A NEW CANDIDATE FOR THE OLDEST ROCK ART - A 67,000+ YEAR OLD HANDPRINT:

Researcher Maxime Aubert  in a limestone cave called Liang Metanduno on Muna. Photograph Ahdi Agus Oktaviana, 21 January 2026.

Almost a year ago I published a column on RockArtBlog on what was claimed to be the oldest rock art discovered so far, a 66,000+ year old hand print in Maltrivieso Cave in Spain (Faris 2025). Now, a new candidate has emerged from a cave on the Indonesian island of Muna, a handprint dated at 67,800+ years of age.

The islands in the Indonesian archipelago were on the transit route for the early humans who ended up in Australia. Some of these people would have settled locally in their tropical paradise, and this was very early indeed in the chronicles of human migration. “In an Indonesian cave system known for its prehistoric art, the oldest cave art yet found was hiding in plain sight. In a cave full of paintings that were well studied over the years, a faint hand stencil on the ceiling had been overlooked. – A nearby stencil dated to about 60,900 years ago.” (Callaway 2026)

Overlooked because of its location and being faded. It will be very interesting to see what future results of these studies will produce. There may be much more to learn there.

The faint handprint between two other images. Image from Griffith University.

Having found this overlooked handprint, their next step was to date it. “The oldest minimum-age constraint we obtained is for a hand stencil (sample LMET2) from Liang Metanduno in Muna Island. This motif is partly covered by ancient coralloid speleothems. This stencil is in a poor state of preservation, comprising only a 14 × 10 cm patch of faded pigment bearing a portion of the fingers and the adjoining palm area. The tip of one finger appears to have been artificially narrowed, either through the additional application of pigment or by moving the hand during pigment application, a distinct type of hand stencil art thus far identified only in Sulawesi. Dating results show that this stencil was produced at least 67.8  thousand years ago (ka) (71.6 ± 3.8 ka).” (Oktavian et al. 2026) This dating was apparently made with uranium/thorium dating of rock deposited over the surface of the handprint. This means that the higher figure of 71.6 thousand years could, in fact, be close to the accurate date.

Close-up of the handprint. Image from Griffith University.

In ages of lowered sea levels the Indonesian archipelago could have been transited on foot, and at times of higher sea level early rafts or boats would suffice for population movement. “It’s not yet clear whose hands made the prints. They could be from an ancient human group called Denisomans who lived in the area and may have interacted with our Homo sapiens ancestors before eventually going extinct. Or they may belong to modern humans venturing away from Africa, who could have wandered through the Middle East and Australia around this time. Fine details on the cave art, including the intentionally modified fingertips, point to a human hand.” (Ramakrishnan 2026) While we are pretty sure that early humans were here because of their early arrival in Australia, we cannot know for certain that Homo sapiens made these prints. As Ramakrishnan states it is possible that Denisovans also could have been in that area although there is not yet any corroborating data for that. We must remember that “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” (although this quote is usually attributed to Carl Sagan its first uses can be traced back to the 1890s).

Additional examples of handprints with narrowed fingers. Image by Maxime Aubert.

This narrowing of the fingertip is very interesting. “Consistent with a style that has, so far, only been found on Sulawesi, the hand is depicted with pointy, clawlike fingers. Researchers believe the style might serve to emphasize the close connection between humans and animals, which is “something we already seem to see in the very early painted art of Sulawesi, with at least one instance of a scene portraying figures that we interpret as representations of part-human, part-animal beings,’ said study co-author Adam Brumm of Griffith University in a statement.” (Callaway 2026) I am assuming that this part-human, part-animal interpretation is seeing the narrowed fingertips as portrayals of hands with claws. This is something that I have to take with a grain of salt. While therianthropic figures mixing human and animal traits are common in rock art the world over a picture of a handprint with narrow fingers does not strike me as related.

 

REFERENCES:

Callaway, K.R., 2026, Oldest cave art ever found discovered in Indonesia, www.scientificamerican.com. Accessed online 21 January 2026.

Faris, Peter, 2025, A newer candidate for the oldest rock art – a 66,000+ year old hand print, 18 January 2025, RockArtBlog, https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/7760124847746733855/3761715241354171606

Oktavian ,Adhi Agus et al., 2026, Rock art from at least 67,800 years ago in Sulawesi, Nature online, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09968-y.

Ramakrishnan, Adithi, 2026, Indonesian handprints are the oldest cave art found yet, 21 January 2026, Associated Press. Accessed online 2 February 2026.

