Overall, the team identified around 40 separate species in the tracks from the two sites, revealing what they see as a "surprising" amount of diversity, according to a press release. Read More: Ancient Shoes: Tracks On A South African Beach Offer Oldest Evidence Yet Of Human Footwear Among the 400 tracks representing animals, most were male adults, with some of the most represented critters including giraffes and antelopes. Among the 100 or so tracks representing humans, the majority were male rather than female and non-adults rather than adults. Instead, they were specific forms that represented specific individuals. In total, the team identified over 500 individual footprints and tracks carved into the cliffs, with around 100 representing humans and around 400 representing animals.Īssessing the shape of these tracks, the team found that the carvings were not general nor generic. Selected for the abundance of track carvings that they contained, the two specific Doro !Nawas sites that were involved in the team's analysis featured almost as many footprints as abstractions and full-fledged human and animal figures. Read More: Why Did Our Paleolithic Ancestors Paint Cave Art?Īn assortment of human and animals footprints are carved into the cliffs of the Doro! Nawas Mountains in Central-Western Namibia. Their analysis determined that the carvings that survive can convey an abundance of information about specific individuals and critters, if scrutinized by specialists with the proper skills and insights, that is. "Researchers lacked the knowledge to interpret them." But building on the budding practice of incorporating Indigenous knowledge and knowledge-keepers in archaeological investigations, the team worked with three Indigenous trackers from the nearby Kalahari desert to analyze the footprints from two separate Doro !Nawas sites. "Until now, the latter have received little attention," the authors of the paper said, according to a press release. Read More: 5 of the World’s Most Fascinating Cave Paintings There, a number of abstractions and conventional, full-fledged human and animal figures cover the cliffs, along with an abundance of carvings of human and animal footprints and tracks. Setting out to study these carved-out prints specifically, a team of archaeologists turned their attention to the ancient art in Namibia’s Doro !Nawas Mountains. That said, most research into the art and artistry of Namibian antiquity ignores these carvings in favor of the flashier abstractions and human and animal figures that are also found in the region's rock, making them a mystery in spite of their prevalence. (Credit: Andreas Pastoors) In addition to the footprints, the carvings on the cliffs of Doro! Nawas also include abstractions and full-fledged figures of humans and animals.Ĭarvings of human and animal tracks play a part in an assortment of ancient art traditions from around the world, though these carvings are particularly prevalent in those of Namibia in southern Africa.
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