TRAINING AI TO DETERMINE THE GENDER OF THE MAKERS OF FINGER FLUTING ON CAVE WALLS:

Finger fluting at Gargas Cave, France. Image from Clottes, 2002.

We are all probably aware of the existance finger fluting in caves, it is found all over the world, but it has always been somewhat peripheral to the subject of cave art itself. It is, however, purposeful markings made by people on the cave walls so it needs to be covered in any consideration of cave art. Various examples have been attributed to Neandertals, as well as Homo sapiens men, women and children. Now, a team in Australia is using artificial intelligence to try to clarify the makers of these marks.

“Flutings have the potential to reveal information about age, sex, height, handedness and idiosyncratic markmaking choices among unique individuals who form part of larger communities of practice. However, previous methods for making any determination about the individual artist from finger flutings have been shown to be unreliable4. Accordingly, we propose a novel digital archaeology approach to begin understanding this enigmatic form of rock art by leveraging machine learning (ML) as a tool for uncovering patterns from two datasets, one tactile and one virtual, collected from a modern population. We aimed to determine whether ML can reveal subtle differences in the sex of the artist based on their finger-fluted images.” (Jalandoni et al. 2025:1) In other words they will attempt to have machine learning programs learn to distinguish information like gender and age by analyzing finger fluting created by volunteers. If successful, this could then be applied to finger fluting in cave walls to learn more about the persons who originally created the marks.

Finger fluting attributed to Neandertals, Noire Valley, France. Image from Jean Claude Marquet.

“Experiments were conducted - both with adult participants in a tactile setup and using VR headsets in a custom-built program – to explore whether image-recognition methods could learn enough from finger fluting images made by modern people to identify the sex of the person who created them.” (Lock and Egan 2025:1) The team had participants actually make finger flutings in clay as well as virtually while being videotaped. “Two controlled experiments with 96 adult participants were conducted with each person creating nine flutings twice: once on a moonmilk clay substitute developed to mimic the look and feel of cave surfaces and once in virtual reality (VR) using Meta Quest 3. Images were taken of all the flutings, which were then curated and two common image-recognition models were trained on them. (Lock and Egan 2025:1-2)

Disappointingly, the tests did not produce reliable results. “The VR images did not yield reliable sex classification; even when accuracy looked acceptable in places, overall discrimination and balance were weak. But the tactile images performed much better. ‘Under one training condition, models reached about 84% accuracy, and one model achieved a relatively strong discrimination score.’ Dr. Tuxworth said. However, the models did learn patterns specific to the dataset; for example, subtle artifacts of the setup, rather than robust features of fluting that would hold elsewhere, which meant there was more work to be done.” (Lock and Egan 2025:1-2) Doctor Gervase Tuxworth is one of the experimental team that conducted this study. His statement suggests that the test results were highly variable.

Paleolithic finger fluting from Rouffignac Cave, France. Online image, public domain.

“Overall, the deep learning models achieved high accuracy during training, with AUC values exceeding 0.85 for certain tactile image conditions. These results suggest that the models effectively learned patterns within the tactile dataset and demonstrated strong discrimination between male and female-generated finger fluting images. However, the relatively lower AUC values for virtual images, coupled with their unstable test accuracy, indicate that they do not provide sufficiently distinct features for reliable sex classification. This discrepancy highlights the greater robustness of tactile images over virtual images in capturing relevant classification features. Despite the promising performance on tactile images, deep learning models exhibited a pronounced disparity between training and test performance. While training accuracy consistently increased, reaching near-perfect levels in the later epochs, test accuracy remained unstable and showed no substantial improvement over time. This pattern indicates overfitting, where the models effectively learn dataset-specific features but fail to generalize to unseen test data.” (Jalandoni et al. 2025:10) I find the previous paragraph somewhat confusing. It states “accuracy consistently increased, reaching near-perfect levels” and “accuracy remained unstable and showed no substantial improvement” in two contiguous sentences. In any case, the team did not get reliable results.

Finger fluting made by children, Rouffignac Cave, France. Online image, public domain.

