CHINESE PICTOGRAPH PAINT CONTAINS HUMAN BLOOD:

Zuojiang Hashan pictographs. Internet image, public domain (photograph sharpened with chatGPT).

How well a painted image will last on a cliff or boulder depends upon a number of factors. One factor, of course, is the kind of rock it is painted on, how hard or how soft? Another factor is the weather itself and the sites exposure to it. Is it directly in the Sun’s fading rays, is it in a location that is hit by rain, etc.? Another, and perhaps most important, factor is the composition of the paint itself. Is the pigment durable or fugitive? How thoroughly does the binder in the paint harden and hold on to the rock surface?

Zuojiang Hashan pictographs. Image, science.org.

The images painted in one section of China have long mystified scientists with their clarity and appartent durability. “The Zuojiang Huashan Rock  Art Cultural Landscape was created over the course of nearly 700 years, between the fifth century BCE and the second century CE, by the Luoyue people – a matriarchal, hunter-fisher-gatherer society that lived in southern China. The images are found across 80 sites along a 260-kilometer stretch of river cliffs. Given that the area is battered by regular monsoons, the art is remarkably intact, especially compared with murals made hundreds of years later in other parts of the country.” (Sagar 2026) Normally, frequent monsoon rains would be thought to doom painted images to quick destruction.

These painted images, however, act very different – they are exceedingly durable. “The pigments are so firmly bonded to the bedrock that when peeling occurs, it is the limestone layer itself that detaches along with the pigments,” says Meng Wu, a chemist at Shandong University.  “The material stability of this art has long been an unsolved mystery.” (Sagar 2026)

Zuojiang Hashan pictographs. Internet image, public domain.

“These paintings are bound to the rock so well that scientists had to use electric drills to scrape off samples for testing, which revealed that the paint contained lime, red clay, and blood from women who’d just given birth.” (Spitz 2026) The most surprising component of the paint used was blood, which came from both humans and animals. “The human portion contained two proteins that were linked to pregnancy, breastfeeding, and female reproductive biology. Therefore the team concluded that these proteins likely came from women who had very recently given birth, and that the blood came from routine postpartum bleeding.” (Spitz 2026) This is a likelihood, not a certainty, as the proteins in question are not totally unique to women and childbirth. Much of the durability of the red paint is due to the lime and red clay ingredients setting up in a reaction much like cement. Then, adding the proteins from blood, we can expect this to only enhance the durability of the paint.

As the Luoyue creators of this rock art are believed by historians to have been a matriarchal society, the use of postpartum blood in the paint may have had a deeply spiritual significance to the people. Therefore the act of creating the rock art may have also involved significant ritual contexts. At least that makes a great deal of sense.

NOTE: One image in this column was 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:

Sagar, Soumya, 2026, Were these ancient rock images painted with human blood?, 12 August 2026, https://www.science.org online. Accessed online 13 August 2026.

Spitz, Ella, 2026, Scientists Just Uncovered The Secret Behind The Durability Of China’s Ancient Huashan Rock Art: Human Blood, AllThatsInteresting.com, 29 July 2026, https://allthatsinteresting.com/china-huashan-rock-art-blood. Accessed 13 August 2026.

EARLY EUROPEAN ART IN GROTTE FUMANE, ITALY:

Fumane Cave (Grotte Fumani), Italy. Internet image, public domain.

According to Rebecca Sykes (2020) Fumani Cave in north-west Italy has Neandertal deposits dating back to between 47.5 and 45 ka. In an area just about the size of a school classroom it contained some 50 hearths and lithic scatters, as well as over 100,000 pieces of bone. Sykes, however, did not attribute any cave art to the Neandertal occupation(s).

 

Painted plaque, Fumane Cave (Grotte Fumani), Italy. Internet image, public domain.

“Discovered in 1964 by archaeologist Giovanni Solinas, the Fumane Cave sits in the Lessini Hills about 15 km northwest of Verona. Although it was examined immediately by the Natural History Museum of Verona, it was only in 1988 that a proper excavation took place. This excavation uncovered a sequence of human occupation of the cave spanning the Mousterian, Aurignacian and Gravettian cultures of the Middle and Upper Paleolithic. Neanderthals occupied the cave from 60,000 to about 38,000 BC, during the Mousterian and early Aurignacian periods.” (Artslookup) This is a very long period of occupation and began during Neandertal periods and probably ended with occupation by Homo sapiens.

