Figure 17 - available via license: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Content may be subject to copyright.
Engraved pebbles of the Incipient Jomon of Kamikuroiwa rockshelter, Japan, of the final Pleistocene.
Source publication
This comprehensive overview considers the currently known Pleistocene palaeoart of Asia on a common basis, which suggests that the available data are entirely inadequate to form any cohesive synthesis about this corpus. In comparison to the attention lavished on the corresponding record available from Eurasia’s small western appendage, Europe, it i...
Similar publications
Excavations at the Middle Pleistocene site of La Cotte de St Brelade, on the island of Jersey in the English Channel, have revealed a long sequence of occupation. The continued use of the site by Neanderthals throughout an extended period of changing climate and environment reveals how, despite changes in the types of behaviour recorded at the site...
The recent discovery of the first authentic Pleistocene rock art in central Europe is reported in one of the classical Palaeolithic cave sites investigated for centuries. The Drachen-höhle in Austria has yielded extensive evidence of human habitation in the Würm I/II Inter-stadial 325 m from its entrance, in total darkness. The cave art occurs a fe...
The ability to produce recognizable depictions of objects from the natural world—known as figurative art—is unique to Homo sapiens and may be one of the cognitive traits that separates our species from extinct hominin relatives. Surviving examples of Pleistocene figurative art are generally confined to rock art or portable three-dimensional works (...
Citations
... Pre-scientific, indigenous interest in rocks and fossils has been evidenced on every continent, including Europe (Buffetaut 1987(Buffetaut , 2017Mayor 2011;Bednarik 2017;McNamara 2020), the Americas (Simpson 1942;Mayor 2005;Alvarado-Ortega et al. 2018), Asia (Xing et al. 2011;Bednarik 2013b) and Oceania (Mayor and Sarjeant 2001;McNamara 2020), but the African continent is special for the antiquity of this behaviour Benoit et al. 2022). For instance, Africa offers the earliest possible record of a geological item collected by a hominin for non-utilitarian purposes: the Makapansgat pebble (Fig. 1a), collected by an australopithecine or an early representative of the genus Homo some 2.8 million years ago (Bednarik 2013a;Benoit et al. 2022). ...
Compared to other continents, the study of indigenous (non-western) knowledge of palaeontology in Africa is a relatively new field. The literature reviewed here nevertheless suggests a long-lasting string of traditions, geomyths and folklore related to fossilised items on the whole continent and encompassing many African cultures. It is often difficult to estimate the antiquity of these traditions, but the evidence gathered here suggests that they range from the 1800s to pre-colonial times, and up to many millennia. Palaeontological items were collected and used for a variety of reasons, but the African record seems unusual for its scarce use of fossils for traditional medicine. Also, despite substantial efforts, some famous localities with conspicuous fossils still remain without any documented indigenous knowledge. We stress that documenting fossil-related folklore and geomyths is not only a matter of preserving this knowledge or promoting diversity, but is also crucial for establishing strong bonds with local stakeholders to encourage preservation of geoheritage and discover new sites.
... Here the evidence for Aveni's claim is missing from the footnotes. This assertion is only partially correct: so far back in time, no complex burials or drawings can be documented (Pettitt 2010;Bednarik 2013aBednarik , 2013bBednarik , 2014. Evidence of intentionally applied notches on bones is evidenced in one case (Guadelli 2004), and the use of jewellery is clearly more recent than one million years ago (Bednarik 2015). ...
Anthony F. Aveni, Creation Stories: Landscapes and the Human ImaginationNew Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2021. Hardback, 220 pp. ISBN 978-0-300-25124-1. £20.00.
... In Tasmania, the Mode 3 traditions continued right up to British settlement, that is, just 200 years ago, therefore all of the rock art of that island must be essentially Middle Palaeolithic. Africa's Middle Stone Age has also produced a catalogue of palaeoart (Bednarik 2013b). But what comes as a surprise to anyone believing 'art' began in the caves of France and Spain is that even vastly earlier Lower Palaeolithic palaeoart has also been reported. ...
... Beads of the same period come from sites in France, Austria, Israel and Libya (Bednarik 2005). Portable engravings have been reported from the Lower Palaeolithic or Early Stone Age of Germany (Figure 4), Bulgaria, China and South Africa (Bednarik 2013b(Bednarik , 2013c(Bednarik , 2014b. The history of pigment use, especially of haematite and other iron minerals, begins about one million years ago, at such sites as Kathu Pan 1 and Wonderwerk Cave, both in South Africa (Bednarik 2013b). ...
