We will never know for sure what humans were thinking when they painted or etched on rock walls. Were they simply scenes to accompany the stories, the Netflix of the time? What we do know is that, like modern artists, they did not always portray only the real world they saw, but also depicted motifs born of the imagination, perhaps with mythological or religious significance. Some of these myths, experts think, may have been inspired by the discovery of fossils of extinct animals. And this may be the case with the painting of a strange creature with long fangs in South Africa.
The Brakfontein Cave, on a farm called La Belle France in the province of the Free State of South Africa, houses cave paintings that show typical animal motifs and hunting scenes, and which were created by the San people of the area (formerly called Bushmen), probably at the beginning of the 19th century. But in this mural, described in 1930 by George Stow and Dorothea Bleek, there is something more, an animal reminiscent of a thick snake with legs and long fangs, or perhaps a walrus. However, there have never been walruses in that part of the world, and the image does not seem to correspond to any real animal.
At least, none current. The identity of this figure has been a mystery. But paleobiologist Julien Benoit, from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg (South Africa), believes he has found the solution: it could represent a dicynodont, a type of herbivorous proto-mammal that lived before the dinosaurs. These animals, with a strong body and horny beak, emerged in the middle of the Permian, about 265 million years ago. They reached great diversity, from small ones like rats to those larger than the size of an elephant. Most of them disappeared in the Permian extinction, 252 million years ago, and only a few survived during the Triassic, the dawn of the great reptiles.
Dicynodonts often had long downward-facing tusks, similar to those in the painting, so the resemblance is plausible. But how were the indigenous Africans of two centuries ago going to portray an animal that had been extinct for hundreds of millions of years? The answer lies in the fossils: those of dicynodonts are abundant in the area, even at ground level. Curiously, the estimated dating of the painting is at least 10 years ahead of the scientific discovery of the first of these fossils in 1845, which would make the San the original discoverers of dicynodonts.
Benoit doesn’t rely on similarity of appearance alone. According to the paleobiologist, San mythology speaks of extinct “monstrous beasts,” as Stow called them, incorporated into the indigenous belief system. “Archaeological evidence supports that the San found and transported fossils over great distances and could interpret them surprisingly accurately,” Benoit writes in his study, published in the magazine PLOS ONE.
“In the painting, the dicynodont is used as if it were a rain-animal, a fantastic being destined to bring rain,” Benoit details to EL PAÍS.. “When they enter a trance state, San shamans travel to the realm of the dead to bring a rain animal to bring rain to the real world. “Dicynodonts as rain-animals would be consistent with the fact that the San knew they were completely extinct.”
Fossil finds prior to the birth of scientific paleontology have a long history of inspiring myths in cultures around the world. “In China, all fossils are considered dragon bones, and not just those of dinosaurs,” says Benoit. In addition to dragons, giant humans, cyclops, unicorns and sea serpents found their way into popular legends through this type of remains. And just as these cases are well known in the East and West, indigenous African paleontology is still largely ignored.
But there are precedents: according to Benoit, the most striking example of San paleontology is the rock art in Mokhali Cave, Lesotho. There the indigenous people reproduced a dinosaur footprint and painted three figures similar to these animals. “These silhouettes do not have arms, because there are no hand prints in the footprints in the area, and they have a short tail because the dinosaurs did not drag their tails,” says the paleobiologist.
These paintings, Benoit adds, were made before the term dinosaur was even invented; In San mythology, dinosaurs were equivalent to a creature called ||Khwai-hemm (with two initial bars), whose name translates as a disturbing “devourer of all.” And still today for the Basotho, indigenous people of Lesotho, dinosaur fossils are remains of this same fearsome monster they call Kholumolumo.
Indigenous knowledge of fossils
“Dr. Benoit has presented a very compelling case,” says Adrienne Mayor, a historian at Stanford University, who in her books The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times (Princeton University Press, 2000) and Fossil Legends of the First Americans (Princeton University Press, 2005) has analyzed the influence of indigenous paleontology on their myths and beliefs. “The San are famous for their knowledge of animal anatomy and their keen observations of their environment,” adds Mayor.
This expert points out that there are other cases of African fossils intertwined with mythology: in the 1990s, the nomadic Tuaregs of Niger guided scientists to skeletons measuring more than 20 meters that protruded from the ground on the Tiguidi escarpment, on the routes of the caravans. For the Tuaregs, they were ancient and fearsome giant camels that perished in a flood. Scientists discovered a new species of dinosaur in them and, as Mayor points out, “they called it Jobaria tiguidensis by the Jobar, the name of the terrifying beast for the Tuaregs.”
All of this agrees with the fact that “the existence of ancient indigenous knowledge of fossils is very probable,” as Benoit concludes in his study. If all this has gone practically unnoticed until now, it is, above all, for one reason: the scarcity of written records. Today scientists join the dots of different evidence to draw the lines of this ancient knowledge, painted on the rock shelters of the African savanna and, possibly, in many cases still waiting to be discovered.
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