Possible weasel, Painted plaque, Fumane Cave (Grotte Fumani), Italy. Internet image, public domain.

Writing about the painted rock finds in Fumane Cave, Elvira Visciola (undated) stated “rock finds found in different points of the Fumane Cave, in the Aurignacian levels, with dimensions between 10 and 30 centimeters, with red ocher representations, some representing schematic motifs, other naturalistic motifs including animals, plants and a very particular anthropomorphic figure. The rocks are all fractured in places that interrupt the figures and were all found upside down at the base of the archaeological level; these tests made it possible to ascertain that the fragments certainly detached cue to cryoclastic effect during the Aurignacian occupation of the site from the vaults or walls of the cavity which were therefore decorated. Inside the cave, the use of ocher is attested in several places, with the discovery of about 50 blocks of red and yellow ocher, as well as two areas whose surface was entirely covered by it, one in the internal part and the other in the entrance, corresponding to a dating of about 41,000 years ago; subsequent investigations made it possible to ascertain that the ocher was recovered from quarries located at a distance between 5 and 29 kilometers from the cave. It is very probably that the age of the rock decorations is contemporary with the ocher deposits found, so that Fumane’s paintings can be considered the most ancient form of European wall art.” (Visciola) Cryoclasty is fracturing by means of freezing, so the assumption is that the paintings were originally parts of the cave wall but that freeze/thaw cycles eventually broke them loose – spalls. Given the fact that all of the painted slabs were found turned over with the painted side down we can probably assume that they were placed that way purposely, it is highly unlikely that they would all fall face down naturally. Perhaps the goal was to conceal or protect them somehow.

Painted plaque, Fumane Cave (Grotte Fumani), Italy. Internet image, public domain.

The painted stone slabs did turn out to be quite old and were not in great condition. “Stone slabs bearing images of a four-legged animal and a half-human, half-animal figure were discovered during the excavation of the cave. Three more figures could be seen on the slabs, but couldn’t be identified due to their bad preservation. As they were embedded in the sediment, they could be dated to between 32 and 36,500 BP, which would make them contemporary to the Chauvet Cave paintings” (Wikipedia) These dates were on the sediment that the rock slabs were embedded in.

Shaman?, Painted plaque, Fumane Cave (Grotte Fumani), Italy. Internet image, public domain.

“In 1999, following a series of excavations, beginning in 1988, researchers came across numerous examples of cave painting buried under layers of debris. The pictures were painted on slabs that had broken off the cave ceiling. Measuring about 30-70cm in length, they include an image of a creature with an elongated neck (perhaps a weasel, as in the Niaux Cave), a strange five-legged animal, and a figure of a man – thought to be a shaman  - wearing a mask with horns. The man's arms are spread, while in his right hand he holds what may be a ritual object which hangs downwards.” (Artslookup) So, we are dragging out the S-word again. Unless you were there 35,000 years ago and could observe the culture I think that designating an extremely crude apparently anthropomorphic figure as a shaman is quite a stretch.

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:

Artslookup, Fumane Cave Paintings, https://artslookup.com/prehistoric/fumane-cave-paintings.html. Accessed online 27 July 2024.

Sykes, Rebecca Wragg, 2020, Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art, Bloomsbury Sigma, London.

Visciola, Elvira (ed.), Painted stones from Grotta Fumane (VR), https://www.preistoriainitalia.it/en/scheda/pietre-dipinte-da-grotta-fumane-vr/. Accessed online 27 July 2024.

Wikipedia, Fumane Cave, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fumane_Cave. Accessed online 27 July 2024.

COULD THE CAVE ARTISTS ACTUALLY SEE THEIR COLORS? – CONTINUED, PART 2:

 This one is just for fun, perhaps more for philosophers, please don’t take it too seriously – I do not.

Cave painting of auroch, Lascaux, France. Internet image, public domain.

