The Horned Serpent panel at La Belle France in the Free Articulate province of South Africa became painted by the San of us no longer no longer up to 2 hundred years in the past. It photos, among many quite a pair of components, a tusked animal with a head that resembles that of a dicynodont, the fossils of that are ample and conspicuous in the South African Karoo Basin. This image additionally apparently pertains to a native San delusion about gargantuan animals that when roamed southern Africa and are now extinct. This means the existence of a San geomyth about dicynodonts.
Interpretation of the tusked animal of the Horned Serpent panel and its dicynodont-treasure traits. Image credit: J. Benoit, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0309908.
The Horned Serpent panel is a allotment of rock wall that contains work of animals and different cultural components connected with the San of us of South Africa, in the initiating painted between 1821 and 1835.
Among the painted figures is a lengthy-bodied animal with downward-turned tusks which doesn’t match any identified contemporary species in the distance.
“Because the San of us are identified to have integrated quite a pair of parts of their atmosphere into art, alongside with fossils, the tusked creature may maybe well need been impressed by an extinct species,” acknowledged College of the Witwatersrand researcher Julien Benoit.
The Karoo Basin of South Africa is eminent for ample well-preserved fossils, alongside with tusked animals known as dicynodonts, that are continuously chanced on eroding out of the ground.
Dr. Benoit revisited the Horned Serpent panel and chanced on the tusked figure similar with dicynodont fossils, an interpretation that’s additionally supported by San myths of gargantuan animals that when roamed the distance but are now extinct.
If the tusked figure is in actuality an inventive interpretation of a dicynodont, a species which went extinct prior to dinosaurs looked and were lengthy extinct when folks looked in Africa, it can predate the first scientific description of those extinct animals by no longer no longer up to ten years.
There is archaeological evidence that the San of us may maybe well need clean fossils and incorporated them into their work, but the extent of indigenous knowledge of paleontology is poorly understood across Africa.
Further research into indigenous cultures may maybe well shed extra gentle on how folks across the sphere have incorporated fossils into their tradition.
“The ethnographic, archaeological, and palaeontological evidence are in step with the hypothesis that the Horned Serpent panel may maybe well maybe depict a dicynodont,” Dr. Benoit acknowledged.
“This is supported by: (i) the downward orientation of the tusks on the La Belle France tusked animal, which does no longer match that of any contemporary African animals, but does match the tusks of dicynodonts; (ii) the abundance of dicynodont fossils in the distance; and (iii) the native San belief trusty into a lengthy extinct, gargantuan animal.”
“This may maybe well indicate that the San will have: (i) chanced on dicynodont fossils; (ii) interpreted them as lengthy-extinct species; (iii) made a checklist of no doubt one of them at La Belle France; and (iv) constructed-in them into their worldview.”
“If that is the case, this is in a position to evidence that Later Stone Age of us were responsive to dicynodont fossils no longer no longer up to a decade prior to their formal scientific description by western scientists, and made the first identified reconstruction of no doubt one of them.”
“Despite the truth that one considers that the Horned Serpent panel has a purely non secular which formulation, it does no longer invalidate the hypothesis that the tusked animal itself will were imagined in step with a dicynodont fossil.”
The findings were published in the journal PLoS ONE.
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J. Benoit. 2024. A that you would assume later Stone Age checklist of a dicynodont (Synapsida) from the South African Karoo. PLoS ONE 19 (9): e0309908; doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0309908