... Portable engravings have been reported from the Lower Palaeolithic or Early Stone Age of Germany (Figure 4), Bulgaria, China and South Africa (Bednarik 2013b(Bednarik , 2013c(Bednarik , 2014b. The history of pigment use, especially of haematite and other iron minerals, begins about one million years ago, at such sites as Kathu Pan 1 and Wonderwerk Cave, both in South Africa (Bednarik 2013b). ...
Contrary to the widely held belief that iconic palaeoart precedes
aniconic during the early history of humans, palaeoart
commenced as non-iconic forms, and in most parts of the world
then settled by hominins continued as such during the
Pleistocene. The forms, development and global distribution of
such palaeoart are presented within the framework of hominin
evolution. Attention is given to the question of the continuation
of aniconism after the introduction of iconicity and the apparent
connection between the latter and youth. This coincides with the
role of aniconism in the world of specific ethnographically studied
peoples, such as the Aborigines of Australia and the Jarawas of
the Andamans. The neuroscientific explanation of aniconism
shows that it is cognitively more complex than iconic depiction.
Based on these and other strands of evidence, a general
hypothesis of the roles and significance of aniconism in the
world’s pre-literate societies, be they extant or extinct, is developed.
... What is certain is that its existence is very irregular, in terms of both temporal and geographical distribution, and there remains the doubt that its purpose was an activity of measurement or of another unknown cause (Barandiarán, 2006;González Redondo et al., 2010;Reese, 2002). Bednarik, 2013Frolov, 1974 (Vanhaeren et al., 2006(Vanhaeren et al., , 2013. Such use is possible, but the lack of knowledge of needs that motivate its development makes the majority of authors opt for its use as elements of personal and/or social differentiation. ...
This paper attempts to analyse the origin of numerical abstraction. We know the existence of a basic perception of quantities (one, two, few, and many) with an innate character, but the abstract development of numeration seems to be a consequence of the cognitive and cultural evolution of the genus Homo. In his study, a psychobiological and social model (functional structuralism) has been used on our cognitive evolution, which allows us to analyse the archaeological data referring to the abstract development of numbers. Their realization requires an adequate evolution of social cognition (cognitive processes related to working memory, theory of mind, self-consciousness etc.), emotional cognition (emotional processes: motivation and interest) and technological cognition (material support of non-observable entities: measurable and/or accounting behaviours), which, working in an interrelated way, can develop numerical behaviours. The material support acquires a special importance, since it will be its technological qualities and sensitive stimulation that will ultimately develop cognitive changes that will produce the concept of numerical abstraction. An important engine of these changes would be causal reasoning, as a fundamental psychoneurological mechanism in the evolutionary development of human cognition. Although it seems that there are antecedents at the end of the Middle Palaeolithic, this process was developed with continuity from the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic, where archaeologically an advanced development of causal reasoning related to measurement behaviours is observed. Its subsequent evolution to counting and numbering behaviours would depend on the social, technological and emotional development of Neolithic and Bronze Age societies.
... Before going into details, we should mention an intense discussion concerning the meaning and function of anthropomorphous Palaeolithic sculptures, including Siberian objects, beginning in the 1960s (Аbramova 1966, 1995Barton et al. 1994;Bednarik 1989Bednarik , 1990Bednarik , 1996Delporte 1979;Dobres 1992;Duhard 1990;Gvozdover 1985Gvozdover , 1989Gimbutas 1991;McDermott 1996;Nesbitt 2001;Russell 2006). Presently, the discussion has resumed due to new finds and discoveries in the archaeology of the Palaeolithic and in palaeogenetics, new scholarly standards of research and new insights into phenomena of Eurasian pre-Historic 'art', as well as the use of new research approaches, techniques and equipment (Bednarik 2013a;Conard 2009;Dixson and Dixson 2011;Lbova and Volkov 2016;Raghavan et al. 2014;Soffer et al. 2000 etc). ...
... Nearly 30% of them have largesized heads with the head-to-body ratio of nearly 1:4, which led some scholars to believe that the figurines might have represented children or the souls of children. Five figurines clearly represent males (Gerasimov 1958;Medvedev et al. 1996;Bednarik 2013a;Lbova 2016 etc.). ...
Microscopic research of samples taken from anthropomorphous sculptures that were discovered at the Upper Palaeolithic site of Mal'ta (19-23 ka BP) in southern Siberia provide new information on the decoration of the so-called 'Palaeolithic Venuses'. The article enumerates the technological stages of making the objects, including the initial stage of ivory processing, creating the blanks of the sculptures, modelling their main features, and focuses on the stage of decoration and final treatment of the objects. Typically applied sets of tools are identified for each stage of processing. Special attention is paid to the details of figurine decoration: ornamentation, engraving, detailing of 'clothing' and accessories, and colouring. Decoration was applied using a standard set of techniques and involved typical elements of ornamentation and combinations of elements, as well as specific areas of ornamentation and colouring. Additional decoration of anthropomorphous figurines in Mal'ta was made using pigments (red, green and blue) on some objects. Traces of pigments were identified using an Altami microscope and Bruker M1 Mistral spectrometer.
