHAMANISM AND ROCK ART - REVISITED:

A Siberian shaman. Illustration from behance.net.

I am taking the opportunity to revisit the subject of ‘shamanism’ in rock art because it seems that more and more references to shamanism can be found in books and articles about rock art.

I once had an opportunity to attend a lecture by the great Joseph Campbell, author of so many books on mythology and belief systems. Campbell believed that similarities in myths were of much greater significance than differences, so he had no trouble equating myths from different sides of the globe. At this particular lecture he explained the significance of the dying man/wounded bison panel from the chimney at Lascaux Cave in France in terms of  Australian Aboriginal belief. To my way of thinking this goes way too far afield. These cultures were separated by tens of thousands of years and thousands of miles, with no apparent possibility of reciprocal influencing.

My example from the Campbell lecture is indicative of a problem that I see cropping up all too frequently in rock art studies. The shamanic or neuropsychological model for explaining rock art has become such a fad explanation that it is hard to find people giving credence to any other possibilities. As far as trancing and/or entoptics influencing rock art I really do not need a trance hallucination or entoptic vision to inspire the images I make. Once the pigments or hammerstones are picked up in front of a rock face there are only so many things I can do with them. Trying to reproduce an image from life or create a geometric shape needs no artificial stimuli. There are only so many geometric shapes available, and a reproduction of a living being is inspired by the being itself. To attribute these to anything else is nonsense.

An understandable, but biased interpretation of rock art is found in the tendency of the viewer to attempt to define what they are viewing on the basis of what has been successfully applied to interpretations in the past. An example of this is seen in the case of David Lewis-Williams whose early work with interpreting South African rock art in light of San bushman shamanism so impressed the rest of the rock art community. Since that early success Lewis-Williams seems unable to consider any other possible interpretation no matter what the conditions or location the rock art is found in, or what age it is from. An early success of intellectual application that was thought to approach the genius level seems to have led him to the status of a one-trick pony.

I suggest that Lewis-Williams made the mistake of taking the wrong message away from his earlier work. Instead of learning the lesson that he had succeeded by a rigorous application of reasoning based upon knowledge of ethnographic material for the San people of Africa, he seems to have come away with the message that “shamanism” was the correct answer so it would always be the correct answer. In other words he seems to have subsequently used his mental abilities, knowledge, and reason, to fit other rock art into his shamanic framework instead of using those same gifts and abilities to find a unique answer that would fit the unique conditions of the rock art he was appraising.

“Throughout the book by Clottes and Lewis-Williams, possibilities are presented as ‘evidence’, then used as building blocks for speculation that magically acquires the status of ‘fact’ (Bahn 1997). This is a crucial problem for, in the words of Carl Sagan, if we become ‘self-indulgent and uncritical, when we confuse hopes and facts, we slide into pseudoscience and superstition’ (Sagan 1997: 27). As Hamayon (1997:65-66, my translation) puts it, the book’s ‘approach is devoid of any critical thought: conjectures on one page become, as if by magic, assertions on the next . . . I have rarely seen such reductionism, I have rarely seen such simple-minded determinism.” (Bahn 2010:118-119) This is a phenomenon I see all too often in rock art writings. A concept that is introduced as a possibility on one page will be used as a fact a page or two later to support another surmise. 

A shaman with paraphernalia. Internat image, public domain.

We would do well to remember that the limited remains of the physical cultures studied by archaeologists represent a very small proportion of those cultures. They had a whole world of beliefs, mythology, rituals, and physical knowledge that is not necessarily represented by those physical remains. Rock art represents that world of beliefs, mythology, rituals, etc. aspect of the whole world that these people lived in, and we have no physical artifacts from that world for most of the cultures that we are studying.

In 2011 I wrote “In his 2002 book The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art, David Lewis-Williams revisited the shamanism argument for the dying man panel. Lewis-Williams originally swept the rock art community with his early analysis of much of South African rock art in light of San (bushman) religious practices that he defined as Shamanism. He eventually served as director of the Rock Art Research Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand from which he retired in 2000. He has since published many important books and reached a position of respect world-wide. He has a great ability to organize and analyze data and search for clues and patterns. As might be expected, considering his focus and early success on the interpretation of South African rock art in light of shamanic influences, he tends to find shamanism behind pretty much anything he looks at. At this point I must confess that I believe that the use of shamanism as an explanation of rock art is hugely overdone. I have gotten to the point where I think of shamanism as the “S”-word. It has reached the position where anyone who cannot come up with a better explanation for rock art just calls it shamanic. A few decades ago pretty much all rock art of animals was dismissed as “hunting magic” and much of the early respect afforded Lewis-Williams came from the fact that he very convincingly gave us an alternative to that overused term. We need to be very careful that we now do not just automatically substitute the “S- word” for “hunting magic” and continue to make the same mistake.” (Faris 2011)

Self portrait by Samantha, 1998.

