A GIANT CARVED SNAKE IN SOUTH AFRICA’S RHINO CAVE:

Coulson et al., 2011, Fig. 2, page 22.

A natural rock feature in a cave in Botswana has been found that had been modified to resemble the head and part of the body of a python. “Rhino Cave, located at the World Heritage site of Tsodilo Hills, is one of the three main Middle Stone Age (MSA) sites in Botswana. Initial investigations during the mid-1990s left unanswered a number of key questions regard­ing the early use of the cave. This prompted the current investigations, which have unearthed a wealth of MSA artifacts from a lag deposit. Results of a selectively employed chaîne opératoire analysis have revealed a very special set of behavioral patterns. It will be argued that the best-fit interpretation of the results from this investigation lies within the realm of ritualized behavior. The assemblage is characterized by an unexpectedly large number of MSA points, which are for the most part produced in non-locally acquired raw materials. These points are colorful, care­fully and often elaborately made, and, once complete, never left the cave. They were either deliberately burned to the point where they could no longer be used, abandoned, or intentionally smashed. These artifacts were found together with tabular grinding slabs and pieces of the locally available pigment, specularite. This assemblage was recovered directly beneath a massive, virtually free-standing rock face that has been carved with hundreds of cupules of varying sizes and shapes. A section of the carved rock face was recovered from well within the MSA deposits in association with handheld grinding stones.” (Coulson et al. 2011) The large number of artifacts and the fact that so many of them had been broken immediately said to the researchers that this was evidence of ceremonial use of the cave.

The serpent highlighted, internet image, public domain.

This discovery certainly fits within the belief system of the local San people who historically resided in the area.

“Associate Professor Sheila Coulson, from the University of Oslo, can now show that modern humans, Homo sapiens, have performed advanced rituals in Africa for 70,000 years. She has, in other words, discovered mankind’s oldest known ritual. The archaeologist made the surprising discovery while she was studying the origin of the Sanpeople. A group of the San live in the sparsely inhabited area of north-western Botswana known as Ngamiland. Coulson made the discovery while searching for artifacts from the Middle Stone Age in the only hills present for hundreds of kilometers in any direction. This group of small peaks within the Kalahari Desert is known as the Tsodilo Hills and is famous for having the largest concentration of rock paintings in the world. The Tsodilo Hills are still a sacred  place for the San, who call them the ‘Mountains of the Gods’and the ‘Rock that Whispers’. The python is one of the San’s most important animals. According to their creation myth, mankind descended from the python and the ancient, arid streambeds around the hills are said to have been created by the python as it circled the hills in its ceaseless search for water. Sheila Coulson’s find shows that people from the area had a specific ritual location associated with the python. The ritual was held in a little cave on the northern side of the Tsodilo Hills. The cave itself is so secluded and access to it is so difficult that it was not even discovered by archaeologists until the 1990s. When Coulson entered the cave this summer with her three master’s students, it struck them that the mysterious rock resembled the head of a huge python. On the six meter long by two meter tall rock, they found three-to-four hundred indentations that could only have been man-made. ‘You could see the mouth and eyes of the snake. It looked like a real python. The play of sunlight over the indentations gave them the appearance of snake skin. At night, the firelight gave one the feeling that the snake was actually moving’.”  (AtHope 2017) So the adding of the pecked pits are assumed to be a way of representing the scales of the python.

Drawings by Damien AtHope, 2017.

Dating for the great serpent is uncertain. Samples from excavation within the cave below the panel were taken for radiocarbon and thermoluminescence dating. The radiocarbon date came back at 14,500±50 BP for the Middle Stone Age level, and the thermoluminescence date retrieved was 18,175±2,871 BP. (Coulson 2011:23) However, when artifacts were compared to dated material from nearby locations they led to conclusions of much older dates. “The dating of the MSA assemblage from this site then had to revert to a typological comparison to the nearby well-dated MSA sites of White Paintings Shelter (66,400±6,500 and 94,300±9,400 BP) (Robbins et al. 2000b: 1092) and the open-air pan site of ≠Gi (77,000±11,000 BP) which is approximately 120km southwest of the Hills. For example Laurel Phillipson (2007: 20), who recently re-examined a selection of the MSA points from the 1996 excavations, states that she concurs “with the excavators that the Middle Stone Age lithics from these adjacent sites appear so similar…that the series of age determinations from the White Paint­ings Shelter can also be applied to the material from Rhino Cave.” Therefore, although the exact dating of Rhino Cave remains unresolved, this MSA assemblage can be consid­ered to be generally comparable to those from White Paintings Shelter.” (Coulson et al. 2011:23)

Diagram of the pecking, drawn by Damien AtHope, 2017.

So, which is it, fourteen to eighteen thousand years, or sixty-six to ninety-three thousand years? If fourteen thousand we might go a little way out on a limb and guess that the serpent was made by the earliest ancestors of the present-day San residents. But, if it is seventy thousand years old that may be a bough too far.

 

REFERENCES:

AtHope, Damien, 2017, Stone Snake of South Africa: first human worship 70,000 years ago, 5 March 2017, https://damienmarieathope.com. Accessed online 24 August 2025.

Coulson, Sheila, et al., 2011, Ritualized Behavior in the Middle Stone Age: Evidence from Rhino Cave, Tsodilo Hills, Botswana, Paleoanthropology 2011:18-61, DOI:10.4207/PA.2011.ART42. Accessed online 26 August 2025.

SECONDARY REFERENCES:

Phillipson, L., 2007, Reassessment of Selected Middle Stone Age Artefacts from Rhino Cave and from White Paint­ings Rock Shelter, Tsodilo Hills, Botswana. South Afri­can Archaeological Bulletin 62(185): 19–30.