FINGER LENGTH AND GENDER IN PAINTED HANDPRINTS:

Apparent female handprint, Pech Merle Cave, France. Image from Pinterest.

On August 5, 2009, I posted a column on Hand prints in Rock Art in which I discussed the fact that a viewer can sometimes determine the gender of a rock art creator by measuring the relative length of the first and third fingers in a hand print. Statistically more males have a longer third finger while more females have a longer first finger.

Handprint, Pech Merle Cave, France. Image from Wikipedia.

Rebecca Coffey wrote in Scientific American (2012) that “In men the index finger is usually shorter than the ring finger, but in most women it’s the other way around, although in some women the fingers are of equal length. In mice the digit ratio corresponds to the female-male hormonal balance in the womb during the week digits form; androgen apparently produces a longer ring finger. Researchers study these ratios to see if they can serve as markers for certain human attributes. So far in 2012, studies have found that girls with a masculine ratio do not get lost as easily; that a feminine ratio in heterosexual girls is associated with bulimia; and that boys with more masculine ratios have more typically masculine facial features.” (Coffee 2012:19)

Handprints, Maltravieso Cave, Spain. Internet image, public domain.

According to A’ndrea Elyse Messer (2013) of Penn State University “the assumption has been that hand prints, whether stencils – paint blown around the hand – or actual paint-dipped prints, were produced by men because other images on cave walls were often hunting scenes. The smaller handprints were assumed to be adolescent boys. Dean Snow, emeritus professor of anthropology, came across the work of John Manning, a British biologist who about 10 years ago tried to use the relationships of various hand measurements to determine not only sex, but such things as sexual preference or susceptibility to heart disease. Snow wondered if he could apply this method to the handprints left in cave sites in France and Spain. ‘Manning probably went way beyond what the data could infer, but the basic observation that men and women have differing finger ratios was interesting,’ said Snow. ‘I thought here was a neat little one off science problem that can be solved by applications of archaeological science.’” (Messer 2013) As it turns out there are numerous ancient handprints in rock art.

Handprints, El Castillo, Spain, image from donsmaps.com, photograph by  Pedro Saura.

An in-depth study of handprints in El Castillo Cave in Cantabria, Spain has provided conclusions about the genders of the makers of the handprints. “Several attempts have been made to develop a system to determine the gender of prehistoric artists with the handprints found in many caves with rock art of this chronology. One of the most prominent attempts, as mentioned above, was by Dean R. Snow. In 2006, Snow studied the hands in Les Combarelles, Font-de-Gaume and the Abri du Poisson with the result that four out of six hands belonged to women. In 2010, Snow along with other authors such as Wang used a computer image method to determine the gender of hand stencils.” (Ravazo-Rodriguez  et al., 2017:378) I find it difficult to imagine a reliable scientific result. With individual variation being such an unknown factor it would seem that the best we can do is use it to make educated guesses, which is pretty much good enough for art historians.

Enhanced handprints, Maltravieso Cave, Spain. Internet image, public domain.

However, a team in Spain determined to study this proposition and then applied the results to Paleolithic handprints found in the cave of El Castillo. “In the experiment, 77 samples (hand stencils) of western adults from the Iberian Peninsula, 46 women and 31 men, were taken. For each modern individual (22 women and 18 men), both the stencils and the real size of their hands were measured. This data was then compared with the Paleolithic stencils to determine whether there was a range of variation between the negative image and the actual hand. The measurements taken into account were the general hand length, index finger length and ring finger length. Discriminatory statistical analysis was used for the experimental work and the measurements collected in the field. In the data obtained in the experimental study, significant differences were observed in the length of male and female fingers, but not in the ring fingers themselves. Discrimina(ting) analyses show that it is the absolute finger lengths and not the ring fingers that are able to discriminate between men and women.” (Ravazo-Rodriguez  et al., 2017:1) I believe that what Ravazo-Rodriguez et al. are saying here is that a simple comparison of ring finger length is not enough, the ratio of first to third fingers must be compared. This only makes sense as we now know that hand prints in caves were made by men, women, adolescents and children so hand sizes, and this finger lengths, vary wildly.

Handprints, Cave of the Hands, Big Sur, California. Image by Esselen Institute.