There are a number of possible sources of inaccuracy in the test results.“The instability in test accuracy further suggests that the models struggle to extract robust and generalizable patterns from the finger fluting images, ultimately limiting their reliability for sex classification. A possible contributing factor to this challenge could be individual variation in hand size and fluting characteristics. For example, some females may have larger hands and exhibit stronger fluting patterns resembling those of males, while some males may have smaller hands and display lighter, less pronounced fluting strength. This variability could confuse the model, making it difficult to accurately differentiate between sexes and ultimately hindering its performance on the test set. These results underscore the critical need to increase the dataset size to alleviate overfitting and improve the model’s generalizability. Moreover, the inherent variability in finger fluting images may impose fundamental limitations on the feasibility of using deep learning for sex classification, suggesting that alternative approaches or additional contextual data may be necessary to enhance classification accuracy. The limited success of the tactile data in sex prediction underscores the importance of material-based approaches in understanding finger flutings. While the VR data failed to provide useful results, it opens up new and exciting possibilities for exploring the dynamic aspects of fluting and artistic intent in the future. While a modest achievement, this study highlights the potential of ML to enhance traditional archaeological methods”. (Jalandoni et al. 2025:10) Not every try is guaranteed success.

Koonalda Cave finger flutings, Australia. Photograph Robert Bednarik, 1979.

So, this test did not manage to display reliable accuracy, too many variables in the creation of finger fluting seemingly overwhelmed the software. Also, the experiment apparently did not include children, and it is thought that much finger fluting, at least in European cave contexts, was created by children. If successful, this project would have been a really wonderful development but, alas, it was not. Better luck next time.

NOTE: Some images in this column 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:

Andrea Jaladoni, Robert Haubt, Calum Farrar, Gervase Tuxworth , Zhongyi Zhang , Keryn Walshe and April Nowell, 2025, Using digital archaeology and machine learning to determine sex in finger flutings, Scientific Reports, 15:34842. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-18098-4. Accessed online 12 October 2025.

Lock, Lisa, and Robert Egan, 2025, VR experiments train AI to identify ancient finger-fluting artists, 16 October 2025, The GIST, by Griffith University, https://phys.org/news/2025-10-vr-ai-ancient-finger-fluting.html.

MUSIC IN ROCK ART – REVISITED AGAIN – AEROPHONES:

 

Pictograph panel (digitally enhanced), Cedarburg, South Africa. Photograph by Neil Rusch.

RockArtBlog has had a number of columns in the past about music and rock art. This column is to present a painted panel from Cedarburg, South Africa (Matjes River), that seems to show a group of four anthropomorphs who are whirling bull-roarers. Neil Rusch and Sara Wurz published a paper (2022) on this panel and the sounds made by reconstructions of the instruments portrayed.

In 2020, Joshua Kumbani called for more research into ancient music in archeological contexts. “Research in music archaeology in southern Africa has just begun. Available evidence dates back from around 10,000 years ago, from the Later Stone Age up to the Iron Age. The artifacts fall into two groups, namely aerophones, where sound is produced by vibrating air, and idiophones, where sound is produced by solid material vibrating. These artifacts include spinning disks, bullroarers, bone tubes that could have been used as flutes or whistles, clay whistles, keys from thumb pianos (also called lamellophones or mbiras), musical bells and an ivory trumpet. The list is not exhaustive and more research needs to be conducted.” (Kumbani 2020) This actually strikes me as a pretty comprehensive list. Kumbani has certainly been doing his homework.

Pictograph panel (digitally enhanced), close-up of two central figures, Cedarburg, South Africa. Photograph by Neil Rusch.

 “These music-related or sound-producing artifacts are made from various materials, including bone, ivory, metal and clay. The artifacts show how integral sound and music production was in the socio-cultural practices of people in the past, most likely for entertainment and rituals. Sound production and music making is a sign of being fully human. Recent experimental work established that some Later Stone Age bone implements from the Klasies River Mouth and Matjes River sites are a spinning disk and a bullroarer respectively. Their replicas produced powerful whirring sounds and they can be referred to as sound-producing implements even though the purpose of the sound or their use cannot be clearly ascertained. They could have been used as signalling implements, toys, in ritual settings or in musical contexts, among others. Nowadays these implements are seldom found in the region.” (Kumbani 2020) Music making – yes. But, the manufacture of these implements to control sound, yes, that is pretty human. There is, of course, the Australian Palm Cockatoo that breaks off a stick to drum on a limb or tree trunk. This is, in fact, apparently a case of non-human intentional music making – but it is a really isolated example (see Heinsohn et al. 2017).

When we are talking about art history we often overlook the importance on non-visual arts: music, poetry, etc. Rusch and Wurz have focused on the instruments indicated in the rock art panel from Cedarberg. “Our archaeoacoustic research is focused on bringing to life sounds made by people living in the past. No aural record remains but people did dance, sing and clap. Instruments either no longer exist or are extremely rare. One exception are the gong rocks, known as lithophones, which ring when struck and produce purposeful, percussive sounds. Occasionally, unfamiliar and rare musical instruments are depicted in rock paintings. In a new study we turned our ears to a rock painting in the Cederberg Mountains in South Africa’s Western Cape province. The human figures in this painting have previously been interpreted as healers holding fly-whisks and doing a trance-dance. Fly-whisks were an important accessory for the dance because they were thought to keep arrows of sickness at bay.” (Rush and Wurz 2022) Concerning ‘gong rocks’ (lithophones) I have previously written a number of columns on RockArtBlog. Go to the cloud index at the bottom and look for the word ‘lithophone.’ But this is about bull-roarers.