... But, the portable Bednarik et al. (1991) relied on six Mesolithic movable engraved art finds in India-a chalcedony core from Chandravati (Sonawane 1991), a human tooth and four bone fragments. Later, Bednarik (2013) added quartz crystals' from Singi Talav 1983D'Errico et al., 1989) anuports of the Lower Acheulian and the other 'engraved ostrich eggshell' from Patne, western India, c. 25Kya. But, he refuted two other claims; a bone "female recognized by him a damaged 'bone and the claimed "grooved patterns" on 45 more ostrich eggshell fragments from central Indian sites (Kumar et as 'natural work of taphonomic agents' (Bednarik, n meagre evidence of Pleistocene portable art, the present five portable art objects They include two bird a stone peacock on chert, and two pendants, one on bone and the other on an shaped stone; the fifth is a painted chopper on cherty quartzite cobble. ...
... A further scrutiny of Indian rock art literature 174021, India. (Bednarik, 2013;Neumayer, 2013;2010;Chakravarty and Bednarik, 1997;bradshawfoundation) reveals that such objects have not been reported from India so far. ...
... Bird figurines of modified Middle Palaeolithic implements are known from America, Europe and China (Bednarik, 2013). Much more important is its in situ contexts which suggest a minimum 30 Kya date (Patnaik et al., 2009). ...
... With help from a few photographs (Fig. 6), and keeping the aforementioned elements of mountain geography and ecology in mind, readers should be able to visualize the settings of such northeast Asian Upper Paleolithic sites as Kara Bom (942 m asl, at 50 latitude in the Altai Mountains); Tolbor-15 (1008 m asl in Mongolia's Tolbor Valley), and Denisova Cave (670 m asl in the Altai Range). The data inTable 1, together with details about site types, the nature of faunal and stone tool assemblages, the intriguingly frequent presence of portable art (Bednarik, 2013), and other characteristics of the Upper Paleolithic record of northeastern Asia can be probed in far more depth and detail than I have offered here. However, I present them in this paper with the sole goal of reinforcing the point that our own biases as archaeologists regarding the nature of the Old World homeland(s) of First Americans have colored our interpretations of the process of peopling the Americas.Table 1Upper Paleolithic site locations and radiocarbon ages from Mongolia, Siberia, the Russian Far East, and Paleo-Sakhalin-Hokkaido-Kuril (PSHK) Peninsula (ordered by ascending latitude).,050 ...
This paper argues that the Rocky Mountains played a significantly more important role in the process of the peopling of the New World than archaeologists have traditionally recognized. Although First Americans did not reach the Rockies before they set foot in any other New World region-they could not have, regardless of their point of entry-by Clovis time, evidence suggests that Clovis people knew the Rocky Mountain landscape intimately.Archaeologists should have long anticipated this, given the many resources the Rocky Mountains offer that adjacent, albeit archaeologically better-known regions such as the Plains and some parts of the Far West do not; at least not as ubiquitously. These include plentiful water in the form of streams, lakes, snowpack, and glaciers; high-quality sources of obsidian, chert, quartzite and other knappable stone; and a vertically oriented landscape that maximizes floral and faunal diversity within comparatively condensed space.Two other non-economic characteristics likely contributed significantly to the appeal of the Rocky Mountains to some First Americans: the power and sanctity nearly all humans attribute to mountains, and the seemingly little-recognized fact that northeast Asian Upper Paleolithic people who populated the New World during the terminal Pleistocene occupied mountainous landscapes for some 45,000 years prior to their departure. For many First Americans, mountains-not the flat, windswept tundra of Siberian stereotypes-had always been home.Evidence for the familiarity of Clovis groups with the Rocky Mountain landscapes comes principally from three Clovis caches: Anzick, Fenn, and Mahaffy. All three caches are located in the Rockies, collectively contain artifacts made from ten of the highest-quality stone raw materials available in the Southern, Central and Northern Rockies, and at least one of the caches accompanies the burial of a young child who appears to have been interred intentionally on a prominent and likely sacred landform in a mountain valley.Bringing the paper's argument full circle, that same child's genetic profile shows a direct link to that of another youngster buried thousands of years earlier at the Late Glacial Maximum Mal'ta site in the mountainous Trans-Baikal region of Siberia.
