South Africa’s Cape south coast affords many hints about how our human ancestors lived some 35,000 to 400,000 years in the past in the course of the Pleistocene epoch. These clues are captured within the dunes they as soon as traversed, immediately cemented and preserved in a rock sort generally known as aeolianite.
Our analysis workforce has been learning this space since 2008. We’ve described the fossilised tracks of huge Pleistocene animals reminiscent of lion, rhinoceros, elephant, large buffalo and crocodiles, in addition to footprints left by hominins.
Then, in 2018, one in all our “citizen scientist” supporters, Emily Brink, noticed an intriguing rock east of Nonetheless Bay, about 330km east of Cape City. The rock was unusually symmetrical and was formed uncannily like a stingray, minus the tail.
After cautious examine of the rock, we’ve got printed an instructional article within the journal Rock Artwork Analysis wherein we posit that it represents a sand-sculpture of a blue stingray (Dasyatis chrysonata). We imagine that the sculpture may need begun with tracing a specimen within the sand.
Why can we use phrases like “posit” and “imagine”, slightly than being extra assured and assertive? Firstly, we can’t show our interpretation, and others can’t falsify it. It due to this fact represents hypothesis – though it’s extremely knowledgeable hypothesis based mostly on our understanding of many tens of hundreds of such rocks. Secondly, historical palaeoart is uncommon within the archaeological file, and could also be tougher to recognise than newer artwork: we actually don’t know the way a lot we don’t know.
Nevertheless, if our interpretation is right, there are a selection of implications:
- making sand sculptures or “sand castles”, as lots of our kids like to do on dunes and seashores immediately, is an exercise that dates again no less than to the Center Stone Age, round 130,000 years in the past
Learn extra:
Drawing within the sand on the seashore? Our ancestors did the identical 140,000 years in the past
-
this may be the oldest identified instance of people creating a picture of a creature apart from themselves – a type of representational artwork
-
tracing could also be a stepping stone to later emergence of representational artwork in caves.
Unimaginable symmetry
The rock was discovered about 30km east of the Blombos Cave, which is famend for its palaeoart. That features an engraving on ochre courting again 77,000 years and a 73,000 yr previous drawing.
Learn extra:
South Africa’s Blombos cave is dwelling to the earliest drawing by a human
Immediately courting the specimen would contain taking a big chunk out of it, thus damaging it – one thing we aren’t prepared to think about. However courting of close by rocks, utilizing optically stimulated luminescence, means that it was created in the course of the Center Stone Age round 130,000 years in the past.
Jan De Vynck, Writer offered (no reuse)
The near-perfect define and proportions are evident by way of evaluating the symmetrical define of the specimen with that of a blue stingray. Viewing the rock from behind reveals additional symmetry in addition to proof of what seems like a tail stub. (We discover no proof that the tail portion broke off not too long ago, and speculate that it could have been deliberately “amputated” when the sculpture was created.)
We contend that both the artist was phenomenally gifted in recording such element or that the picture was traced. If it was traced, the disc width of lower than 30cm implies that it was comprised of a male or small immature feminine.
The notion of tracing is said to each the dimensions of the characteristic (just like that of a stingray) and its near-perfect form. As well as, the a number of ranges of symmetry happen not solely within the define of the rock and in areas comparable to the fins, but in addition within the sample engraved on its floor.
Symmetry is all the time intriguing, and might have quite a lot of origins, solely one in all which is human. Nevertheless it all the time begs for a proof, and such a number of ranges of symmetry help a hominin origin: the chance that the mix of a number of symmetrical options is because of probability alone is, in our view, distant. It has beforehand been reported by researchers that historical hominins appreciated and recognised symmetry.
The traditional artwork file
So, the place does our postulated sand sculpture match into the emergence of artwork within the historical file?
The magnificent corpus of western European rock artwork, starting about 40,000 years in the past, appears to emerge abruptly, as if out of nowhere, preceded largely by summary symbols from various world places. There may be an interval of round 90,000 years between when this purported stingray sand sculpture was created and the emergence of these artworks on the partitions of caves in Europe, essentially the most well-known of which is France’s Chauvet Cave.
The idea of the world’s unique artwork being in sand, and sand thus being the unique canvas, supplies ample time for these expertise to be honed over the intervening millennia. The absence of such artwork within the archaeological file can merely be attributed to the absence of appropriate rocks preserved from the intervening ages.
Certainly, ammoglyphs (patterns made in sand by ancestral hominins and now evident in rock) have solely been reported from the Cape south coast. This can be a reminder of the rarity of historical palaeoart and the truth of taphonomic bias: leather-based and wooden decay quicker than bone, which decays quicker than rock, and historical palaeoart might have been extra frequent than is usually recommended by the sparse examples within the archaeological file. Furthermore, it reminds us that there are extra kinds to historical rock artwork than engraving and portray or drawing.
A stepping stone
We advise, due to this fact, that tracing in sand may kind a doable “stepping stone” between summary photos and pictures of creatures created “from scratch”. A flattish animal reminiscent of a stingray would have offered an acceptable mannequin for tracing, in contrast with extra three-dimensional varieties. We’ve got tentatively advised a sequence of development of representational palaeoart from preliminary tracing in sand, to the creation of photos in sand (by way of copying or from reminiscence), after which to rock artwork.
Artwork is such an necessary a part of our existence as people. Which means concepts on how and when it started are of curiosity and significance to many. If our suggestion is right, it might not solely push again the time when our distant ancestors first created artwork of one other species, however might additionally assist clarify what has till now appeared enigmatic: the seemingly sudden look of magnificent artwork on partitions deep inside caves in western Europe.
