Botswana "snake rock" may show Stone Age religion
By Alister Doyle
Reuters
OSLO - Carvings about 70,000 years old on a snake-like rock in a cave in Botswana indicate that Stone Age people developed religious rituals far earlier than previously believed, a researcher said on Thursday.
Ancestors of Botswana's San people apparently ground away at a natural outcrop about 2 meters high and 6 meters long (6 by 20 ft) to heighten its similarity to a python's head and body, said Sheila Coulson, an associate professor at Oslo University.
"We believe this is the earliest archaeological proof of religion," Coulson, a Canadian expert in Stone Age tools, told Reuters of findings made during a trip in mid-2006 to the Tsolido Hills in northwestern Botswana.
The previous oldest archaeological evidence of religious worship is about 40,000 years old from European caves. The Botswana find bolsters evidence that modern humans originated in Africa, along with religion and culture.
Coulson said the python-like rock had 300-400 carved indentations. In flickering firelight, the patterns might have seemed like scales and given the impression of movement to the rock as part of some sacred rite.
Scores of carved stone items, including 115 points and 22 burned red spearheads, were abandoned on the floor of the cave beneath the snake-like rock. Many had been brought more than 200 km (125 miles) across the Kalahari Desert.
"The snake symbol runs through all the mythologies, stories, cultures, languages of southern Africa," Coulson said. The cave, with a floor of 26 square meters (280 sq ft), was not known to archaeologists until the 1990s.
SLITHERING PYTHON
In San mythology, humankind descended from a python, and ancient streambeds nearby were believed to have been created by a shake slithering around the hills in search of water.
The archaeologists, with Coulson leading a team funded by a Norwegian research program and Tromsoe University and Nick Walker heading a team from the University of Botswana, found stone tools when they dug a pit two meters deep below the snake.
They estimated that the artifacts were 70,000 years old, based on comparisons with carved stones found in other well-dated sites in Botswana.
"In the upper levels there is a distinct change to objects from the Late Stone Age" which began 40,000 years ago, Coulson said. The scientists were working to get more precise dates.
The scientists believe the cave was a purely sacred site because there were no signs of wider habitation -- animal bones, tools or cooking fires -- such as those found in South Africa's Blombos Cave of similar age.
At the back of the Botswanan cave was a well-worn chamber, large enough for a shaman to hide and to speak, perhaps in imitation of a snake.
Coulson said she and Walker had decided the findings were startling enough to publicize them before writing up a report for a scientific journal.
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