Palaeoart in Lope

[trehinp]

Yesterday night a great documentary was aired on BBC Prime on the behaviour of primates. It was a second the first one was aired in 2001 on BBC 2.

<< Footprints In The Forest
Congo has the largest concentration of primates in the world, and the forests are home to all three closest living relatives of humans: chimps, bonobos - pygmy chimps - and gorillas. >>

If this was all, I would have posted it on a different board, but in the documentary, towards the end, beautiful engravings were shown. The style was somewhat similar to some Australian palaeolithic engravings. But that was a quick appreciation since the movie went fast on that subject and that I had not turned on a tape recording...

The most striking point was the comment by the TV speaker "these are the oldest engravings known in Africa, about 400,000 years old".

I was in such a disbelief that I tried to find information on the web.

I got several web sites speaking about Lope but with different dates some in the range of 4,000 to 9,000 years for human occupation:

Paleoenvironments of the late Pleistocene and Holocene in the Lope reserve (Gabon); Approach by geomorphologic, sedimentologic, phytologic, geochimic, and anthropogenic indicators of the environments recording the Lope depression
Peyrot B.; Oslisly R.; Abdessadok S.; Fontugne M.; Hatte C.; White L.
L'Anthropologie, April 2003, vol. 107, iss. 2, pp. 291-307(17)
Elsevier Science
<< Abstract
Au Gabon, dans la moyenne vallée de l’Ogooué, la dépression de la Lopé constitue un milieu original dans une aire géographique dominée par la forêt. Elle se caractérise par des paysages de savane, une anomalie climatique à déficit hydrique sensible et une morphogenèse marquée par une vigoureuse érosion. Des analyses sédimentologiques soutenues par des dates radiocarbones C14 sur des niveaux archéologiques, des données isotopiques 13C semblent indiquer une certaine pérennité de conditions défavorables à la forestation de ce milieu, où l’homme, d’une manière nette, ca.9000 BP, mais déjà auparavant, a largement contribué à une anthropisation du paysage.

Within the middle Ogooué valley (Gabon), the Lope depression appears as a very particular area with savannas landscape surrounded by rain forest. Such a pattern results from the low annual rainfall and also extensive surface erosion. Several sedimentologic analyses, radiocarbon dates on archaeological levels, 13C isotopic data of residual organic matter led us to suggest too bad conditions for a forest extension and think that savannas ecosystem has probably always existed in this region during the late Pleistocene and Holocene times and has been seriously influenced by human destabilizations since 9000 years BP and probably for long times before. >>

CLICK HERE FOR URL

A beautiful one with great pictures but no dates:
CLICK HERE FOR URL


And one confirming the  400,000 years I heard on TV...

<< Landscapes witness the past :
The oldest signs of human presence in forested Central Africa, dating from 400,000 years ago, have been found near the Lopé. The rock engravings of the Lopé are among the oldest in Central Africa. The magnificent Lopé landscapes were made famous by de Brazza.>>
CLICK HERE FOR URL

I hope that the specialists of African rock art on this list will help me on this one.

If this is a valid datation, it would dwarf Blombos discovery by several hundred thousand years... Since this was aired a couple of years ago I assume that there must have been some reaction about that astonishing datation since...

Paul

[trehinp]

I've been "digging the web" some more information on this subject of Lope rock engravings.

I've found a couple of references that may give some clues on this apparently extraordinarily ancient rock engraving art :

<< The [Lope] region supports a mosaic of forests, savannas and mountains that contain gorillas, elephants, mandrills, chimpanzees and a wealth of other species, some found nowhere else on Earth. It also contains archaeological remains without parallel in all of Central Africa, including stone tools dating back 350,000 years and an astonishing collection of over 2,000 rock engravings. >>
CLICK HERE FOR URL

<< Lopé wildlife reserve
      Description
The Lopé reserve stretches over an area of 5,360 km2 in central Gabon. Its boundaries are marked by the Ogooué river to the north - site of the historic "gates of the Okanda" - the Offoué river to the east and the Mingoué river to the west. The altitude varies from around 120 m near the Ogooué, rising to over 600 m in the south. The Chaillu massif, characterised by rugged terrain and a dense network of watercourses, bisects the reserve from north to south, from Mt Brazza to Mt Iboundji.
Dense evergreen rainforest covers most of the reserve, although in the north a savanna/gallery forest mosaic bears witness a cool arid phase that the area experienced between 20,000 and 12,000 years ago at the time of the last great glaciation. The reserve is home to a variety of wildlife, including most of the large mammals species typical of the central african rainforests, and especially large numbers of forest elephants. The variety of habitats has also produced an exceptional number of plant species: more than 1,500 have been recorded so far.
The flora and fauna of the reserve are well protected thanks to the region's low human density and the vast tracts of surrounding rainforest.
At several sites in and around the reserve stone tools, rock engravings and primitive furnaces have been uncovered which bear witness to human occupation stretching back 350 000 years, a cultural heritage unique in Central Africa. >>
CLICK HERE FOR URL

These texts accredit the occupation of the land by  human beings capable of producing stone tools 350,000 years BP, but the text doesn't say if the engravings are of the same period.