”A number of years ago on a field trip an enthusiastic rock art fan explained to me that all human figures in rock art that have their arms stretched out straight represent shaman figures. Upon return from that trip to the museum where I worked as exhibits curator at the time I was confronted by the illustration above. It turned out that the picture had been done by a young girl named Samantha who had run out of space on the page when signing her name. The resulting picture had been posted on a lobby wall by the institution’s education curator. I kept a copy of the picture because at that time its innocent childishness seemed to sum up so perfectly the statement that “all figures in rock art that have their arms outstretched straight represent shaman figures”; why she even spelled shaman almost correctly. At the very least it represents scientific proof as definitive as some of Lewis-Williams’.” (Faris 2011) In this I have not modified my opinion since.

“The “shamanism” or “neuropsychological” model proposed by Lewis-Williams and colleagues has had a powerful impact on rock art research, and has significantly added to our knowledge of past foragers lifeways in southern Africa and elsewhere in the world. However, this model is primarily based on the view of shamanism as a universal and unvarying characteristic of foragers over space and time. This paper raises both theoretical and empirical problems with this view. The paper examines the relationship between the specific social roles and practices of shamanism and the overarching cosmological structures on which they are based in both southern Africa and Northern Eurasia. In both cases, the paper argues that many cosmological beliefs are highly persistent and durable, extending into prehistory, while the specific practices and roles of shamans are variable, changing to meet the immediate and local needs of their communities.” (McCall 2006)

Picture of a dancing siberian shaman in full regalia. Image from DALL-E.

This concept of rock art being the product of shamanism had been pushed by the Abbe Breuil. “By Breuil’s death in 1961, the concept of shamanism aligned an idea of universal early religion with the eminence of the painter, the beauty of the cave art, the violence of the imagined ritual, and the political influence of the charismatic leaders. It explained the painter as a shaman too. Like Picasso, Breuil enjoyed what this meant for himself: the painter saw and moved where others could not, and like the shaman he plumbed the animal depths and made them accessible to everyone. The Renaissance of cave painting in the twentieth century was built on this myth. Contemporary artists, confronted with an unpleasant, disenchanted world in their own time, couldn’t resist.” (Geroulanos 2024:302) I, for instance, grew up in the Unitarian church, my wife a Baptist church. If either, or both of us were to paint a picture of a deer on a cliff or cave wall, would it then be shamanic in nature. According to Breuil and Lewis-Williams it would.

Bahn argued basically the same point. “Unfortunately, the claim is often made that ‘shamanism is the religion of all hunting and gathering cultures’, which, as we have seen, is simply not true. For example, there is no shamanism at all in Australia. Trance and ecstasy are not found in many cultures known to have produced prehistoric and historic rock art.” (Bahn 2010)

“There are both theoretical and empirical flaws with the view that shamanism is a universal feature of forager societies, and that forager rock art invariably relates to shamanism. Future rock art research in southern Africa must work to address these flaws in moving beyond past paradigmatic dispositions. This paper has also argued that rock art is (a) class of archaeological remains originating from the process of landscape enculturation. The production of rock art is affected by many short-term and local contingencies, but rock art affects human behavior at scales beyond human lifetimes. The accumulation of rock art on landscapes represents a long-term, inter-generational process. Therefore, this paper has argued that the content of rock art at regional scales is easier to relate to the durable and persistent cosmological structures of forager societies than to the variable, flexible, and transitory social practices of shamanism.” (McCall 2006)

I feel the need to state here (again) that I am not denying that there is shamanistic rock art. I am stating that there are a myriad of potential meanings for a rock art image and reasons for its production, some of it shamanic, some not. Let us not automatically jump to the use of the “S-word” in all instances. It is just not the only answer.

NOTE 1: In some of the quotations I have included above I have left citations that are not listed in my references below. To find these I recommend that you go to the sources listed.

NOTE 2: Some images in this column were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain images.

REFERENCES:

Bahn, Paul G., 2010, Prehistoric Rock Art: Problems and Polemics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Faris, Peter, 2011, The S-Word, Shamanism- or, The Dying Man in Lascaux Revisited, Rock Art Blog, 9 July 2011, https://www.rockartblog.blogspot.com.

Geroulanos, Stefanos, 2024, The Invention of Prehistory, Liveright Publishing Company, a division of Norton and Co., New York.   

McCall, Grant S., 2006, Add Shamas and Stir? A Critical Review of the Shamanism Model of Forager Rock Art Production, 25 September 2006, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, doi:10.1016/j.jaa.2006.09.001

Williams, David Lewis, 2004, The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the origins of Art, 1 April 2004, Thames and Hudson, New York.

