Rock face drawings and etchings recently rediscovered in southern Egypt are similar in age and style to the iconic Stone Age cave paintings in Lascaux, France, and Altamira, Spain, archaeologists say.
"It is not at all an exaggeration to call it 'Lascaux on the Nile,'" said expedition leader Dirk Huyge, curator of the Egyptian Collection at the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels, Belgium.
"The style is riveting," added Salima Ikram of the American University in Cairo, who was part of Huyge's team.
The art is "unlike anything seen elsewhere in Egypt," he said.
The engravings—estimated to be about 15,000 years old—were chiseled into several sandstone cliff faces at the village of Qurta, about 400 miles (640 kilometers) south of Cairo (Egypt map).
Of the more than 160 figures found so far, most depict wild bulls. The biggest is nearly six feet (two meters) wide.
The drawings "push Egyptian art, religion, and culture back to a much earlier time," Ikram said.
The team's findings will be published in the September issue of the British quarterly journal Antiquity.
Before Its Time
The Qurta art has now twice been uncovered by modern researchers.
Some of the engravings were first found in 1962 by a group from the University of Toronto, Canada.
The leader of that expedition, Philip Smith, made the then novel suggestion that the figures were from the Paleolithic age—the Stone Age period from about 2.5 million years ago to about 10,000 years ago—in a 1964 article in Archaeology magazine.
But he abandoned the hypothesis in later years.
"The Paleolithic experts told them, It's absolutely crazy—Europe is the cradle of art," Huyge, the leader of the new expedition, said. "And they backed off the idea.
"They must have accepted the fact that that nobody wanted to believe them, but they were right."
Discoveries of Paleolithic art in southern Africa and Australia since then have paved the way for the scientific community to accept what Smith first diffidently suggested, Huyge said.
Neither Smith, who has retired, nor his assistant on that expedition, Morgan Tamplin, now a professor emeritus at Trent University in Canada, could be reached for comment.
Thinking Alike
Huyge's March 2007 expedition strengthened the findings that Smith had discarded. The team found several additional panels of artwork over a 1-mile-long (1.66-kilometer-long) stretch of 230-foot-tall (70-meter-tall) sandstone cliffs.
There is "little doubt" the engravings are 15,000-years-old, Huyge said. They depict a now extinct species of wild cow whose horns have been recovered from Paleolithic settlements nearby.
The drawings would be examined for lichens and organic grime called "varnish rind" that could be carbon dated or subjected to another process known as uranium series dating, Huyge added. Because the rocks are inorganic, they cannot be dated directly using these methods.
In the meantime, the finding has raised a big question: How were people in Western Europe and southern Egypt producing almost identical artwork at the same time?
While the caves at Lascaux are best known for their painted images of bulls and cows, that artwork is actually outnumbered by stone engravings. And the Lascaux engravings are virtually identical to those in Qurta, Huyge pointed out.
"I'm not suggesting that the art in the caves of Lascaux was made by Egyptians or that [European] people were in Egypt," he said.
"The art is so similar that it reflects a similar mentality, a similar stage of development," he added. "When people are confronted with similar conditions, this will automatically lead to a similar kind of thinking, a similar creativity."
Now the archaeologists are on the hunt for additional—and potentially older—artwork.
"The rock art must be part of an evolution," Huyge said. "There must be older art in Egypt, if we can find it. I think open-air sites like Qurta will be found all over North Africa."
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quote:The rock art discovered close to the village of Qurta on the east bank of the Nile is uncannily closer in style to European cave art, as seen at Lascaux in France, than to Egypt’s more typically stylised representations exemplified by the region’s 4th millennium BC Pre-dynastic iconography.
Located in the higher parts of the Nubian sandstone scarp bordering the Nile floodplain, the petroglyphs are hammered and incised naturalistic-style images of wild animals. So far, 185 individual figures have been identified, more than three quarters of which are aurochs (Bos primigenius), followed by birds, hippopotamuses, gazelle, fish, and hartebeest, with some indeterminate creatures (‘monsters’ or hybrids), and several highly stylised representations of human figures. The subject matter, technique and style, their archaeological and geomorphological context, and their patination and degree of weathering all suggest the Qurta rock art dates to the Late Palaeolithic period (c.23,000-11,000 years ago). While this interpretation has met with little criticism from the archaeological community, direct science-based dating evidence was lacking. Until now.