In my search on the internet I wasn't able to find a really scientific publication on these engravings.

Frustrating...

Paul

[Daryl Habel]

And one confirming the  400,000 years I heard on TV...

<< Landscapes witness the past :
The oldest signs of human presence in forested Central Africa, dating from 400,000 years ago, have been found near the Lopé. The rock engravings of the Lopé are among the oldest in Central Africa. The magnificent Lopé landscapes were made famous by de Brazza.>>
CLICK HERE FOR URL

I hope that the specialists of African rock art on this list will help me on this one.

If this is a valid datation, it would dwarf Blombos discovery by several hundred thousand years... Since this was aired a couple of years ago I assume that there must have been some reaction about that astonishing datation since...

Paul

Hi Paul,

I've read very quickly through these webpages and I can find none of them which "verify" or imply 400,000 years as the age of the rock engravings.  In the example above, notice that  "human presence" is dated to 400 ka in one sentence.  The rock engravings which are "among the oldest in Central Africa" are referred to in a separate, next, sentence.

This does not mean the rock engravings are 400,000 years old, regardless of the one sentence following immediately upon the other.

Incidently, one of the URLs you posted was very long (about 200 characters), which spread the message widely beyond the screen capability of my computer.  I took the liberty of modifying it (and the others, although they were not a width problem) with a "tiny URL"  change, so that your messages will be more compatable with screen viewing on the Palanth system.  If a URL has more than about 65 characters it should be "tiny URL'd" to prevent this problem.

Hope you don't mind this small modification,

Dar

[trehinp]

This does not mean the rock engravings are 400,000 years old, regardless of the one sentence following immediately upon the other.

Dar

Thanks for having modified the URL, That's perfect. I have to learn how to do it... I admit that I've been a bit lazy on learning the editing interface for this forum...

On the probable actual age of the engravings, I agree with you, the date of land occupation by human beings doesn't say that the engravings were made 400,000 years ago.

The comment by the BBC speaker was however specifically refering to the engravings age (another person I contacted heard the same sentence). It is likely that he was somwhat overdoing it... Which kind of surprises me given the general seriousness of that TV channel.

The texts on the websites were ambiguous. It remains that I have not been able to find a propre academic paper on that subject.

I have sent a message to the author who wrote a paper on Palaeoenvironmental studies (references on my first post) asking him if some of the members of the team had written an article on the engravings.

We will see...

Paul

[Daryl Habel]

Hi Paul,

I doubt if you'll find published documentation of 400,000 year old rock engravings anywhere, but good luck on your search and let us know what you find.

It's easy to modify the URL as I've done with your initial post to begin this thread.  All that is required is to add a bracket and the letters url  followed by an "equal" character to the beginning of the URL, example :

Then you type in CLICK HERE FOR URL (or whatever you wish) and follow this with a bracketed "slash url", example /url surrounded by brackets [].  I can't put the exact bracketed /url in a form that will display in the final appearance of this post, so you'll have to imagine the form as I've described it (but see below).

It is important that there is no open spacing anywhere in the series - all the characters in the modification and original URL must follow immediately upon one another.

Since you can modify your own posts, you can easily go to your original post in this thread and click on your "modify" icon, which will take you to a page where you can scroll down in your message and see exactly what I added to the URL you originally posted in the form I describe above.

Any questions about this can be addressed to me personally by e-mail.  My e-mail address should be available to all members of palanth.

Dar

[trehinp]

Hi Paul,

I doubt if you'll find published documentation of 400,000 year old rock engravings anywhere, but good luck on your search and let us know what you find.

Dar

Dar,

I agree with you, it is most unlikely that the engravings be 400,000 years old. What I am looking for is a scientific paper providing specific dates for these engravings.

From the few pictures that I saw in the BBC movie and the poorly referenced websites I went to visit on Lope engravings, these would probably fit more with the style of some Panaramitee rock art in Australia.

With all the precautions required for dating artefacts by their style, we would be on a period going from the upper palaeolithic to the early neolithic.

It is quite possible that no article was published so far on the Lope engravings. Given the number of recent discoveries in this domain, researchers have more than enough matter for publications.

But if there was just one it would be just great...

Paul
ps: thanks for the tips on editing posts to the list