Then the question became whether the lack of blue was actually based on a physical difference, or was perhaps a cultural or linguistic question.

“Anthropologists took up the challenge next. They were curious about how color was perceived by traditional cultures with limited or no contact to outsiders. In 1898, anthropologist and psychiatrist W.H. R. Rivers went to the Torres Straits Islands, located between New Guinea and Australia, where he investigated the islanders’ color perception. Rivers was astonished to hear the elders describe the sky as black, and a child describe the sky as being dark like dirty water. Rivers and other anthropologists concluded that early humans and members of isolated cultures were not color blind. They saw the same colors we see but linguistically don’t distinguish beyond hues of white, black, or red. This might be a simple enough explanation for Homer’s wine-dark sea, but it still raises the question: did ancient peoples perceive the color ‘blue’?” (Hall 2018) Remember, it is difficult to cognitively contemplate a phenomenon that you do not have a name or label for.

“Before the color blue became a common concept, perhaps humans saw it but simply didn’t recognize it as such. Even more fascinating—or perhaps disturbing—is the realization that the way we perceive the world around us may be something of an illusion, a trick played on us not by some external force but by our own minds, shadows cast against the back of Plato’s allegorical cave. We are oblivious to whatever realities exist outside of our perception. While we modern humans can differentiate between 1 million colors today, our perception is still largely limited to eleven color categories (in the English language: white, black, gray, red, yellow, green, blue, brown, pink, orange, purple). More humbling is the fact that we humans get by with just three types of photoreceptor cone cells (corresponding roughly to red, green, and blue sensitive detectors). Somewhere, silently scuttling beneath Homer’s wine-dark sea, the modest mantis shrimp boasts 16 different types of photoreceptor cone cells, viewing the world through a kaleidoscopic vision of unknowable colors, the likes of which we can only dream.” (Hall 2018) Once again, I enjoy Hall’s slightly sardonic comparison of our human color vision to that of the mantis shrimp.

In  2018, Fiona MacDonald reported on a field trial conducted in 2006 by Jules Davidoff, among the Himba people of Namibia. “But just because there was no word for blue, does that mean our ancestors couldn’t see it? There have been various studies conducted to try to work this out, but one of the most compelling was published in 2006 by Jules Davidoff, a psychologist from Goldsmiths University of London. Davidoff and his team worked with the Himba tribe from Namibia. In their language, there is no word for blue and no real distinction between green and blue. To test whether that meant they couldn’t actually see blue, he showed members of the tribe a circle with 11 green squares and one obviously blue square. But the Himba tribe struggled to tell Davidoff which of the squares was a different color to the others. Those who did hazard a guess at which square was different took a long time the get the right answer, and there were a lot of mistakes. But, interestingly, the Himba have lots more words for green than we do.” (MacDonald 2018) They could see the one square as different, but lacking the mental concept of a color ‘blue’ they had trouble seeing it as different enough to point out. This tends to confirm the statement that we cannot fully comprehend something until we have a name (or label) for it.

 

Hachure on a Mimbres bowl. Internet image, public domain.

MacDonald also reported on a “study by MIT scientists in 2007 that showed that native Russian speakers, who don’t have one single word for blue, but instead have a word for light blue (goluboy) and dark blue (sinly), can discriminate between light and dark shades of blue much faster than English speakers.” (MacDonald 2018)

In 2022 Nikola Jones explained a reasonable hypothesis for the development of color terms throughout the history of a culture. “There are several big datasets out there looking at color categorization across cultures. And the consensus is that there are some commonalities. This implies that there might be some biological constraints on the way people learn to categorize color. But not every culture has the same number of categories. So, there’s also this suggestion that color categories are cultural, and cultures experience a kind of evolution in color terms. A language might initially make only two or three distinctions between colors, and then those categories build up in complexity over time.” (Jones 2022)

Hachure on a Mimbres bowl. Pinterest.

