Prehistoric artists carved incredibly lifelike animal tracks

A rocky basin in the mountains of western Namibia hosts an ancient art gallery. Thousands of years ago, prehistoric hunter-gatherers used the basin’s sandstone as a canvas for a massive collection of engravings, including hundreds of human and animal footprints. The carvings are so detailed and realistic that even today, Indigenous tracking experts can identify nearly all the species depicted, as well as their sex and approximate age . The identifications are an “impressive and thought-provoking” contribution to our understanding of prehistoric rock art, says Gary Haynes, an anthropologist at the University of Nevada, Reno, who wasn’t involved in the research. In addition to illustrating the skill of Stone Age artists, the study published today in PLOS ONE also demonstrates the importance of working with Indigenous experts, who may have a more nuanced understanding of the locations and subjects being researched than Western archaeologists. Carvings of human footprints and animal tracks are a common feature of prehistoric rock art and have been discovered at Stone Age sites on nearly every continent. But little is known about how or why prehistoric hunter-gatherers may have included such tracks among other designs, such as figures or geometric patterns. To help address this dearth of knowledge, a team of German archaeologists investigated rock art at a recently excavated site in Namibia’s Doro! Nawas Mountains. The site’...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research