Ancient subterranean travelers with tusksThe enigmatic tusked animals depicted in South African rock art belong to a long-lost world.
A Creature Long Forgotten Is Reborn
A quirky new study by Peter J. Senter finds that what was long believed to have been stylized rock art of the mythical Horned Serpent in South Africa may, in fact, be a representation of an extinct species.
One remarkable link between the rock art and the fossil record has been revealed by researcher, Julien Benoit of the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. This animal has tusks that curve downwards and it has a long body making this specimen unlike any modern species boring holes in the trees.
But Benoit’s work has convinced him that this cryptic creation was indeed an attempt to depict the fossilized remains of dicynodonts, a kind of tusked synapsid that flourished in South Africa’s Karoo Basin long before the time of the dinosaurs. The now-extinct creatures, which are older than humans and were found in Africa before the time when humans even appeared there, have become famous for their often remarkably well-preserved remains that can be seen literally eroding out of the rocks of the region.
Making Science Look Pretty
If a definititive link is established, however, the identification would be stunning considering that the San people who created the rock art are considered to have been some of our least technologically advanced ancestors.
It is known that the San people integrated different aspects of their environment (including fossils) into various types of material culture like art and belief systems, Benoit said. In addition, the tusked figure bears a strong resemblance to the dicynodont fossils., and they could have been aware of these creatures and thought them mind-blowing enough to included in their rock art.
This discovery also has major ramifications for our knowledge on the historical and ongoing development of human understanding and the input of indigenous cultures into the scientific field. Such foreknowledge, if proved accurate with hard scientific evidence or even reasonably compelling speculation, would speak to a stunning grasp of paleontology by these ancient denizens of southern Africa long before Western science formally described dicynodonts for the first time in 1845.
Additional studies on the Indigenous relation with their environment and bodies of the earth (including fossil remains and other archaeological material) through their cultural beliefs could provide remarkable insights into potential scientific advances hidden in these vast cultural traditions.
Conclusion
The identification of a putative depiction of such a creature featured in South African rock art is an exciting peek into the myriad interconnections between human culture and the natural world. While it is a testament to the amazing powers of observation and representation of the San people, this research also hints that Indigenous knowledge related to paleontology may have developed before the formal study conducted by us Westerners into these prehistoric beasts. While we will continue to explore this nexus between art, culture and science — discoveries like this remind us all of the vast stores of knowledge still waiting to be sussed out in Earth’s fossil record, as well in the plethora of cultural traditions from those that have lived alongside it for thousands of years.