The results obtained by the Spanish team were actually pretty good. “By applying this function to 21 stenciled hands in El Castillo Cave, it was found that 11 belong to women and 10 to men, indicating equal gender representation. Three of the 21 hands may be wrongly sexed according to the discriminant function. However, there is a significant difference between the real finger measurements and the measurements of their stencils in the experimental study, as the negative images overestimate the real values.” (Ravazo-Rodriguez  et al., 2017:1) With an estimation of three errors out of 21 evaluations this would have indicated a roughly 85% accuracy rate and, as I said above this is not bad in a field like art history, perhaps not good enough for a scientist, but encouraging for me.

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 this you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

Coffey, Rebecca, 2012, Digit Divide, Scientific American, July 2012, p. 19.

Faris, Peter, 2009, Hand prints in Rock Art, 5 August 2009, RockArtBlog, https://rockartblog.blogspot.com.

Messer, A’ndrea Elyse, 2013, Women leave their handprints on the cave wall, 15 October 2013, Penn State University press release. https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/women-leave-their-handprints-cave-wall. Accessed online 14 April 2025.

Ravazo-Rodriguez, Ana Maria et al., 2017, New data on the sexual dimorphism of the hand stencils in El Castillo Cave (Cantabria, Spain), Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 14 (2017), 374-381.

SECONDARY REFERENCE:

Snow, D.R., 2013. Sexual dimorphism in European Upper Paleolithic cave art. Am. Antiq. 78 (4), 746–761.

Wang, James Z. et al., 2013, Determining the Sexual Identities of Prehistoric Cave Artists using Digitized Handprints, A Machine Learning Approach, Penn State University. Downloaded from Research Gate on 7 September 2025.

 

A NEW VIEW ON INCOMPLETE HANDPRINTS IN EUROPEAN CAVES:

Stencilled handprint with missing fingers, Gargas Cave, France. Internet photograph, public domain.

I have previously written a number of columns in RockArtBlog about handprints (see hand print in the cloud index at the bottom of the page with a couple more under gender). Subjects have included determining gender from handprints, handedness from handprints, and handprints as a system of numerical notation. Many handprints (especially in the Paleolithic painted caves of Europe) are incomplete showing apparently missing finger joints of whole fingers. Various reasons for this have been proposed including fingers missing because of injury or fristbite, and counting systems where whole fingers and folded fingers represent differing numbers in a notation.

Stencilled handprint with missing fingers, Cosquer Cave, France. Internet photograph, public domain.

A 2018 paper published online brought out a new proposal for the reason we find hendprints with missing finger joints or fingers. McCauley et al. (2018) studied the phenomenon of phalangeal amputation across a broad range of indigenous cultures and identified seven separate reasons for the removal of finger joints among these peoples.  

Stencilled handprint with missing fingers, Maltravieso Cave, Spain. Internet photograph, public domain.

Sacrifice: the amputation to appeal to a deity for assistance. The most common type of finger amputation, they found thirty-three groups that practiced this: sixteen from North America, ten from Africa, six from Oceania, and one from Asia. More common in females than in males, it was also more common in children than adults. Typically the distal phalanx of the fifth finger would be removed from one hand or the other. (McCauley et al. 2018) An example would be members of the tribes of the Great Plains of North America who would sometimes remove a finger joint during the Sun Dance to appeal to the Great Spirit.

Stencilled handprints with missing fingers, Gargas Cave, France. Internet photograph, public domain.

Mourning: wherein close relatives of a deceased individual would remove finger joints as an actd of extreme grief. Thirty groups displayed this practice: fifteen from North America, six from Africa, six from Oceania, and three from South America. (McCauley et al. 2018)

Identity: finger amputations carried out to mark group membership. Nineteen groups in their sample engaged in this practice: nine from Australia, eight from Africa, and two from North America. (McCauley et al. 2018)

Stencilled handprints with missing fingers, Gargas Cave, France. Internet photograph, public domain.

Medical: in this practice finger amputation was used to resolve a health problem. It not only includes fingers that have been physically damaged (e. g. frosbitten or crushed) but also amputating undamaged fingers to bleed sickness out. Twelve groups engaged in this practice: eight from Africa, two from North America, one from Eurasia, and one from Oceania. (McCauley et al. 2018)

Marriage: This was removal of a phalange prior to the amputee getting married. This was engaged in by two groups; one from Africa, and one from Australia. In both cases it was female specific and involved the removal of the distal phalanx of the left hand. In both of these groups it was carried out by tying a cordd tightly around the finger until the phalange fell off. (McCauley et al. 2018)

Punishment: Twenty three groups practiced finger amputation as a form of punishment: sixteen from Africa, four from Asia, two from North America, and one from Oceania. (McCauley et al. 2018)

Veneration: McCauley et al. found one example of this from North America. In this case and elderly Sioux woman cut off all the fingers of some Chippewa children and strung them on a ritual necklace. (McCauley et al. 2018)

View of the "Panel of Hands," Gargas Cave, France. Illustration from the Wendel Collection, Neanderthal Museum.

