Tracking in Caves is an international archaeology project focusing on reading and understanding human tracks in archaeological contexts. The project combines Western scientific approaches with the indigenous knowledge of present-day trackers from hunter-gatherer societies.
Tracking in Caves was organized as a joint project by the African Archaeology (at the Institute of Prehistoric Archaeology, University of Cologne), [1] the Neanderthal Museum, the Heinrich-Barth-Institute, the Nyae Nyae Conservancy, the Kalahari Peoples Fund and the Association Louis Bégouën. Financial support came from the German Research Foundation Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft .
The numerous human footprints still preserved in some rock art caves in southern France were the starting point of the project. These tracks date back to the last Ice Age and originated around 17,000 years ago. In contrast to the rock art, they have so far only been sparsely studied and with purely morphometric, "surveying" approaches. In order to get a deeper understanding of these very individual human traces, two researchers, Tilman Lenssen-Erz (University of Cologne, African Archaeology), [2] and Andreas Pastoors (Neanderthal Museum, Mettmann), [3] invited African trackers to support them. Together with /Ui /Kxunta, /Ui G/aqo De!u and Tsamkxao Ciqae, three highly specialized trackers of the Ju/'hoansi San in Namibia, they investigated various caves in the French Pyrenees in the summer of 2013, including Niaux, Pech-Merle, Fontanet and Tuc d'Audoubert. [4] In all the track fields that were investigated the three San experts were able to determine the age, sex, gait and occasional peculiarities (load, slipping, etc.) of most people who had moved there. [5] Concluding statements on the prehistoric footprints were made after intensive discussion in the consensus of all three trackers. These conversations were recorded for further evaluation. The project was also accompanied by a film team and the resulting 90 minute TV documentary was broadcast on Arte TV on September 6, 2014. [6] In addition to this documentary the project reached a far ranging public also in the following years in particular through media reports in newspapers and journals. [7]
In 2014, with the support of AICON 3D Systems, the footprint field in Pech-Merle was scanned, which had been examined by the trackers the year before. [8]
In 2015, the core research team travelled back to Namibia, funded by the Andrea von Braun Stiftung. There the English dubbed version of the TV documentary was screened at the communities of the participant San trackers at various locations in Namibia and Botswana. On these occasions the three trackers took over the entire presentation (introduction, explanations and subsequent discussion) of the events. In addition to the "homecoming" of the results, an important element of these movie nights was the conveyance of the importance of the art of tracking based on the encyclopaedic ecological knowledge of the communities.
In order to bring together the very diverse approaches existing worldwide in the field of tracking and in scientific research on old tracks, an international conference is scheduled for Cologne and Mettmann (Neanderthal Museum) in May 2017. It allows an intensive exchange between scientists and trackers from different parts of the world, in order to bring together the wide and most diverse knowledge about prehistoric tracks and their interpretation. A wide range of indigenous knowledge is to be articulated through trackers from such diverse environments as arid tropical zones, rainforest and Arctic tundra.
The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic, also called the Old Stone Age, is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone tools, and which represents almost the entire period of human prehistoric technology. It extends from the earliest known use of stone tools by hominins, c. 3.3 million years ago, to the end of the Pleistocene, c. 11,650 cal BP.
In archaeology, cave paintings are a type of parietal art, found on the wall or ceilings of caves. The term usually implies prehistoric origin. These paintings were often created by Homo sapiens, but also Denisovans and Neanderthals; other species in the same Homo genus. Discussion around prehistoric art is important in understanding the history of the Homo sapiens species and how we have come to have unique abstract thoughts. Some point to these prehistoric paintings as possible examples of creativity, spirituality, and sentimental thinking in prehistoric humans.
In archaeology, a denticulate tool is a stone tool containing one or more edges that are worked into multiple notched shapes, much like the toothed edge of a saw. Such tools have been used as saws for woodworking, processing meat and hides, craft activities and for agricultural purposes. Denticulate tools were used by many different groups worldwide and have been found at a number of notable archaeological sites. They can be made from a number of different lithic materials, but a large number of denticulate tools are made from flint.
The Mousterian is an archaeological industry of stone tools, associated primarily with the Neanderthals in Europe, and to the earliest anatomically modern humans in North Africa and West Asia. The Mousterian largely defines the latter part of the Middle Paleolithic, the middle of the West Eurasian Old Stone Age. It lasted roughly from 160,000 to 40,000 BP. If its predecessor, known as Levallois or Levallois-Mousterian, is included, the range is extended to as early as c. 300,000–200,000 BP. The main following period is the Aurignacian of Homo sapiens.
The Upper Paleolithic is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago, according to some theories coinciding with the appearance of behavioral modernity in early modern humans, until the advent of the Neolithic Revolution and agriculture.
The Altamura Man is a fossil of the genus Homo discovered in 1993 in a karst sinkhole in the Lamalunga Cave near the city of Altamura, Italy. Remarkably well preserved but covered in a thick layer of calcite taking the shape of cave popcorn the find was left in situ in order to avoid damage. Research during the following twenty years was based mainly on the documented on-site observations. Consequently, experts remained reluctant to agree on a conclusive age nor was there consensus on the species it belonged to.