I have already written about the use of hachure on ceramics by the Ancestral Puebloans in the American southwest, and the theory that it represented the color blue to them (see my column of 7 June 2025). The origin of the idea that hachure, closely spaced, parallel thin lines, used to fill a space might be intended to symbolize the color blue was credited to J. J. Brody by Stephen Plog (2003). “One of the common design characteristics on black-on-white pottery from the eleventh and twelfth centuries in the northern American Southwest is the use of thin, parallel lines (hachure) to fill the interior of bands, triangles, This essay explores a proposal offered by Jerry Brody that hachure was a symbol for the color blue-is examined by exploring colors and color patterns used to decorate nonceramic material from the of northwestern New Mexico. His proposal is supported and the implications of this conclusion for future studies of this nature are discussed.” (Plog 2003:1) This, however, was not a suggestion that Ancestral Puebloans could not see the color blue, they had a name for the color, comprehended it, and designated it as the color of the direction West in many of these cultures. The assumption is, rather, that good blue pigments are much rarer than blacks or reds, especially blues that would stand up to the firing of a piece of pottery. There are, however, some remarkable examples of blue pictographs in the American west although considerably fewer than most other pigments. I should also point out that most indigenous peoples lend spiritual significance to various colors.

Blue painted figures, Carrot Man site in western Colorado. Photograph Peter Faris, 2005.

I also questioned whether or not hachure on rock art might have also symbolized blue, even if painted on with a different pigment. Of course, the rock art we study does actually, if rarely, have blue pigments based on natural clays and other materials.

Blue painted figures, Carrot Man site in western Colorado. Photograph Peter Faris, 2005.

Given all of this, the basic question remains ‘did the ancient painters of cave art such as can be found in Lascaux and Chauvet caves see the same range of colors as we do?” There is certainly very little blue found in Paleolithic cave painting, but I take that as a lack of convenient sources of blue pigment at that time, not a lack of visual acuity in color determination. Most of the readily available sources of blue for them would have been in plants in the indigo family which, if used in painting cave walls, might be fugitive, leaving us no evidence of blue in Europe’s painted caves.

I hope you have found this as interesting as I.

 

 

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:

 

Hall, Christopher, 2018, Blue is the Rarest Color: Language and Visual Perception, 30 August 2018, Burnaway digital magazine online, https://burnaway.org/magazine/blue-language-visual-perception. Accessed online 19 February 2025.

 

Jones, Nicola, 2022, Color is in the eye, and brain, of the beholder, 27 October 2022, Knowable Magazine online. Accessed online 8 April 2025.

 

Macdonald, Fiona, 2018, There’s Evidence Humans Didn’t Actually See Blue Until Modern Times, 7 April 2025, https://www.sciencealert.com. Accessed online 19 February 2025.

 

Plog, Stephen, 2003, Exploring the Ubiquitous Through the Unusual: Color Symbolism in Pueblo Black on White Pottery, October 2003, American Antiquity, Volume 68 (4), pp. 665-695. Accessed online at JSTOR, 7 March 2025.

 

 

SECONDARY REFERENCE:

 

Brody, J. J., 1991, Anasazi and Pueblo Painting, A School of American Research Book, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, New Mexico.

ARCHAEOMAGNETIC DATING OF OLD PICTOGRAPHS:

For forty years I have maintained that it should be possible to date certain old pictographs painted with ochres by archaeomagnetic dating techniques.  A 2004 study by Avto Goguitchaichvili and his team used archaeomagnetic dating on ochre paint used to create precolumbian murals in Mexico. “The magnetic measurements of the pigments show that at least four murals retain a remanent magnetization carried by a mixture of magnetite and minor hematite grains.” (Goguitchaichvili et al. 2004) Given that they have proved the feasibility of the process on murals, it stands to reason that it would work on paint deposits on cave walls and other pictographic imagery.

Murals from Templo de Venus, Cacaxtla culture, Mexico. Image from Pinterest.

In traditional archaeomagnetic dating clay samples from a feature that has been exposed to high heat, like a fireplace or a adobe brick from a structure that burned down are tested for magnetic orientation. This is then used to calculate the time period that the earth’s magnetic north pole was in the position indicated. “A number of samples are removed from the feature by encasement in non-magnetic plaster within non-magnetic moulds. These samples are marked for true north at the time of collection. The samples are sent to an Archaeomagnetic Laboratory for processing. Each of the samples is measured in a spinner magnetometer to determine the thermal remnant magnetism of each sample. The results are statistically processed and an eigenvector is generated that shows the three-dimensional magnetic declination that will yield a location for the North Pole at the time of the last thermal event of the feature. Data from this feature is compared to the regional secular variation curve in order to determine the best-fit date range for the feature's last firing event.” (Wikipedia)

Murals at Templo Rojo, Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan, Mexico. Photograph by Marcela Perez Z., El Giroscopo Viajero.