McCauley et al. also recorded some instances of the practice of amputating fingers of an individual after death but these would be irrelevant to this practice because we would not expect a dead person to be leaving handprints in a cave.

"We identified 121 groups that engaged in finger amputation at the time they were studied by ethnographers. Among these groups there were ten different reasons for engaging in finger amputation. Of these ten, the one that best fits the available data for the UP (Upper Paleolithic) incomplete hand images is voluntary sacrifice to a deity or supernatural power." (McCauley et al. 2018) So, based on this study, we have a new candidate for the reason some handprints show missing fingers or joints - voluntary sacrifice.

This comprehensive study illustrates the difficulty of interpreting the moteve from just the image. Far from proving either frostbite, or a counting system, a missing finger could represent any of these seven cultural practices, as well as indicating frostbite, or a counting system. It is just not as simple as it looks.

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 this subject you should read the original report at the site listed below.

REFERENCES:

McCauley, Brea, David Maxwell and Mark Collardi, 2018, A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Upper Palaeolithic Hand Images with Missing Phalanges, published online 21 November 2018, Journal of Palaeolithic Archaeology, Springer Nature Switzerland AG. 

MIDDLE PLEISTOCENE HOMININ HAND AND FOOT IMPRESSIONS IN TIBET:

Handprint and footprint panel from Quesang, Tibet. Internet photo.

One subject of continual interest is the age of any example of art, particularly the earliest (oldest) example of art. Previously, pieces of ocher from Blombos Cave in South Africa had been claimed as the oldest example of petroglyphs in the world. One fragment, which has been dated to ca. 100,000 years BCE, bears a pattern of intentional scratch marks on the surface. On 25 August 2018, I wrote of this “All students of this question seem to share the assumption that the ocher was ground to make a pigment powder that can be mixed into paint for other use. What the current debate seems to be about is whether the designs on the ocher have any symbolic significance or whether they were perhaps only doodles.” (Faris 2018) While they look to me to have been created by scraping to get powdered ocher, they have been accepted as human made marks, thus possibly the oldest petroglyph.

There are always going to be questions about whether certain old traces of hominin activity should be classified as art. This is particularly relevant when it comes to recently described human hand and foot prints discovered in Tibet. By the same logic applied to the Blombos cave ocher, if the Tibetan hand and foot prints had been placed intentionally, ipso facto, they must be accepted as petroglyphs. just as the mud glyphs of Tennessee caves, or as painted handprints are accepted as pictographs.

Back in 2016 and 2017 I wrote a couple of columns on handprints and pictographs in Tibet as being the highest (altitude above sea level) rock art known. The handprints were reported from a location given as Chusang, which I assume is a different spelling for the same place as this report, Quesang. They were actual handprints in travertine limestone and were dated to approximately 7,400 years BP. Now new dating of handprints at Quesang have given us much older dates. (Faris 2017)

Closeup of handprints. Internet photo.

“At Quesang on the Tibetan Plateau we report a series of hand and foot impressions that appear to have been intentionally placed on the surface of a unit of soft travertine. The travertine was deposited by water from a hot spring which is now inactive and as the travertine lithified it preserved the traces. On the basis of the sizes of the hand and foot traces we suggest that two track-makers were involved and were likely children. We interpret this event as a deliberate artistic act that created a work of parietal art. The travertine unit on which the traces were imprinted dates to between ~169 and 226 ka BP. This would make the site the earliest currently known example of parietal art in the world and would also provide the earliest evidence discovered to date for hominins on the High Tibetan Plateau (above 4000 m a.s.l.).” (Zhang et al 2021)

New demonstation panel. "Active seep/stream below current hot spring with soft travertine in which the first author (Zhang) has placed three handprints in 2019." (Zhang 2021)

This particular area on the Tibetan plateau is supplied with a number of hot springs, both active and fossilized. This particular location is one of the fossilized hot springs.