Bull-roarers. Online image, public domain.

Rusch and Wurz interpreted what they observed on the panel as what in western sources are known as bull-roarers. I have to agree with this. Given that the figures seem to be waving slender cords with something on the end bull-roarers would seem to be the logical interpretation. “But our results suggest that the fly-whisks are in fact musical instruments of a type known as a !goin !goin – a name that only exists in the now extinct ǀXam language that was spoken by hunter-gatherers in central southern Africa. The !goin !goin is an aerophone; these instruments produce sound by creating vibrations in the air when they are spun around their axes. To reach this conclusion we combined digital image recovery techniques with instruments created from life-size templates based on our findings. The eight instruments were played in a Cape Town sound studio and the sounds were recorded. Sound produced by the recreated instruments convincingly matches the sound spectrum (90 – 150 Hz) produced by a similar 19th century model of the !goin !goin aerophone, which is archived in the Kirby Collection of Musical Instruments, curated by the University of Cape Town’s College of Music.” (Rush and Wurz 2022) So, this particular panel is the group of figures with bull-roarers.  

West African fly whisk. Online image, public domain.

Noticing that the pictograph panel shows multiple musicians playing the !goin !goin aerophone Rush and Wurz also recorded multiple examples played at the same time. They found that by varying the speed of one or the other instrument they could create a number of different sound effects. They call this ability ‘compositional.’ “This compositional aspect of the instrument was not well known at all so we delved deeper. In the Special Collections archive at the University of Cape Town we found an obscure description of the !goin !goin which confirmed, as does the Cederberg painting, that groups did play the instruments together. ‘An instrument consisting of a blade of wood attached to a little stick, which is held in the hand. The performer grasping the little stick whirls the blade about in the air, producing a whirring sound. It is used by both !sexes among the Bushmen [another name used for the San and today considered derogatory by some] and, at times, by a number of persons together with the view to causing rain.’ ǀXam-speaking hunter gatherers associated the sound of the !goin !goin with honey bees  They even went so far as to say that with the !goin !goin  they could “move bees”. This complements the previous statement linking the instrument’s sound with “causing rain”. The archive statement also confirms that both men and women worked with rain, using the sound of the !goin !goin  for this purpose.” (Rush and Wurz 2022) It is really very easy to imagine the sound of multiple bull-roarers sounding like a swarm of bees.

Kumbani's "spinnin discs." Kumbani et al., 2019.

Kumbani et al. (2020) also refers to a second type of aerophone which he calls simply a ‘spinning disc.’ Kumbani’s ‘spinnin disc’ is a piece of bone with two holes drilled near the center. A loop of cord is tied through those holes, held between both hands,  and by rhythmically pulling the ends apart and then relaxing to let it spin and wind up the other way, one can achieve pulses of a whirring sound. But I know of no examples of these pictured in ancient rock art. So we turn our focus and attention back to the bull-roarers.

Such in-depth analysis of the recorded sound frequencies of !goin !goins goes past the point of my interest in the panel, but, I have frequently written about music related to rock art, and this is a marvelous example. Their identification of the instruments involved gives us a whole new aspect to appreciate. And, their innovation of playing more than one at the same time opens new areas of experimental archaeology of music.

NOTE: Some images in this column 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.

PRIMARY REFERENCES:

Kumbani, Joshua, 2020, What archaeology tells us about the music and sounds made by Africa’s ancestors, 24 August 2020, https://theconversation.com. Accessed online 2 January 2025.

Kumbani, Joshua et al., 2019, A functional investigation of southern Cape Later Stone Age artifacts resembling aerophones, Journal of Archaeological Science Reports, April 2019, DOI:10.1016/j.jasrep.2019.02.021. Accessed online from Researchgate, 26 August 2025.

Rusch, Neil, and Sara Wurz, 2022, How the music of an ancient rock painting was brought to life, 29 June 2022, https://theconversation.com. Accessed online 2 January 2025.

SECONDARY REFERENCE:

Heinsohn, Robert et al., 2017, Tool-assisted rhythmic drimming in palm cockatoos shares key elements of human instrumental music, 28 June 2017, Science Advances, Vol. 3, Issue 6. DOI:10.1126/sciadv.1602399. Accessed online 13 November 2025.