Establishing a date On our team’s return to the region, we came across partly buried rock art panels at one of the Qurta sites. The deposits covering the rock art, in part composed of wind-blown sediments, were dated using optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) techniques. This method determines the time elapsed since the buried sediment grains were last exposed to sunlight, thereby establishing at what date these areas of the rock art panels were covered over. The result gave us a minimum age of c.15,000 calendar years – providing solid evidence that this is, indeed, Pleistocene Age artwork, the oldest graphic activity ever recorded in the whole of North Africa. It also makes it more or less contemporaneous with European art from the last Ice Age, as at Lascaux and Altamira caves.
However, these OSL results give us a date for when the rock art was buried – its true age may be much greater. It is clear that some of the buried drawings were already considerably weathered before they became covered by sediment, and an age of about 17,000 to 19,000 years is now being proposed .
-------------------- It's not my burden to disabuse the ignorant of their wrong opinions Posts: 2699 | From: New York | Registered: Jun 2015
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The aurochs had once a geograpic range that covered much of the Eurasian continent and Northern Africa. It is a bit scary that we humans managed to exterminate this species in such a vast area. The last aurochs is said to have been shot in Poland in 1627. Much of its legacy still lives on though in the many domesticated races of cows that today roam the world. There are also work in progress to try to recreate the aurochs (or something very similar to it) by selective breeding.
quote:The principal technique is “back-breeding”: by combining cattle breeds with desired characteristics, a bovine can be created with physical attributes, behaviour and genetics that closely match those of Europe's original wild auroch.
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^ That map is really flawed. For one, B. nomadicus/indicus ranged farther west and north not only in Pakistan but also Afghanistan. Also, B. Africanus also likely had a much greater range in North Africa than that map shows especially since North Africa was once lush, verdant grassland. In fact, a couple of years ago a study was published about the discovery of aurochs remains in Sudan and that there was likely more in other parts of Africa.
Oh, and there is a 4th group of domesticated cattle that the map leaves out which is not surprising, that being Bos Javanicus or the banteng cattle of Southeast Asia. This cattle subspecies was domesticated mainly for draft and meat but not dairy which is why it is the least dairy productive of all domestic cattle and why Southeast Asians are lactose intolerant.
What's also interesting is the phenotypic differentiation that already existed among the auroch types. We see this phenotypic difference in modern domesticates.
^ Note the African type has a slight hump though not as prominent as the Indian type, and now note the prehistoric depictions.
This is why I believe there was already divergence between the different aurochs types well before domestication. Which is why it makes no sense to suggest domestic cattle in Africa is the result of adoption of domestic types from Asia. cattle may have been domesticated in the Middle Nile basin around 10kya.
-------------------- Mahirap gisingin ang nagtutulog-tulugan. Posts: 26239 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
It could be that, after domestication, there was substantial interbreeding between different cattle lineages. Even if most African cattle really do have some Levantine ancestry, that’s not incompatible with there being an indigenous cattle domestication event, since you could have indigenous African and Levantine breeds later intermixing with each other (as well as others). It doesn’t have to be either or.
Good catch. Some scholars who argue for direct descent of sanga cattle from Eurasian domesticates sometimes attribute those humps to admixture with zebu cattle. The pre-domestication presence of this hump is just one more clue that they're wrong.
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Seems that the map is reproduced in many sites on the net. It can probably be based on somewhat old data. It would be good with maps based on the latest findings.
Sometimes it can be hard to know ancient species exact geographic distribution, one must have fossil or artistic representations. But as you said the paleogeography of an area can also give clues of where a species lived. As in Sahara there we have many artistic representations of animals who not live in that area anymore, including representation of totally extinct species.
It could be a nice hobby to plot all the occurrences (art or fossils) of these animals on a GIS map with a corresponding data base (I know a retired geology professor here in Sweden who has done that regarding subfossil finds of animals from the late Pleistocen and holocene here in Scandinavia).
Here is a similar map, that illustrates the range of Bos primigenius, but without any division in subspecies. Before the age of DNA it was harder to separate the different subspecies of aurochs and sometimes it can also be hard to separate the wild form from early domesticates.