Regional context for Quesang prints showing other hominin locales.

“We argue that these traces were imprinted into soft travertine (pre-lithification) and were not carved after the travertine had lithified. On the basis of Uranium series dating the travertine unit in which the tracks are impressed dates from between ~169 and 226 ka BP. Based on the size of the tracks the trackmakers were likely two children and the traces were not imprinted during normal locomotion or by the use of hands to stabilize motion as reported at the Rocomonfina track site in Italy. Consequently, we argue that the deliberate track-making was likely and early act of parietal art.” (Zhang et al:2021)

Location of panel. "The site consists of a rocky promontory and the art-panel was exposed on the surface of one of these blocks by the natural removal of an overlying block." (Zhang et al, 2021)

Five hand prints and five footprints were recorded on the travertine unit under study. The team compared measurements of the prints to the growth curves of modern humans. “A growth curve suggests that the track-maker was of equivalent size to a Homo sapiens child with a mean age of 7.75 ± 0.12 (years). The length to width ratio of the hands falls within the modern range, although the fingers are more elongated. The average hand length is 161.07 ± 2.72 mm, which equates to a child with a mean age of 12.17 ± 0.18 a, using a modern Homo sapiens growth curve.” (Zhang et al:2021)

While you may or may not be able to think of them as art per se, they do seem to have been intentionally made, and that intentionality to modify a surface, to leave a physical trace, is at the root of all artistic creation. These prints seem to be the earliest currently known so we must consider them to be the oldest known examples of art.

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, 2018, Oldest Petroglyphs So Far?, 25 August 2018, https://rockartblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Blombos%20 cave

Faris, Peter, 2017, High Altitude Rock Art – Tibet Yet Again, 30 September 2017, https://www.blogspot.com

Zhang, David D. et al, 2021, Earliest Parietal Art: Hominin Hand and Foot Traces From the Middle Pleistocene of Tibet, Science Bulletin (2021), DOI: 10.1016/j.scrib.2021.09.001

POLYDACTYLY REVISITED - PART 1:

Six-toed footprint, Newspaper Rock, Utah. Photograph Richard Coleman.

A fascinating feature of rock art is the occasional occurrence of polydactylism (polydactyly) in hand or foot prints. I have written on this subject a number of times before (see polydactylism in the cloud index at the bottom of this blog). The archaeologist H. Marie Wormington explained her theory of polydactyly in Fremont rock art to me back in the 1980s (a personal conversation). She had found a Fremont Culture burial of a six-fingered man who had deluxe grave goods interred with him and, from that, she inferred that the polydactyly made one special in that society, and hence more likely to be considered important, important enough to bury with special deluxe grave goods, and important enough to be pictured on the rocks.

Polydactyly of the hand. Online photograph, Public Domain.

"Bigfoot Man" with six fingers, McConkey Ranch, outside of Vernal, Utah. Photograph 10 September 1994, Peter Faris.

This may have been the case with the so-called “Bigfoot Man” at McConkie Ranch, outside of Vernal, Utah. This Fremont painting of a warrior shows him with six fingers on each hand.

Three Rivers, New Mexico. Online photograph, Public Domain.

Polydactyl Mayan hand print, Temple of the Frescoes, Tulum, Mexico. Online photograph, Public Domain.

In Crown, et al. (2016) polydactyly is classified as Type A (the extra digit may be well-developed and functional, or Type B. With Type B polydactyly the extraneous protrusion is without bones, comprised only of soft tissue. Type A postaxial polydactyly occurs in modern Native American populations in .11/1000 births, and in a ratio of males to females of 1.6. The figure for Type B is .73/1000 live births. The feet are affected more often than the hands and the left side more often than the right. (Crown et al. 2016:427)

Nine-Mile Canyon, Utah, Photograph Peter Faris, August 1993.

Nine-Mile Canyon, Utah, Internet photograph, Public Domain.

Hirthler and Hutchison have a higher figure citing “a relatively high incidence of polydactyly in contemporary Native American populations. The modern incidence of finger and toe duplication is approximately 2.4 in 1,000, with hands preferentially effected. Thumb duplication is more common in Native American populations (0.25/1,000) than it is in Afro-Americans (0.08/1.000) or caucasians (0.08/1.000).” (Hirthler and Hutchison 2012) Whichever set of figures is accurate, this condition, while relatively rare, is still known among First American descendants.