BRONZE AGE ROCK ART GAME BOARDS FOUND IN AZERBAIJAN:

Capmali rock shelter (shadows right of center), Gobustan National Reserve, Azerbaijan. Figure 4, Crist and Abdullayev, 2024. 

Readers of RockArtBlog will recognize that one subject I enjoy looking into is board games portrayed in rock art panels (refer to game or game boards in the cloud index at the bottom of this blog). A report in November of 2023 told us about the discovery of a number of boards for the game of ‘58 Holes’ or ‘Hounds and Jackals in Azerbaijan.’

Closeup of Capmali rock shelter (arrow shows location of the game board), Gobustan National Reserve, Azerbaijan. Figure 5, Crist and Abdullayev, 2024. 

“In 2018, archaeologists uncovered ancient game boards on the Absheron Peninsula, located in present-day Azerbaijan. These game boards date  back to the late third to early second millennium BCE, making them among the oldest examples of the Game of 58 Holes. The game boards were found at several archaeological sites, including Çapmalı in the Gobustan National Reserve near the Caspian Sea, as well as Yeni Türkan, Düb əndi, and Ağdaşdüzü.” (Radley 2024) These game boards were engraved onto bedrock in some cases, or onto slabs of stone in other cases.

58-hole game board from Capmali rock shelter, Gobustan National Reserve, Azerbaijan. Figure 6, photograph by Ronnie Galagher, 2024. 

“The game of fifty-eight holes, sometimes known as ‘hounds and jackals’ (so named because the first gaming pieces found feature either a jackal’s or a hound’s head, was played for more than a millennium from the Middle Bronze Age into the Iron Age. Its ancient name is lost, though it could have been the isb from the Middle Kingdom Egyptian Tomb of Khety or the patti-abzu mentioned in a letter from Tushratta to Amenhotep III. Boards have been found in a broad region covering Egypt, the Levant, Mesopotamia, Iran, and Anatolia. Recently, patterns of shallow depressions identified on stone outcrops and portable stone objects indicate that this game was also played during that period in the southern Caucasus. Here we discuss these game boards to show that the Caspian coast was culturally connected to the wider region through playing this game.” (Criss and Abdullayev 2024:1)

Patterns of 58-hole game boards, Azerbaijan. Figure 6, Crist and Abdullayev, 2024. 

These discoveries considerably expand the area in which the game is known to have been popular, and provides earlier examples as well.

“The game of fifty-eight holes was played in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Iran, and the Caucasus during the late third– early second millennium BC. While all these regions have boards without lines connecting holes, those with lines show that there are regional differences in the arrangement of these lines. In Egypt, the lines only connect holes in the same track, while in Anatolia, Iran, and Azerbaijan the lines connect holes in different tracks.” (Criss and Abdullayev 2024:15) Slight regional variations are only to be expected such an early time. Without mass marketing and social media to submerge ideas to the lowest common denominator their spread and uses would depend on individual criteria. “Hey, I learned this great game on my trip. I cannot remember all the details but we can improvise a little.” Indeed, many game players like to create variations in their favorite games.

58-hole game board. Photograph by W. Crist, Courtesy of the director of the Gobustan State Historical and Cultural Preserve.

“The evidence from Azerbaijan shows that people played the game of fifty-eight holes there during the late third–early secondmillennium BC, and that they participated in regional interactions that ranged throughout south-western Asia. To date, six patterns with the distinctive geometry of the game have been identified on the Abşeron Peninsula and to the southwest of it, in the Gobustan National Reserve. One each was found at Çapmalı, Yenı Türkan, and Dübəndi, and three came from Ağdaşdüzü.” (Criss and Abdullayev 2024:4) This game was obviously quite common and popular. Perhaps, at one time it would have been the national game, remember, they didn’t have television.

 “Clearly, further early evidence for the game from precisely dated contexts is required to credit a specific culture for inventing this game. Whatever the origin of the game of fifty-eight holes, it was quickly adopted and played by a wide variety of people, from the nobility of Middle Kingdom Egypt to the cattle herders of the Caucasus, and from the Old Assyrian traders in Anatolia to the workers who built Middle Kingdom pyramids. The fast spread of this game attests to the ability of games to act as social lubricants, facilitating interactions across social boundaries. Games are particularly amenable to building relationships between traders because games are one way that people use to judge trustworthiness, informing future social and economic relationships. At certain times in antiquity, particular games were regionally popular, suggesting that they helped to connect cultures that regularly interacted with one another, as has been documented in more recent times. The game of fifty-eight holes probably served this purpose in the second millennium BC in Egypt and south-western Asia, because it was the only game that was played throughout the region. Indeed, the game was particularly embedded into the social lives of people living in towns involved in the Old Assyrian karum system, of which all of the Anatolian sites producing Middle Bronze Age games were a part. Other games were only locally popular.”  (Criss and Abdullayev 2024:16)

