Researchers have unveiled what they believe to be the oldest known example of human artwork depicting another animal. The object in question, initially mistaken for a symmetrical rock, has been reexamined by a team of experts who now speculate that it may represent a prehistoric sand sculpture of a stingray.
Discovered in 2018 along the cliffs near Still Bay, approximately 330 kilometers east of Cape Town on South Africa’s coast, the rock bears an uncanny resemblance to the shape of a stingray, albeit with its tail broken off. The researchers, hailing from Nelson Mandela University and the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity, have recently published their findings in the journal Rock Art Research.
The researchers used a technique known as optically stimulated luminescence to date the object, revealing that it was most likely created during the Middle Stone Age around 130,000 years ago. If their interpretation is correct, this finding challenges existing notions of the timeline of human artistic expression.
Prior to this discovery, the oldest uncontested example of figurative art was a 45,000-year-old cave painting of a pig in Indonesia. The stingray sand sculpture predates this by a significant margin, pushing back the timeline of representational art by tens of thousands of years.
The researchers propose that the rock may be an ammoglyph, a tracing made in sand that has since solidified into stone. The remarkable symmetry and surface grooves of the rock support this hypothesis, leading the team to suggest that the sculpture may have been created by tracing around a fresh stingray specimen encountered along the shore.
But why would ancient humans engage in such artistic endeavors? Helm and his colleagues speculate that the stingray may have held significance for these early artists, perhaps due to its utility as a food source or its potential danger to those traversing the coastline. The researchers also suggest that the creation of such sand sculptures could have served as a precursor to the emergence of representational art in caves, providing a possible link between abstract imagery and depictions of real-world creatures.
While the conclusions drawn by the researchers are tentative and speculative, the implications of this discovery are profound. If validated, it prompts a reconsideration of the origins and evolution of human creativity.
The stingray sculpture, although initially indistinguishable from an ordinary rock to the untrained eye, may indeed occupy a coveted place in the annals of human cultural history.
