MNP - Ph. Jugie

Quaternary International

Quaternary International

Quaternary International

Quaternary International

We know little about the early Homo sapiens who migrated to Europe from Africa and the Middle East more than 70,000 years ago, but we've just found a new piece of the puzzle. A group of archaeologists has just described the discovery of a distinctive rock carving of an aurochs, a kind of extinct ox, its thick body peppered with dozens of carefully created, shallow holes called "punctuations." What's truly fascinating is that the markings on this limestone slab, carbon dated to 38,000 years old, strongly resemble other rock carvings from the same era scattered across France and Germany.

No, it's not aliens. New York University anthropologist Randall White, who worked on the excavation that revealed the slab at the Abri Blanchard site in southwestern France, said that it's simply a sign that many of these new arrivals in Europe shared some common cultural symbols. "Following their arrival from Africa, groups of modern humans settled into western and Central Europe, showing a broad commonality in graphic expression,” he said in a release. “This pattern fits well with social geography models that see art and personal ornamentation as markers of social identity at regional, group, and individual levels.”

In a paper for Quaternary International , White and colleagues describe the rock shelter where they found the carving. The floor had been modified to fit three fire pits and was littered with thousands of tools, decorative items, animal bones, and other carvings. These were left behind by generations of people from the first wave of Homo sapiens to settle in Europe, who met and occasionally bred with Neanderthals who had been living there for hundreds of thousands of years already. These Homo sapiens shared a culture that archaeologists call Aurignacian, and it spread like wildfire, even among Neanderthals. Many caves belonging to Neanderthal groups during this period are full of cultural objects that strongly resemble Aurignacian ones, but with their own distinctive Neanderthal flare, known as Châtelperronian. The researchers believe it unlikely that Aurignacian culture came with Homo sapiens from Africa. It appears to have developed in Europe.

The newly discovered limestone carving of the aurochs is a particularly fine example of art from this lost moment in European history. In their paper, the researchers describe it:

The aurochs shows a marked sway back, pronounced withers and a forward projected, curved horn. Particular care was taken in the rendering of the cervico-dorsal line where a manipulation of the angle of the engraved line creates the impression of bas-relief. The size of the head is small in relation to that of the body and the finely engraved muzzle is somewhat elongated. The limbs are represented on the same plane and are not in perspective. The abdominal line terminates with what seems to be the sexual organ. The tail, rendered explicitly in a raised position, stands in contrast to the absence of details such as ears and eyes.

The punctuations mystery

More intriguing, however, are the abstract markings on the stone. There are punctuations, which form a clear pattern behind and beneath the animal. There are also "short, parallel marks" in front of the aurochs' chest. And there is a deep line that cuts straight through the center of the stone and the aurochs' body, as well as a "tunnel-like depression" right in the abdomen. Indeed this line was cut so deeply that the researchers believe it eventually caused the slab to split in two. Interestingly, analysis revealed that this deep cut was carved first, then the punctuations, followed by the aurochs. So the animal's body was drawn on top of these abstract dots and lines, and some of the dots were even joined to create the aurochs' legs, hindquarters, and abdomen. "The animal figure, executed after the creation of the deep depression, was constructed so as to integrate this feature, which seems to have an important role in the overall graphic construct," the research team wrote.

Early archaeologists believed these punctuations, which are found throughout the region, were a way of tracking phases of the moon. White and his colleagues found, however, that the markings "were done with a single tool in a single sitting, not at all coherent with day-by-day recording of external events." If someone were noting the moon's waxing and waning, they would be making a new marking each night, not carving them all at once.

What, then, might these symbols mean? Given that we see different patterns of these punctuations throughout France and Germany, it's possible that they were an expression of local identity. White noted that some cave paintings even feature painted dots, rather than carved ones, and suggests that these might be another regional version of a more widespread symbol. The researchers are not suggesting that these dots are morse code or signposts that say "We live here." Instead, they admit that the meaning of the dots is mysterious.

Still, we are certain that many styles of these punctuations exist across a broad geographical area. That suggests there was a widely shared symbolic system among the peoples of Europe 38,000 years ago. But there were also local dialects and regional variants. Perhaps these ancient dots and dashes allowed people to interact across cultural boundaries while also maintaining distinct, hometown identities.

Quaternary International, 2017. DOI: 10.1016/j.quaint.2016.09.063

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