Then we come to six-toed footprints. For some reason (unknown to me at least) there are a large number of six-toed footprints at the Newspaper Rock site in Utah. 

6-toed trackway, Newspaper Rock, Indian Creek, San Juan County, Utah. Photograph Peter Faris.

Newspaper Rock, San Juan County, UT. Photograph Sherman Spear, October 1967.

Newspaper Rock, San Juan County, UT. Photograph Richard Coleman, October 2011.

This is part one of my revisit to the theme of polydactyly (polydactylism) in rock art. In part two I will continue with polydactyly at Chaco Canyon and then expand it into sandals and sandal prints that exhibit signs of polydactyly as well.

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:

Crown, Patricia L., Kerriann M. Hedman, and Hannah V. Mattson, 2016, Foot Notes: The Social Implications of Polydactyly and Foot-Related Images at Chaco Canyon, American Antiquity 81, 426-48

Hirthler, Maureen A., and Richard L. Hutchison, 2012, Polydactyly in the Southwest: Art or Anatomy - a Photo Essay, October 16, Hand (Journal), NY.

LIZARD HAND PRINTS IN EGYPTIAN WESTERN DESERT ROCK ART:

Wadi Sura II pictographs, Egypt. 

Tiny handprints circled. Photo 

www.mcdonald.cam.ac.uk, 

public domain.

In the past, I have posted columns on human handprints in rock art, and columns about animal tracks in rock art, but this is my first time reporting on little animal hand prints in rock art.

An interesting October, 2016, report by Laura Geggel for Live Science described an important rock art found at a site in western Egypt. Discovered in the Egyptian portion of the Libyan Desert in 2002, the cave is named Wadi Sura II, and is located about 6 miles (10 kilometers) from Wadi Sura I, The Cave of the Swimmers, discovered in 1933.

Wadi Sura II pictographs, Egypt. 

Photo www.mcdonald.cam.ac.uk, 

public domain.

Among the imagery in Wadi Sura II can be found a large number of hand prints, many of them surprisingly small.  "The roughly 8,000-year-old 'hands' painted on a rock wall in the Sahara Desert aren't human at all, as researchers originally thought, but are actually stencils of the 'hands' or forefeet of the desert monitor lizard, a new study finds.

These tiny lizard hands are intermingled with paintings of human adult hands, which ancient rock artists stenciled around using red, yellow, orange and brown pigments, the researchers said." (Geggel)

Dr. Emmanuelle Honore, a research fellow of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, determined to attempt to find out what the little hand prints meant. "Honore was stunned the first time she walked into Wadi Sura II in 2006. 'I immediately saw those tiny hands among the [nearly] thousands of paintings,' she said. In earlier studies researchers hypothesized that the large and small hands were stenciled around adult and baby hands. Yet, shortly after looking at the 13 'baby' hand drawings, Honore concluded that they weren't human.

For one thing, they were too small to belong to a human infant, she said. Moreover, the digits were pointy and 'very long and thin' Honore said. In contrast babies have fingers that are roughly the same length as their palms." (Geggel)

  

Tiny hand print - center.

Wadi Sura II pictograph, Egypt. 

              Photo www.mcdonald.cam.ac.uk, 

public domain.

Honore's research began with careful measurements of human hand prints, including the hands of a number of normal and premature babies. "Honore and her colleagues also measured 11 of the tiny hands at the Wadi Sura II site. (The other two were incomplete and difficult to measure, she said.) In addition, they measured 30 of the large hands at Wadi Sura II and 30 hands from living adults, and found that they matched well, she said.

But several parameters indicated that the tiny hands were not human. Though the stenciled fingers were long, overall the hands were small - just 1.8 inches (4.5 centimeters) from the base of the palm to the end of the middle finger. That's much smaller than a human baby hand, which measures and average of 2.4 inches (6.2 cm.) long, she said." (Geggel)

This meant that the adult human hand prints were overlaid with unidentified small hand prints.  "At first, Honore thought the tiny hands belonged to a small monkey. But none of the thousands of monkey hand pictures she researched looked like those o the wall at Wadi Sura II. Then, when she was doing research at a crocodile farm in Zambia, she realized that the prints belonged to a reptile.

