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.

AN ALABAMA CAVE CONTAINING INSCRIPTIONS WRITTEN IN CHEROKEE:

Cherokee inscription,

Manitou Cave, Alabama.

Internet, Public Domain.

We now know that writing was invented numerous times in human history, but very seldom do we get to know exactly who invented a writing system and exactly what their original creation was.

"Back in the 18th century, when tribes such as the Cherokee were a subject of study by white settlers, the natives in turn were amused by the "talking leaves" they possessed. They could communicate and transmit messages, a skill that to the people unfamiliar with the concept of an alphabet, or reading and writing, seemed more like magic. There were many members of the Cherokee who were against their society's assimilation with the white people and tried to prevent it in many different ways, mostly by emphasizing the importance of their own cultural elements." (Radeska 2018)

Cherokee syllabary, Sequoya.

Wikipedia, Public Domain.

"Nobody did as much as the man known as Sequoyah. Observing and analyzing the newcomers and their "talking leaves," Sequoyah decided that creating a system that would allow his people to communicate and transmit their own stories and messages might help prevent the assimilation and the loss of Cherokee culture. Hence, he invented the Cherokee syllabary with which to write the Cherokee language. This was one of the two times in recorded history when a pre-literate person created and original and efficient writing system." (Radeska 2018)

"It took Sequoya 12 years to finish the work he started in 1809. At first, he had been ridiculed and insulted. Even his wife was said to have burned his initial work as she believed it was some form of witchcraft. But the man didn't give up." (Radeska 2018)

"Although he first experimented with logograms, his final product resulted in a system of 86 symbols, each representing a syllable. He studied the Greek, Latin, and Cyrillic alphabets and even borrowed a few symbols from them, but the sounds and representations of each in the Cherokee syllabary hs no similarity. When Sequoya finished his project, he had to find a way to present it to his people, who were very skeptical at first and couldn't see the importance of his work." (Radeska 2018)

"Sequoyah's first student of his new linguistic system was his six-year-old daughter, Ayokeh (in some places mentioned as the daughter of his brother-in-law). He taught her the system of reading, and then went to the Indian Reserves in the Arkansaw Territory, where he found local leaders, the first people he needed to convince. Sequoyah asked each one of them to tell him a word, which he wrote down. Then he called Ayokeh to read what he had written. His tactic turned out to be convincing, and he got permission to teach the syllabary to more people." (Radeska 2018)

Viewing Cherokee inscriptions,

Manitou Cave, Alabama.

www.ntd.com, Public Domain.

Now a team has identified and deciphered inscriptions found in a cave in Alabama written in the Cherokee script. "Inside Manitou Cave in modern Alabama, nineteenth-century Cherokees carried out sacred ceremonies, recording their activity on the walls using (the) Cherokee syllabary, a system invented in nearby Willstown by Cherokee scholar Sequoyah. Through collaboration between modern Cherokee scholars and Euro-American archaeologists, the authors report and interpret - for the first time - the inscriptions in Manitou Cave. These reveal evidence for secluded ceremonial activities at a time of crisis for the Cherokee. Pressures from the surrounding white populations disrupted the Cherokee ancient lifeways, culminating in their forcible relocation in the 1830s along the Trail of Tears." (Carroll et al 2019:519)

Although there are extensive examples of partial words and symbols in the Cherokee script on the walls throughout the cave "we focus on two areas within the cave where Cherokee inscriptions are extensive and where their meanings can be translated. The first area is more than 1.5km into the cave's main passage, the second approximately 300m from the cave entrance. Each area contains multiple inscriptions, and one inscriptions in the deeper area includes a written date. Associated with these inscriptions are signatures, one of which is a name that appears twice in the cave and which significantly enhances the historic importance of the site. All of the inscriptions in the two areas concern ceremonial and/or spiritual matters; they were probably made in the seclusion of the cave and were not intended for general audiences." (Carroll et al 2019:524)

"One inscription on a wall deep inside the cave, translates as, "leaders of the stickball team on the 30th day in their month April 1828." (Bower 2019)

"Other inscriptions on a ceiling near the caves entrance may be religious messages to Cherokee ancestors or other supernatural beings. The script is written backward, likely because it was intended to be read by residents of what they Cherokee considered to be a spirit world reachable only via Manitou Cave, the researchers say." (Bower 2019)

I am certainly not a scholar of the Cherokee language or writing but I have a problem matching some of the symbols in inscriptions retrieved from the internet with characters in the Cherokee syllabary I found on Wikipedia. Perhaps I am just failing to recognize the backward characters, or perhaps some of the inscriptions contain ligatures. The paper by Carroll, Cressler, Belt, Reed, and Simek does not mention any ligatures in the inscriptions but I find myself wondering if any of the characters are indeed ligatures. "In hand writing, a ligature is made by joining two or more characters in atypical fashion by merging their parts, or by writing one above or inside the other." (Wikipedia) I will have to leave that determination to the experts.