Now a team of scholars in Mesoamerica have tested the red paint in four Precolombian murals to see if they can be dated archaeomagnetically. The team of scholars involved in the study, aware that archaeomagnetic dates for Mesoamerican sites are relatively few, wanted to study the possibility of retrieving dates on paintings from Precolumbian sites. “For this study, we chose four mural paintings from Central Mexico: Templo de Venus (Cacaxtla culture), Templo Rojo (Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan), Chapulines and Estrellas (both belonging to the Cholula complex). These sites correspond to the Classic and early post-Classic period in Mesoamerican chronology (approx. 200 to 1200 A.D.).” (Goguitchaichvili et al. 2004)

Heavy red paint, La Pasiega Cave, Spain. Internet image, public domain.

The results of these tests were very promising, having positive results in all samples. “In summary, 28 samples belonging to four Mesoamerican mural paintings were investigated and the direction of their remnant magnetization was successfully determined. A mixture of magnetite and hematite is responsible for the magnetization, Studied Mesoamerican mural paintings retain the direction of the magnetic field at the time they were painted and are therefore an invaluable source of information concerning secular variation. The archeomagnetic study of pre-Columbian mural paintings opens new alternatives for improving the Mesoamerican absolute chronology.” (Goguitchaichvili et al. 2004) If this is the case in the tested murals, surely it will also apply to many other records painted with ochre paint, such as pictographs and cave painting.

Lascaux Cave, France. Internet image, public domain.

The team of researchers also triple-checked their results to confirm them. “When researchers compared the magnetic directions of the murals to directions measured in volcanic rocks dated to the same periods and to other archaeomagnetic studies of similarly aged lime-plasters, they found rough agreement. And based on that agreement, they conjecture that the mean direction from three of the murals corresponds to the interval between A.D. 1000 and 1200.” (Pratt 2004)

 

Red dots in Pech Merle Cave, France. Internet image, public domain.

In the situation I am proposing the layer of ocher paint will have to be thick enough on the painted surface (cliff, cave wall) to remove a sample. This might be the result of uneven application of paint, or applying paint to a rough stone surface where high and low points on the stone would create a paint layer of varying thickness. While it was still liquid after application the earth’s magnetic field would influence the magnetite and hematite constituents of the paint to orient to the magnetic North Pole as it was then located, and when the paint dried that orientation would be locked in place. This procedure would add a new tool to our collection of dating methods for ancient paintings in addition to radiocarbon dating of charcoal based black pigments. Now some graduate student can take this and run with it - it always feels really good to be vindicated.

NOTE 1: 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.

NOTE 2: For technical details see the paper (Goguitchaichvili et al. 2004) in References below.

REFERENCES:

A. Goguitchaichvili, A. M. Soler, E. Zanella, G. Chiari, R. Lanza, J. Urrutia-Fucugauchi, and T. Gonzalez, 2004, Pre-Columbian mural paintings from Mesoamerica as geomagnetic field recorders, Geophysical Research Letters, 22 June 2004, Vol. 31, No. 12. DOI:10:1029/2004GL020065. Accessed online 3 February 2-25.

Pratt, Sara, 2004, Geoarchaeology - Magnetic Murals, Geotimes Magazine online, September 2004, http://www.geotimes.org/sept04/NN_magneticmurals.html. Accessed online 12 January 2025.

Wikipedia, Archaeomagnetic dating,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeomagnetic_dating. Accessed online 20 November 2024.

 

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.

THE OLDEST KNOWN ROCK PAINTING IN AUSTRALIA:

17,300 year old kangaroo dated with mud dauber wasp nests. Illustration from Finch et al.