 

12,000-YEAR-OLD NATUFIAN FIGURINE OF A WOMAN AND A GOOSE:

 

Venus of Laussel, Laussel Cave, France. Image from Wikipedia.

Back in July of 2018 I wrote a column about the possibility that the horn held by the 25,000 year old ‘Venus of Laussel’ represented a cornucopia, and was thus evidence of an incredibly long lasting tradition. Now a recent discovery of a 12,000 year old Natufian figurine in Israel appears to possibly point to another very long survival of a theme in ancient myth and legend – Leda and the Swan.

Statue of Leda and the Swan. Timotheos, ca. 300 BC. Getty Museum, 70.AA.110.

The myth, as we know it, is set in the Mythical Bronze Age of Greece (roughly 1600–1100 BCE), the same legendary era as the Trojan War. Zeus, the father of the gods, appears to Leda, a queen of Sparta, in the form of a beautiful swan and seduces her. Leda is the mother of Helen of Troy, linking the myth to that cycle. (Wikipedia)

Leda and the Swan. 1505-1510 CE, by Cesare da Sesto, after a  lost  Leonardo.

The myth of Leda and the Swan remained a favorite of artists throughout the Renaissance.

Now, at a Natufian site in Israel the discovery of a figurine from over ten thousand years earlier than the Greeks suggests the possibility that the Bronze Age Greeks had received the myth from earlier people, handed down orally.

Woman and Goose, Nahal Ein Gev II, Israel. Image from the Hebrew University.

This discovery was made by a team from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “A 12,000-year-old clay figurine unearthed in northern Israel, depicting a woman and a goose, is the earliest known human-animal interaction figurine. Found at the Late Natufian site of Nahal Ein Gev II, the piece predates the Neolithic and signals a turning point in artistic and spiritual expression. Combining naturalism, light manipulation, and symbolic imagination, it reveals how early communities used art to explore the relationship between humans and the natural world.” (Phys.org 2025) The figurine appears to be, at least, a small figure of a woman with a large bird on her back and its neck and head over her right shoulder.

Artist's reconstruction of the figurine. Image from phys.org.

“The Natufians, who lived across the Levant between about 15,000 and 11,500 years ago, were among the first groups in the region to establish permanent or semi-permanent settlements. Living before the rise of farming, they were already experimenting with artistic forms that would flourish in the Neolithic. The new figurine underscores their growing interest in narrative imagery, mythmaking, and the symbolic links between people and the natural world. Researchers studying the artifact note that the goose, a bird commonly eaten by Natufians and used for ornamentation, is depicted as alive and active, not hunted. Its wings stretch back toward the woman in a gesture of intimate contact. While a practical reading, such as a person carrying game is still possible, the sculptor’s emphasis on movement and interaction favors a mythological reading. The scene may reflect an early animistic worldview in which humans and animals shared overlapping spiritual roles and identities.” (Radley 2025) Additionally, the presence of traces of red ocher on both the woman and the goose, and the fact that the clay had been fired illustrate its intentionality, this is no lump of mud that accidentally looks like a figurine. (Phys.org 2025)

Prof. Natalie Munro and Dr. Laurent Davin with the figurine. Image from the Hebrew University.

“The figurine is only 3.7 centimeters tall and was molded from local clay before being heated in a fireplace at a controlled temperature. Microscopic examination showed traces of red ocher on both figures and even a partial fingerprint left by its maker, likely a young woman, based on ridge-pattern analysis.” (Radley 2025) Identifying the maker as a young woman based on a partial fingerprint in a lump of 12,000 year old clay may be a stretch.

Goose. Online image, public domain.

A number of other indicators were found testifying to the importance of the goose to the people of Nahal Ein Gev II. “Faunal remains from the site reinforce the connection between geese and ritual life. The bird’s feathers were used for decoration, and certain bones were fashioned into ornaments. The artistic focus on a goose and a woman, the researchers argue, points to an early mythic imagination, a symbolic vocabulary that later blossomed in Neolithic cults and figurative traditions across Southwest Asia.” (Phys.org 2025) While I do not question the identification of the faunal remains mentioned above, I do question that there are enough identifiable details in the figurine to positively confirm that it is a goose. Both geese and swans are large bodied birds with similar beaks. The team use the word mythic, and I would like them to consider that this might be an earlier manifestation of the myth cycle that led to Leda and the Swan.

Swan. Online image, public domain.