In any case these discoveries provide a fascinating look at a painful period of history, and underscore the importance of some historic inscriptions to our understanding of past events.

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:

Bower, Bruce

2019 Newly translated Cherokee cave writings reveal sacred messages, April 16, 2019, https://www.sciencenews.org/article/newly-translated-cherokee-cave-writings-reveal-sacred-messages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typographic_ligature

Radeska, Tijana

2018 How Sequoyah, inspired by "talking leaves," invented the Cherokee writing system, Feb. 24, 2018, https:/www.thevintagenews.com/2018/02/024/cherokee-writing-system/

Carroll, Beau Duke, Alan Cressler, Tom Belt, Julie Reed, and Jan F. Simek

2019 Talking Stones: Cherokee Syllabary in Manitou Cave, Alabama, Antiquity, Vol. 93, Issue 368, p. 519 - 536.

NEANDERTAL ARCHITECTURE:

 la-1464215980-snap-photo

I do not know if reading this title surprises you as much as writing it surprises me, but this seems to be the only conclusion we can make about findings from Bruniquel cave in France. An article by Ewen Callaway from Nature Magazine, on May 25, 2016, and reprinted by Scientific American online, describes arrangements of broken off pieces of stalagmites that I can only understand in terms of intentional structures.

"The six structures are made of about 400 large, broken-off stalagmites, arranged in semi-circles up to 6.7 metres wide. The researchers think that the pieces were once stacked up to form rudimentary walls. All have signs of burning, suggesting that fires were made within the walls. By analysing calcite accreted on the stalagmites and stumps since they were broken off, the team determined that the structures were made 174,400 to 178,600 years ago." (http://www.scientificamerican.com/)

cnrs_20160048_0006

There are two of the stone circles, and four piles of pieces of stalagmite accompanying them. All of this is found 1,000 feet from the entrance of the cave with at least one stretch that requires crawling to pass through.

"Now Jaubert et al. have published he results of their analysis of a remarkable set of structures discovered some 336 meters deep inside Bruniquel Cave in France. Made from the broken-off spears of roughly 400 stalagmites, these circular patterns and seemingly careful piles span between 2 and 7 meters in diameter, and strongly suggest the deliberate actions of someone, or something.

The astonishing aspect is the age that Jaubert et al. find for the formation. The broken pieces of the stalagmites have continued to grow layers since they were snapped off in the wet cave environment, and so the researchers were able to identify where the original calcite surfaces were in their core samples. They then used uranium-series radioisotope dating to come up with a time for the event of around 176,500 years ago (give or take about 2,100 years)." (Scharf, Caleb, 2016, http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/176-000-year-old-neandertal-structures-and-life-in-the-universe/)

cnrs_20160048_0005_custom-1d179113df33bb0db56362ecd2047f76a0c8076b-s800-c85

To me this description can only be describing intentional construction from ca. 176,000 years ago, and at that period in time Neandertals were the only hominin in western Europe. 

“The big question is why they made it,” says Jean-Jacques Hublin, a palaeoanthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany who was not involved in the study, which is published online in Nature on May 25. “Some people will come up with interpretations of ritual or religion or symbolism. Why not? But how to prove it?”" (http://www.scientificamerican.com/)

Now, back when I was an art history student, architecture was classified as an art form and included in the textbooks, so I am presenting this as rock art, of a sort. It also provides context for an appraisal of Neandertal creative cognitive ability, and we now know that they could, and did, create rock art. 
Get the full story from the Scientific American article cited below, or read the original in Nature Magazine.

REFERENCE:

Callaway, Ewen, 2016 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/
neandertals-built-cave-structures-and-no-one-knows-why/

Scharf, Caleb, 2016
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/176-000-year-old-neandertal-structures-and-life-in-the-universe/