The front feet of the desert monitor lizard (Varanus) had the closest match to the paintings, she found. A baby crocodile (Crocodylus) was another possibility. However, crocodiles likely didn't live in the desert at that time, so a person would have needed to transport one over from the Nile or another watery region, Honore said." (Geggel)

"Other prehistoric cultures used animals as stencils for their rock art. For example, the Aboriginal people used emu foot stencils in the Carnarvon Gorge and Tent Shelter in Australia, and choike/nandu (birds in the genus Rhea) stencils are in the rock art at La Cueva de las Manos in Argentina." Honore is now working on a study to try to figure out some possible reasons for the monitor lizard hand prints.(Geggel)

For this full article see Laura Geggel referenced below. She also reported that the findings were published in the April 2016 issue of the Journal of Archaelogical Science: Reports.

NOTE: The images illustrating this article were obtained from the internet as the result of a search for Wadi Sura II public domain. If any of these images were, in fact, not public domain I apologize for their use.

REFERENCE:

Geggel, Laura,

2016   Nonhuman Hands Found in Prehistoric Rock Art, October, 2016, LiveScience, http://www.livescience.com/53944-prehistoric-rock-art-nonhuman-hands.html

PAINTED HANDPRINTS AT THE MAYAN SITE OF SAN GERVASIO, COZUMEL, MEXICO:

Las Manitas, San Gervasio, Cozumel, Mexico.

Photograph Peter Faris, March 2015.

Las Manitas building group. Las Manitas marked by

the arrow. La Tumba to its lower left and Chichen

Nah to lower right. Hajovsky, p. 18.

On March 21, 2015, I visited the Mayan site of San Gervasio on the island of Cozumel. There, in a structure known as Las Manitas (or the Little Hands) are found walls decorated with red painted hand prints.

Las Manitas, San Gervasio, Cozumel, Mexico.

Photograph Peter Faris, March 2015.

Mayan settlement of the area began in the Early Classic Period (300 AD to 600 AD). (Hajovsky 2014:4) Las Manitas was constructed during the Terminal Classic (1000 - 1200 AD) and served as the residence of the halach uinik or Mayan ruler of Cozumel during that Terminal Classic Period. It has an outer room that was the residence and an inner sanctum that was a household shrine. (Wikipedia)

Hand prints from Las Manitas, San Gervasio,

Cozumel, Mexico. Photograph Peter Faris,

March 2015.

 

Floor plan of Las Manitas, San Gervasio,

Cozumel, Mexico. Hajovsky, p. 19.

"The structure was originally a one room dwelling, but later renovated by an elite family to include an outer room with an open, colonnaded front with plastered benches and a small inner-sanctum within the original interior room. The renovated building was purely Mayapan in style. In the 1970s, a colorful mural was still visible on the interior wall, but vandals have since chipped it away. During the 1970 excavations, a limestone sculpture of a sea-turtle was discovered in the rubble. It had probably been plastered upside-down into the ceiling, similar to others found at Mayapan. Today the turtle sculpture can be seen in the city museum. Under the floor of the interior room a tomb was also found, covered over with a huge cap-stone." (Hajovsky 2014:19)

 

 

La Tumba, San Gervasio, Cozumel, Mexico.

Photograph Peter Faris, March 2015.

Las Manitas is accompanied by a couple of other structures that appear to have been in relationship with it .  In front of Las Manitas was a structure known as La Tumba (The Tomb). It was presented by my guide as a low pyramid, but is described in literature as an altar platform. It once supported a thatch-roofed building with a group of benches arranged around an altar. Underneath this platform was a vaulted-roofed tomb. Discovered in 1973, it is the only one of its kind discovered at San Gervasio to date. (Wikipedia)

 

Chichan Nah, San Gervasio, Cozumel, Mexico.

Photograph Peter Faris, March 2015.

 

To the east of La Manitas is found the Chichan Nah meaning small house. Also known as The Oratorio, it was constructed during the Post Classic Period (1200 - 1650 AD). This is believed to have been an oratorio, or chapel, used by the family of the halach uinik who lived in Las Manitas. It consist of a large outer room with a small inner sanctum containing an altar. (Wikipedia)

San Gervasio is believed to have been influential in the coastal ocean trade during the Mayan period. Although it does not contain the grand constructions of many mainland Mayan sites, its site on a relatively flat island covered with scrub forest means it did not have to soar over jungle canopy to look impressive to the subjects who supported it.

REFERENCES:

Hajovsky, Ric

2014    The Yellow Guide to The Mayan Ruins of San Gervasio, CZM,S. de R. L. de C. B., Cozumel, Q. Roo, Mexico

Wikipedia