Back on 20 June 2020, I wrote a column titled “Dating Australian Rock Art With Mud Wasp Nests” about using small samples of mud wasp (or mud dauber) nests that overlay old pictographs to date them using optically stimulated luminescence dating. This practice has now produced dates for an image in the Kimberly region in Australia as old as 17,300 BCE.

17,300 year old kangaroo dated with mud dauber wasp nests. Illustration from Finch et al.

“In two of the most extensive provinces for painted rock art in Australia, the Kimberley and Arnhem Land, naturalistic animals are the most common subjects in the oldest stylistic period on the basis of superimposition analysis, but there is debate about their antiquity and the adequacy of the definitions of these earliest styles. The same or similar animals are also depicted in more-recent art periods, but using different stylistic techniques (for example, solid or regular infill rather than irregular infill, and solid infill of the extremities of the head, tail and limbs); further evidence is therefore required to test these ideas as no old, radiometric age constraints have been published for any of these motifs. In the Kimberley region, it is now known that paintings from the superimposed and inferred to be more-recent Gwion stylistic period proliferated around 12 ka18, so the generally agreed relative rock art sequence predicts that the earlier paintings of naturalistic animals should be older than this.” (Finch et al. 2021)

12,700 year old kangaroo pictograph. Ian Waina nspecting the painting. Photo via Peter Veth, Balanggarra Aborigina Corporation. Illustration by Pauline Heney and Damien Finch.

Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating relies on the transfer of energy from cosmic rays to crystalline materials. If these materials are in the light the energy bleeds back out but, if they are in complete dark the energy accumulates and is stored up until it can release. If this small piece of material is hidden underground (or incorporated into a mud wasp nest) it can be taken back to the archeologists lab and handled under controlled conditions. Then, when hit with a pulse from a laser the energy is released at once, its intensity indicating how much had built up and thus how long it was in the dark. If the mud wasp nest was taken from the surface of a rock art image, the date found in it represents the possible minimum age of the image. It can be older, but not younger, then the OSL date.

The team recording rock art. Image from www.bbc.com.

“In the Kimberley rock art stylistic sequence, these naturalistic animals belong to the earliest known phase of painted rock art, the Irregular Infill Animal Period (IIAP). Notwithstanding the abovementioned debate about the classification of similar motifs in the Arnhem Land region (some 700 km to the east), we adopt the comprehensive definition of the Kimberley IIAP by Walsh and Welch as a starting hypothesis. This definition of IIAP motifs includes some styles of hand stencils, hand prints, stencils of boomerangs and other objects, and some freehand depictions of plants (such as yams), animals (particularly kangaroos but also echidna, birds, goannas, fish and possum) and, more rarely, anthropomorphs. Here we report radiocarbon ages determined from 27 mud wasp nests, which were collected from 8 separate sandstone rock shelters, that constrain the ages of 16 IIAP motifs. Fifteen nests overlay ten IIAP motifs and six nests were underneath a further five motifs. Importantly, three overlying and three underlying nests were dated from one further IIAP motif, thereby providing a bracketed age constraint for that individual painting.” (Finch et al. 2021) These bracketed ages give maximum and minimum ages for that particular image narrowing down its date.

“The age estimates for 27 mud wasp nests in contact with 16 different rock paintings of the Kimberley IIAP style suggest that these motifs were painted between 17.2 and 13.1 cal kBP. The age of one IIAP macropod motif is well-constrained by six radiocarbon dates on three overlying and three underlying wasp nests to be between 17,500 and 17,100 years old, corresponding to the middle of the age range for the European figurative motifs.

Rock shelter containing the 17,300 year old painting. Image from University of Melbourne, Australia.

This is a period during which sea levels in the nearby Joseph Bonaparte Gulf began to rise from a low of ~125 m below present sea levels during the Last Glacial Maximum (21±3 ka) but mostly before the rapid rise in sea levels between 14.6 and 8 ka. By 12 ka, the coastline to the northwest had advanced by around 300 km over the continental shelf toward the area in which our study was undertaken. Many generations of Kimberley coastal Aboriginal populations experienced a continuing loss of territory over these millennia. At around the same time, from 14 to 13 ka, a paleo-environmental record from a nearby mound spring and other Kimberley climate proxies indicate an improving climate with an increase in monsoonal activity and precipitation.”  (Finch et al. 2021) With a 300 kilometer advance of the coast during that period one has to wonder how many wonderful sites have disappeared.