... Beads of the same period come from sites in France, Austria, Israel and Libya (Bednarik 2005). Portable engravings have been reported from the Lower Palaeolithic or Early Stone Age of Germany (Figure 4), Bulgaria, China and South Africa (Bednarik 2013b(Bednarik , 2013c(Bednarik , 2014b. The history of pigment use, especially of haematite and other iron minerals, begins about one million years ago, at such sites as Kathu Pan 1 and Wonderwerk Cave, both in South Africa (Bednarik 2013b). ...
Contrary to the widely held belief that iconic palaeoart precedes aniconic during the early history of humans, palaeoart commenced as non-iconic forms, and in most parts of the world then settled by hominins continued as such during the Pleistocene. The forms, development and global distribution of such palaeoart are presented within the framework of hominin evolution. Attention is given to the question of the continuation of aniconism after the introduction of iconicity and the apparent connection between the latter and youth. This coincides with the role of aniconism in the world of specific ethnographically studied peoples, such as the Aborigines of Australia and the Jarawas of the Andamans. The neuroscientific explanation of aniconism shows that it is cognitively more complex than iconic depiction. Based on these and other strands of evidence, a general hypothesis of the roles and significance of aniconism in the world’s pre-literate societies, be they extant or extinct, is developed.
... For instance some human markings in Yaranda Cave, part of a very complex design, predate claw marks of Th ylacoleo (Bednarik 1991), a carnivore thought to have become extinct around 46 ka ago (Roberts et al. 2001). Th is is currently the oldest known cave art in the world (Fig. 5), exceeded in age only by cave petroglyphs in India (Bednarik et al. 2005) and similar open-air rock art in South Africa (Bednarik 2013). Great antiquity of some Australian cave art is also suggested by a variety of superimposed speleothems (laminar travertine skins, moonmilk, stalactites, and straws); by signifi cant tectonic (structural) changes in the cave morphologies since the art was produced; by indirect dating in three sites (Koonalda, Koongine and NewGuinea 2 Caves, Gallus 1971, Wright 1971, Frankel 1986, Bednarik 1989, Ossa et al. 1995); and by direct dating in Malangine Cave (Bednarik 1999). ...
Although the largest known concentrations of cave art are those of southwestern Europe, southern Australia and northern Papua New Guinea, smaller corpora do exist elsewhere. In the first two regions mentioned, such cave art has been demonstrated to be of the Pleistocene and up to about 50,000 years old. Cave art has been studied most intensively in the famous caves of France and Spain. Due to the specific speleoclimates of caves, lithological conditions and often the delicate nature of the cave art itself, the preservation of this immensely valuable and irreplaceable cultural resource, its conservation and its management are more demanding than those of any other rock art. In France and Spain, such practices are particularly well developed, and in Australia, efforts to design uniform management and protection measures are currently being undertaken by the Australian Rock Art Research Association. Cultural use of caves is a global phenomenon, including their role as sacred sites, and some examples of such practices are recounted in this paper.
... Cupules form the major bulk of the early non-iconic rock art (one form of paleoart) globally, and have been recorded on every continent that early humans occupied (Bednarik 2008) [2]. The antiquity of cupules in Asia and Africa extends back to the Lower Paleolithic, though their production has continued up to the present in some regions of Australia and South America ; Kumar et al. 2005;Bednarik 2013; Beaumont and Bednarik 2015; Querejazu et al. 2015) [3][4][5][6][7]. ...
... Cupules form the major bulk of the early non-iconic rock art (one form of paleoart) globally, and have been recorded on every continent that early humans occupied (Bednarik 2008) [2]. The antiquity of cupules in Asia and Africa extends back to the Lower Paleolithic, though their production has continued up to the present in some regions of Australia and South America ; Kumar et al. 2005;Bednarik 2013; Beaumont and Bednarik 2015; Querejazu et al. 2015) [3][4][5][6][7]. ...
Throughout the world, iconic rock art is preceded by non-iconic rock art. Cupules (manmade, roughly semi-hemispherical depressions on rocks) form the major bulk of the early non-iconic rock art globally. The antiquity of cupules extends back to the Lower Paleolithic in Asia and Africa, hundreds of thousand years ago. When one observes these cupules, the inquisitive mind poses so many questions with regard to understanding their technology, reasons for selecting the site, which rocks were used to make the hammer stones used, the skill and cognitive abilities employed to create the different types of cupules, the objective of their creation, their age, and so on. Replication of the cupules can provide satisfactory answers to some of these questions. Comparison of the hammer stones and cupules produced by the replication process with those obtained from excavation can provide support to observations. This paper presents a manual of cupule replication technology based on our experience of cupule replication on hard quartzite rock near Daraki-Chattan in the Chambal Basin, India.