Since the term ‘Karum System’ is not commonly used in rock art studies it is explained in the following. “During the first centuries of the second millennium BCE, Assyrian merchants originating from Assur, on the Upper Tigris, organized large-scale commercial exchanges with central Anatolia. They settled in several localities called karums. This Akkadian word, which usually designates the quay or port in Mesopotamian cities, refers in Anatolia to the Assyrian merchant district and its administrative building. Thus, the karum period – which comprised the Old Assyrium period – covers the time during which the Assyrians traded in Anatolia, from the middle of the twentieth to the end of the eighteenth century BCE; it corresponds, more or less, to the Middle Bronze Age. In Anatolia, this period is characterized by an important phase of urbanization, with a flourishing material culture mixing native and foreign styles.” (Michel 2012) Perhaps a more recent analogy for this would be the British East India Company and the enclaves they established for trade in the colonies.

Abbas Islamov and Ronnie Gallagher indicating the location of the two Ağdaşdüzü boards in the centre of the settlement. Reproduced by permission of Ronnie Gallagher

There is, however, a deal of uncertainty in the dating of these. “The authors caution that it can be complicated to achieve precise dating for this period. "Clearly, further early evidence for the game from precisely dated contexts is required to credit a specific culture for inventing the game," they wrote. Regardless of the game's origin, "it was quickly adopted by a wide variety of people.... The fast spread of this game attests to the ability of games to act as social lubricants, facilitating interactions across social boundaries." (Oullette 2024)

Along with serving as a social lubricant as stated above, the playing of board games goes has a role to play in socializing children into the families and societies that they must grow up with. Like baby bighorn sheep practice butting heads, and baby wolves practice play fighting, children playing board games are learning how to navigate social interactions and appropriate emotional responses.

NOTE 1: I have omitted citations from the quotes above. To see all secondary references I would refer you to the original publications. 

NOTE 2: 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:

Crist, Walter, and Rahman Abdullayev, 2024, Herding with the Hounds: The Game of Fifty-eight Holes in the Abseron Peninsula, European Journal of Archaeology, 2024, pp. 1-29. Doi.10.101/eaa.2024.24. Accessed online 3 September 2024.

Michel, Cecile, 2012, The Karum Period on the Plateau, pp. 313-336, from The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia (10,]000 – 323 BCE), Gregory McMahon and Sharon Steadman editors, published 21 November 2012.

Oullette, Jennifer, 2024, Archaeologists believe this Bronze Age board game is the oldest yet found, published online by Ars Technica, https://arstechnica.com. Accessed online 17 September 2024.

Radley, Dario, 2024, Bronze Age game board in Azerbaijan challenges Egyptian origin of ‘Hounds and Jackals’, 2 September 2024, Archaeology Magazine online, https://archeologymag.com. Accessed online 3 September 2024.

 

 

EDITORIAL – A reply to a comment just left added by Anonymous to my column on 6 April 2013, “Kaneikokala – A Hawaiian Shark Deity.”

“Anonymous has left a new comment on the post "KANEIKOKALA - A HAWAIIAN SHARK DEITY - All of the other photos I took in the museum turned out just fine, but when I went back into my phone to search for the photo of Kaneikokala, it's just all black... I understand that many people believe that sacred spiritual energy (mana) can interact with electronics or discourage photos from turning out, particularly if permission wasn't asked or if the object is traditionally respected by not being photographed. Is this what happened? Also, does anyone have any advice for apologizing for my ignorance and correcting my disrespect? I am not of Polynesian descent and I feel guilty.”

RockArtBlog’s Answer – Anonymous, thank you for your comment. Comments come to me without an attached e-mail address so I cannot reply directly to you, yet your comment interests me and deserves some response. You bring up an interesting point. I also am not of Polynesian descent and yet my photographs turned out fine. As an art historian who specializes in rock art my feelings when in front of this sort of thing do approach a kind of reverence. To me it is incredibly special and fascinating. This is, of course, completely different from the reverence based on spiritual belief held by an ancient Hawaiian approaching Kaneikokala, but if you believe that there is any credibility to the tradition that reverence is needed when approaching the statue, then perhaps my feelings were a satisfactory substitute.

WAS A SOUTH AFRICAN ROCK ART PANEL INSPIRED BY A DICYNODONT FOSSIL?

Dicynodont illustration by Oleg Kluzman, artstation.com.

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.

Horned Serpent Panel, photograph by Julien Benoit, journal.pone.

Horned Serpent Panel, close-up of figure, photograph by Julien Benoit, journal.pone.

“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.

Fossilized dicynodont skull. From journal.pone.

“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.

Dicynodont skeleton, South Africa. Photograph from North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

“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)

Drawing by George Stow and Dorothea Bleak. From journal.pone.

“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.