In summary, the study found what they are pronouncing as the oldest rock art yet discovered in Australia. “These Pleistocene ages for naturalistic animal motifs from the earliest known period of Australian rock painting position this creative human activity at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum. The initial results from eight rock art sites in the northeastern Kimberley suggest an extended period for the Irregular Infill Animal style, from 17 to 13 ka. Many more dates from this period are required before the full chronological extent of the paintings still visible today can be determined. For now, a robustly dated, approximately 17,300-year-old painting of a kangaroo is the oldest in situ rock painting radiometrically dated in Australia.” (Finch et al. 2021) This is such a fortuitous and clever way to date rock art, working in a team with an insect to learn marvelous facts.

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, 2020, Dating Australian Rock Art With Mud Wasp Nests, 20 June 2020, https://www.blogger.com.

Finch, Damien et al., 2021, Ages for Australia’s oldest rock paintings, March 2021, Human Nature Behavior, doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-01041-0. Accessed online 17 June 2023.

ROCK ART IMAGES OF EARLY ROCK CLIMBING AND ROPES:

 Closeup, A honey hunter climbing a rope ladder at abrigo de Barranco Gómez in Castellote, Teruel, Spain. Online image public domain.

Back in February 2022 I did a column on some pictographs of honey gathering from Spain. In that one I focused on the idea of the importance of honey to the societies and the lengths they would go to gather it. Recent studies have taken another track, to the implications of the climbing itself and the ropes and other equipment required in acquiring the honey.

As seen on cliff face at abrigo de Barranco Gómez in Castellote, Teruel, Spain. Image from Bea, 2013.

Drawing and hypothical sections of rope ladder based on the pictograph. Online image, public domain.

“Direct or indirect evidence of ropemaking are scarce in European prehistory. Only a few references to Middle or Upper Palaeolithic remains are known to us, with more examples towards the Holocene. The archaeological contexts of ropes offer little information about possible uses, as the activities they are used for are often archaeologically invisible. However, some rock-art traditions shed some light on potential uses, worth exploring. In Spain, Levantine rock art offers the best graphic examples across Europe showing various uses of ropes, including climbing. Starting from the recently discovered climbing scene of Barranco Gómez site (Teruel, Spain), including the best preserved and more complex use of ropes seen so far in Levantine art. - Different rope-making techniques were used by Levantine societies, which we believe are indicative of a complex rope-making technology, requiring a considerable investment of time and efforts. It also shows a certain variety of rope climbing techniques and rope climbing gear, illustrating that both were mastered by Levantine societies. Moreover, a preferential use of ropes in honey-hunting scenes is observed.” (Bea et al. 2023)

Fragment of rope in situ, Lascaux Cave, France. Image from donsmaps.com.

Fragment of rope, Lascaux Cave, France. Image from donsmaps.com.

 

There have been a few samples of rope recovered from ancient sites in Europe. These pictures from Don Hitchcock at www.donsmaps.com show an excavated sample of rope, as well as an imprint in dried mud of a rope that has disappeared with age.

Rigid climbing systems (tree trunks, masts or branches). (1 & 2) Los Trepadores (after Beltrán Reference Beltrán2005); (3) La Higuera (after Baldello). Image from Bea, 2013.

 

“The catalogue of Levantine Rock Aat includes hundreds of sites, but explicit representations of ropes or rope-ladders are rare. Some of the known examples cannot be linked to a specific activity, but most of them are related to climbing. Nevertheless, climbers do not only use ropes and rope ladders, but occasionally climb some type of plants, branches or trees. Climbers are either related to wild boar hunting, honey hunting or unidentifiable activities, as they are isolated or are part of incomplete scenes.” (Bea et al. 2023)

“Within the foothills of the Iberian System Mountain Range in northeastern Spain, archaeologists have discovered a 7,500-year-old painting depicting prehistoric humans gathering honey. The exceptionally detailed image shows a figure climbing a rope ladder to reach a colony of bees.” (Saed 2021) While we have the pictures of figures climbing ropes up cliffs we have no indication of their equivalents of modern climbing equipment. I suppose we can project a few things like a wooden peg pounded into a crack in the rock with a hammerstone, instead of a metal piton, and a loop tied into the rope instead of a carabiner.