Animal studies is a recently recognised field in which animals are studied in a variety of cross-disciplinary ways. Scholars who engage in animal studies may be formally trained in a number of diverse fields, including art history, anthropology, biology, film studies, geography, history, psychology, literary studies, museology, philosophy, communication, and sociology. They engage with questions about notions of "animality," "animalization," or "becoming animal," to understand human-made representations of and cultural ideas about "the animal" and what it is to be human by employing various theoretical perspectives. Using these perspectives, those who engage in animal studies seek to understand both human-animal relations now and in the past as defined by our knowledge of them. Because the field is still developing, scholars and others have some freedom to define their own criteria about what issues may structure the field.
The Cave of the Trois-Frères is a cave in southwestern France famous for its cave paintings. It is located in Montesquieu-Avantès, in the Ariège département. The cave is named for three brothers, Max, Jacques, and Louis Begouën, who, along with their father Comte Henri Begouën, discovered it in 1914. The drawings of the cave were made famous in the publications of the Abbé Henri Breuil. The cave art appears to date to approximately 13,000 BC.
Pech Merle is a cave which opens onto a hillside at Cabrerets in the Lot département of the Occitania region in France, about 32 km by road east of Cahors. It is one of the few prehistoric cave painting sites in France that remain open to the general public. Extending over 2 kilometres over two levels, of which only 1,200 m (3,900 ft) are open to the public, are caverns, wells and sloping tunnels, the walls of which are painted with dramatic murals dating from the Gravettian culture. Some of the paintings and engravings, however, may date from the later Magdalenian era.
Peștera cu Oase is a system of 12 karstic galleries and chambers located near the city Anina, in the Caraș-Severin county, southwestern Romania, where some of the oldest European early modern human (EEMH) remains, between 42,000 and 37,000 years old, have been found.
James David Lewis-Williams is a South African archaeologist. He is best known for his research on southern African San (Bushmen) rock art. He is the founder and previous director of the Rock Art Research Institute and is currently professor emeritus of cognitive archaeology at the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS).
The art of the Upper Paleolithic represents the oldest form of prehistoric art. Figurative art is present in Europe and Southeast Asia, beginning between about 40,000 to 35,000 years ago. Non-figurative cave paintings, consisting of hand stencils and simple geometric shapes, are somewhat older, at least 40,000 years old, and possibly as old as 64,000 years. This latter estimate is due to a controversial 2018 study based on uranium-thorium dating, which would imply Neanderthal authorship and qualify as art of the Middle Paleolithic.
The Denisovans or Denisova hominins(di-NEE-sə-və) are an extinct species or subspecies of archaic human that ranged across Asia during the Lower and Middle Paleolithic. Denisovans are known from few physical remains; consequently, most of what is known about them comes from DNA evidence. No formal species name has been established pending more complete fossil material.
Neanderthals, also written as Neandertals, are an extinct species or subspecies of archaic humans who lived in Eurasia until about 40,000 years ago. The type specimen, Neanderthal 1, was found in 1856 in the Neander Valley in present-day Germany.
Almost everything about Neanderthal behaviour remains controversial. From their physiology, Neanderthals are presumed to have been omnivores, but animal protein formed the majority of their dietary protein, showing them to have been carnivorous apex predators and not scavengers. Although very little is known of their social organization, it appears patrilines would make up the nucleus of the tribe, and women would seek out partners in neighbouring tribes once reaching adolescence, presumably to avoid inbreeding. The men would pass knowledge and customs down from fathers to sons. An analysis based on finger-length ratios suggests that Neanderthals were more sexually competitive and promiscuous than modern-day humans.
Tautavel Man refers to the archaic humans which—from approximately 550,000 to 400,000 years ago—inhabited the Caune de l’Arago, a limestone cave in Tautavel, France. They are generally grouped as part of a long and highly variable lineage of transitional morphs which inhabited the Middle Pleistocene of Europe, and would eventually evolve into the Neanderthals. They have been variably assigned to either H. (s.?) heidelbergensis, or as a European subspecies of H. erectus as H. e. tautavelensis. The skull is reconstructed based on the specimens Arago 21 and 47, and it is, to a degree, more characteristic of what might be considered a typical H. erectus morphology than a typical H. heidelbergensis morphology. The brain capacity is 1,166 cc. They seem to have had an overall robust skeleton. Average height may have been 166 cm.
The Neanderthals in Gibraltar were among the first to be discovered by modern scientists and have been among the most well studied of their species according to a number of extinction studies which emphasize regional differences, usually claiming the Iberian Peninsula partially acted as a “refuge” for the shrinking Neanderthal populations and the Gibraltar population of Neanderthals as having been one of many dwindling populations of archaic human populations, existing just until around 42,000 years ago. Many other Neanderthal populations went extinct around the same time.
The Apollo 11 Cave is an archeological site in the ǁKaras Region of south-western Namibia, approximately 250 km (160 mi) southwest of Keetmanshoop. The name given to the surrounding area and presumably the cave by the Nama people was "Goachanas". However, the cave was given its name by German archaeologist Wolfgang Erich Wendt in reference to Apollo 11's then recent return to Earth.
The La Garma cave complex is a parietal art-bearing paleoanthropological cave system in Cantabria, Spain. It is located just north of the village of Omoño, part of the municipality of Ribamontán al Monte. The cave complex is noted for one of the best preserved floors from the Paleolithic containing more than 4,000 fossils and more than 500 graphical units. It is part of the Cave of Altamira and Paleolithic Cave Art of Northern Spain World Heritage Site.
Marco Peresani is an Italian prehistoric archaeologist, anthropologist, university professor and scientific communicator.