Bos javanicus is seemingly a species of its own and that is probably the cause they did not include it in the map.
quote:The banteng (Bos javanicus; /ˈbæntɛŋ/), also known as tembadau,[5] is a species of cattle found in Southeast Asia. The head-and-body length is between 1.9 and 3.68 m (6.2 and 12.1 ft). Wild banteng are typically larger and heavier than their domesticated counterparts, but are otherwise similar in appearance. The banteng shows extensive sexual dimorphism; adult bulls are generally dark brown to black, larger and more sturdily built than adult cows, which are thinner and usually pale brown or chestnut red. There is a big white patch on the rump. Horns are present on both sexes, and are typically 60 to 95 cm (24 to 37 in) long. Three subspecies are generally recognised. ---------- A 2015 phylogenetic study obtained the complete mitochondrial genome of the Bornean banteng. It showed that the Bornean banteng is closer to the gaur (Bos gaurus) than it is to other banteng subspecies, having diverged from the gaur around 5.03 million years ago. Moreover, the Bornean banteng is genetically distant from taurine cattle and zebu, indicating that the wild Bornean banteng could not have hybridised with them, and therefore might form a purebreeding line.
Someone who has a more updated map with the range of Bos primigenius?
-------------------- Once an archaeologist, always an archaeologist Posts: 2684 | From: Sweden | Registered: Mar 2020
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Good catch. Some scholars who argue for direct descent of sanga cattle from Eurasian domesticates sometimes attribute those humps to admixture with zebu cattle. The pre-domestication presence of this hump is just one more clue that they're wrong.
Some populations of modern sanga do have zebu admixture which is why the really prominent humps and big ears. But most sanga populations don't have such admixture.
By the way, banteng although part of the Bos family is not part of the taurine lineage and thus of aurochs ancestry proper. The banteng actually share a closer lineage to the gayal of mainland Southeast Asia and gaur of South Asia. The banteng apparently developed in Sundaland and became isolated since that subcontinent's submergence.
-------------------- Mahirap gisingin ang nagtutulog-tulugan. Posts: 26239 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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By the way, banteng although part of the Bos family is not part of the taurine lineage and thus of aurochs ancestry proper. The banteng actually share a closer lineage to the gayal of mainland Southeast Asia and gaur of South Asia. The banteng apparently developed in Sundaland and became isolated since that subcontinent's submergence.
Yes indeed, I touched on that above. Also unlike the aurochs the Banteng still exists today.
-------------------- Once an archaeologist, always an archaeologist Posts: 2684 | From: Sweden | Registered: Mar 2020
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Good catch. Some scholars who argue for direct descent of sanga cattle from Eurasian domesticates sometimes attribute those humps to admixture with zebu cattle. The pre-domestication presence of this hump is just one more clue that they're wrong.
Some populations of modern sanga do have zebu admixture which is why the really prominent humps and big ears. But most sanga populations don't have such admixture.
By the way, banteng although part of the Bos family is not part of the taurine lineage and thus of aurochs ancestry proper. The banteng actually share a closer lineage to the gayal of mainland Southeast Asia and gaur of South Asia. The banteng apparently developed in Sundaland and became isolated since that subcontinent's submergence.
I agree. From what I remember, zebu admixture in sanga cattle is found all along the east African coast, from South Africa to Egypt and more inland. Certain breeds in West Africa seem almost entirely of the ancestry of the African pre-domestication auroch, while modern Maghrebi cattle are mainly Europe/Levantine with some 'indigenous' African. (Indigenous in quotes because aurochs are ultimately not native, but they have been in Africa long enough to have adapted to African climates [sanga have more elongated limbs than European and Levantine cattle]).
Certain cattle breeds in the Middle East and Europe also have remnants of this African component, which I've always thought was nice evidence to go along with evidence of an ancient presence (e.g. sanga mtDNA hg in Iberian cattle in ancient cattle DNA).
I think Xyyman had a thread on a paper discussing the zebu admixture, but I can't find it.
posted
In the article about the Egyptian aurochs they also mentioned the site Wadi Abu Subeira. Also there one can find pictures of aurochs. Here are some examples:
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There's a book by Michael Rice on the history of human relationship with taurines from aurochs to domestication.
He brought up the fact that the earliest known cattle culture in Africa was found in Nubia in Tushka where the earliest complex graves were decorated with auroch skulls.
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posted
That book seems interesting. I may order it from the library
I remember I once read a book from 1976 by Swedish zoologist and author Bengt Sjögren. In the book he tells about how already in his time there were speculations about an independent domestication of cattle in Africa. But at that time hard evidence in the form of archaeological findings were lacking, and of course DNA technique was not available.
One can hope they will be able to find more bones from both aurochs and early domesticated cattle and extract DNA from them.
-------------------- Once an archaeologist, always an archaeologist Posts: 2684 | From: Sweden | Registered: Mar 2020
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