  Flexible climbing systems. Stirrup ladders: (1) Barranco Gómez; (2) Cingle de l'Ermità.      Ropes: (3) La Araña (Hernández-Pacheco;          (4) Los Trepadores (after Beltrán).                             Images from Bea, 2013. 

“Manuel Bea, a researcher from the University of Zaragoza, authenticated the painting alongside colleagues Ines Domingo and Jorge Angas. ‘We have a perfect photograph,’ he explains, that provides insight into just how these practices were conducted: by climbing ropes. The Barranco Gomez rock shelter was found by a nearby resident in 2013, but the analysis of the painting published just this year.” (Saed 2021)  The Barranco Gomez pictograph clearly shows some sort of rope ladder with a pair of ropes connected somehow creating openings for the feet. The authors of the paper (Bea et al. 2023) postulate that the second rope is repeatedly tied around the first, spaced comfortably apart to create a series of loops for the foot. This suggestion seems to fit comfortably with what can be seen in the image. What cannot be seen, however, is how it is fastened at the top of the rope, what secures it to the cliff?

The team was able to get quite a bit of information out of their analysis. “The unique honey-hunting scene from Barranco Gómez site illustrates the use of a truly complex rope-making technology. Close observation of this depiction does not assist in identification of the rope-making techniques (whether twisted or plaited fibres), but the use in climbing and the length show that Levantine societies were technologically advanced in the production of quality ropes. We estimate that each loop of the ladder (considering a minimum of 25 cm high and 20 cm wide) requires up to 80–85 cm of rope (including the necessary knots), so the rope length was possibly 25 m after the 29 stirrups depicted in the scene. Given that, the ladder itself could have been up to 7.5 m in length. The proportions of the length of the ladder and the height of the climber (assuming a height of 1.7 m) would fit perfectly.” (Bea et al. 2023)

Climbing illustrated in Cueva de las Aranas. Image from Bea, 2013.

Drawing of climbing illustrated in Cueva de las Aranas. Image from Bea, 2013.

The image from Cueva del las Aranas appears to show three vertical ropes with no horizontal rungs or loops of any kind. This may be meant to show an instance of shimmying up the rope, but again no details on its connection at the top other than some angled lines that the ropes connect with. These angled lines at the top have been suggested to represent branches.

“What is important is that Levantine groups had a refined technique for rope making, which was adapted to produce long ropes for climbing activities. When the action represented in the scenes displaying rope equipment can be deduced, honey hunting is the only well-defined activity. While this activity was depicted in different parts of the Levantine territory in the final stages of the sequence, it is completely absent in the initial stages, marking a significant change in the cultural treatment this activity had over time.” (Bea et al. 2023)

The authors of this study (Bea et al. 2023) have also included images of a number of other climbing scenes from rock art in the Levant including not only more that appear to be climbing ropes, but also apparently using trees or limbs for vertical access. This is an interesting and informative look at a vestige of early technology that we seldom think of, and I highly recommend it for fascinating reading.

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:

Bea, Manuel, Didac Roman, and Ines Domongo, 2023, Hanging over the Void. Use of Long Ropes and Climbing Rope Ladders in Prehistory as Illustrated in Levantine Rock Art, 8 June 2023, Cambridge University Press (online). Accessed online 19 July 2023.

Faris, Peter, 2022, Some Sweet Pictographs – Honey Collecting in Spanish Rock Art, 12 February 2022, https://rockartblog.blogspot.com/search/label/honey%20gathering

Hitchcock, Don, A rope from Lascaux Cave, https://donsmaps.com/lasc auxrope.html. Accessed online 25 July 2023.

Saed, Omnia, 2021, Found: A 7,500-Year-Old Cave Painting of Humans Gathering Honey, 16 December 2021, Atlas Obscura, https://atlasobscura.com/articles/honey-cave-painting

Wikipedia, Rope, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rope. Accessed online 25 July 2023.