“This figurine offers archaeologists a rare glimpse into the beliefs and artistic experimentation of communities standing at the threshold of major cultural change, capturing a moment when early sedentary societies began exploring more elaborate systems – long before the emergence of agriculture, permanent architecture, and the more standardized art forms of the Neolithic.” (Radley 2025) Such an artifact testifies to a certain level of importance of this concept, that someone took the time and energy to create the figurine, fire it and decorate it with ochre. That would certainly suggest a likely ritual importance of the figurine. And, if we accept this ritual importance, I would add, perhaps we should consider the possibility that the origins of a Classical Greek myth can be traced back an additional 12,000 years.

NOTE: Some images in this column 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, 2018, The Cornucopia – An Ancient Tradition, 7 July 2018, RockArtBlog, https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/7760124847746733855/3537035597338938690

Phys.org, 2025, The woman and the goose: A 12,000-year-old glimpse into prehistoric belief, 18 November 2025, The Gist, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Accessed online 18 November 2025.

Radley, Dario, 2025, Rare 12,000-year-old Natufian figurine of a woman and a goose offers a glimpse into prehistoric beliefs, 18 November 2025, https://archaeologymag.com/2025/11/rare-natufian-figurine-of-a-woman-and-a-goose/. Accessed online 18 Nov. 2025. 

Wikipedia, Leda and the Swan, https://en.wikipedia.org/Leda_and_the_Swan. Accessed online 20 November 2025.

CERTIFIABLE ROCK ART PREVARICATION (C.R.A.P.) AWARD FOR 2025 – SPACE ALIENS IN ROCK ART:

The RockArtBlog 2025 Certifiable Rock Art Prevarication Award goes to the purveyors of nonsense on the internet claiming that rock art at a site in the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh, India, illustrate ancient alien visitors to earth 10,000 years ago (this also applies to any other examples of such felgercarb).

Swelter Shelter, Dinosaur National Monument, Uintah County, Utah. Photograph J&E Faris, September 1989.

My own experience with this sillyness goes back in the early 1980s. After a trip to Dinosaur National Monument I showed this photograph of the above anthropomorphic petroglyphs to a coworker who said “see, you can’t tell me that Earth hasn’t been visited by aliens from outer space.” Well, I am trying to tell you now!

Alien astronauts wearing space suits. Photograph by Amit Bhardwaj, Times of India.

More recently, reports in the Times of India have been circulating that are identified as images of aliens by so-called archeologists there. “An archaeologist of India found 10,000 year old paintings depicting Aliens and UFOs in a cave near Chhattisgarh, India. According to archaeologist J.R. Bhagat, these paintings have depicted aliens like those shown in Hollywood and Bollywood flicks and say they may serve as evidence that earth was once visited by an advanced alien civilization.” (archaeologynewsnetwork.com 2022) Now J.R., doesn’t the fact that they do look like depictions from Bollywood give you reason to question them?

Alien astronauts wearing space suits. Photograph by Amit Bhardwaj, Times of India.

The Times of India continues, “According to archaeologists these ancient rock carvings represent 10,000-year-old depictions of ancient aliens and UFOs. Scientists are now trying to unravel the mystery behind the curious paintings and seek help from NASA, ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) and other archaeologists in order to learn more about the origin of these carvings. The rock paintings were discovered in caves located about 130 kilometers from Raipur, the capital city of the state of Chhattisgarh, India. According to the Times of India, archaeologist J.R. Bhagat says these paintings depict aliens in spacesuits.” (thearchaeologist.org 2025) One question Mr. Bhagat, if an alien has the advanced technology to travel all the way to earth do you really think he would need to wear a baggy spacesuit like our astronauts do? Wouldn’t he be more likely to wear a portable force-field generator, or just beam down from orbit like on Star Trek?

Supposed vimana or UFO. Image from archaeologynewsnetwork.

The people who disseminate this kind of nonsense apparently seem to strenuously avoid actually thinking these things through. Maybe there is a dearth of intelligent life on this planet. This leads to the disseminators of these reports as the proud recipients of the RockArtBlog 2026 C.R.A.P Award. Thank you for your contributions.

REFERENCES:

Anonymous, 2022, 10,000-year-old cave paintings depicting aliens found in India, 25 April 2022, archaeologynewsnetwork.com. Accessed online 21 December 2025.

The Archaeologist, 2024, 10,000-Year-Old Rock Paintings In Chhattisgarh Hint At Ancient Encounters With “Aliens” And “UFOs”, 5 November 2024, thearchaeologist.org. Accessed online 21 December 2025.

Drolia, Rashmi, 2014, 10,000-year-old rock paintings depicting aliens and UFOs found in Chhattisgarh, 15 July 2014, The Times of India. Accessed online 21 December 2025.