The rock art depiction known as the Horned Serpent, situated within La Belle France in South Africa’s Free State province, was crafted by the San people no less than two centuries ago. This artwork portrays, among numerous other motifs, a creature possessing tusks and a cranial structure reminiscent of a dicynodont, whose fossilized remains are both plentiful and prominent in the Karoo Basin of South Africa. Furthermore, this imagery seems to correlate with a local San folklore concerning formidable, now-extinct fauna that once inhabited southern Africa. This connection proposes the existence of a San geomyth centered around dicynodonts.
Interpretation of the tusked animal of the Horned Serpent panel and its dicynodont-like traits. Image credit: J. Benoit, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0309908.
The Horned Serpent panel is essentially a segment of rock canvas adorned with artistic representations of fauna and other cultural symbols attributed to the San population of South Africa, with its creation estimated to have occurred between 1821 and 1835.
Within this collection of painted figures is an elongated animal exhibiting downward-pointing tusks, an anatomical feature that does not align with any contemporary species native to the region.
“Given that the San people are recognized for incorporating diverse elements from their environment into their artistic expressions, including fossilized remains, it is plausible that the tusked creature was inspired by an extinct animal lineage,” stated Julien Benoit, a researcher affiliated with the University of the Witwatersrand.
The Karoo Basin in South Africa is renowned for its rich deposits of well-preserved fossils, including those of tusked creatures known as dicynodonts, which are frequently unearthed from the earth.
Dr. Benoit undertook a re-examination of the Horned Serpent panel and concluded that the representation of the tusked creature bears a resemblance to dicynodont fossils. This interpretation is further bolstered by San oral traditions detailing colossal animals that once traversed the landscape but have since vanished.
Should the depicted tusked figure indeed be an artistic rendition of a dicynodont – a species that became extinct prior to the emergence of dinosaurs and had been long extinct by the time humans appeared in Africa – then this artwork would predate the initial scientific classification of these ancient creatures by at least a decade.
There exists archaeological substantiation suggesting that the San people may have collected fossils and integrated them into their artistic works; however, the extent of indigenous paleontological knowledge across Africa remains inadequately understood.
Additional investigations into indigenous cultural legacies could potentially illuminate how human societies globally have assimilated fossils into their cultural frameworks.
“The converging ethnographic, archaeological, and paleontological data lend support to the hypothesis that the Horned Serpent panel potentially portrays a dicynodont,” Dr. Benoit commented.
“This assertion is substantiated by: (i) the downward orientation of the tusks on the tusked animal from La Belle France, which is inconsistent with any extant African animals but accurately reflects the tusks of dicynodonts; (ii) the prevalence of dicynodont fossil finds in the locality; and (iii) the local San belief in a massively scaled, long-extinct creature.”
“If correct, this would indicate that the San people may have: (i) unearthed dicynodont fossils; (ii) conceived of them as species from a distant past; (iii) rendered a depiction of one such creature at La Belle France; and (iv) integrated these findings into their cosmological understanding.”
“In such a scenario, this would serve as evidence that Later Stone Age peoples possessed awareness of dicynodont fossils at least ten years before their formal scientific identification by Western scholars, and furthermore, produced the inaugural known artistic representation of one.”
“Even if one maintains that the Horned Serpent panel holds purely spiritual connotations, this does not negate the possibility that the tusked animal depicted could have been conceived based on a dicynodont fossil.”
These discoveries have been formally presented in the academic journal PLoS ONE.
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J. Benoit. 2024. A possible later Stone Age painting of a dicynodont (Synapsida) from the South African Karoo. PLoS ONE 19 (9): e0309908; doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0309908
