A team of researchers just released a study that claims the tiny Stone Age handprints that were found stenciled inside an Egyptian cave back in 2002 are most likely lizard prints. Anthropologist Emmanuelle Honoré headed the team that analyzed the tiny prints, which are located at Wadi Sūra II, a rock shelter in the Western Desert of Egypt that is also known as "the cave of beasts" due to the numerous creatures depicted in the artwork on its walls.
The cave is lined with mysterious painting and markings, including human hands that are at least 6,000 years old, and they seem to have been created before animal domestication. Among the artwork, researchers discovered 13 small handprints originally thought to be human. But when Honoré examined them closer, she doubted their origins, prompting her to create a team to explore the question.
The researchers acquired measurements of newborns and pre-term babies at a French hospital. Newborn infants were between 37 and 41 weeks gestational age, and newborn premature babies were between 26 and 36 weeks gestational age. Afterwards, they compared the measurements to the printings, revealing that they were definitely not human.
After realizing that the prints were not human, the team compared them to monkey and lizard measurements, ultimately revealing that they had likely stemmed from lizards.
"The most compelling comparisons are found among reptiles," Honoré said, although crocodiles are also viable candidates.
Despite the solid evidence so far, she told News.com.au that the results are not conclusive.
"We are not sure if we will get a definitive answer, but our first results are very convincing," she said.
Why lizards? The team believes that lizards may have been an important religious or cultural symbol, leading the ancient humans to integrate their prints into their paintings and artwork, although this is just speculation as of now.
"We have a modern conception that nature is something that humans are separate from," Honoré said. "But in this huge collection of images we can detect that humans are just part of a bigger natural world. It's very challenging for us as researchers to interpret these paintings since we have a culture that's totally different [from the one that created it]."
The findings were published in the Feb. 21 issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science.
