we, humans are SUCH fascinating creatures. i especially love stories of rites and rituals.
"Python Cave" Reveals Oldest Human Ritual, Scientists Suggest
Brian Handwerk for National Geographic News
December 22, 2006
A team of archaeologists has discovered what it says is evidence of humankind's oldest ritual.
Africa's San people may have used a remote cave for ceremonies of python worship as much as 70,000 years ago—30,000 years earlier than the oldest previously known human rites—the team says.
"The level of abstract thinking within the peoples of [this period] and the continuity of their cultural patterns is proving to be astonishing for such an early date," said Sheila Coulson, an archaeologist at Norway's University of Oslo.
Coulson and colleague Nick Walker base their findings on artifacts found in Rhino Cave, a cavern discovered in the 1990s in the remote Tsodilo Hills of Botswana.
The researchers found a large rock inside the cave that they say resembles a giant python, with natural features in the stone forming an eye and a mouth.
The 20-foot-by-6.5-foot (6-meter-by-2-meter) stone was also scarred by several hundred human-made grooves that may have been meant to resemble scales. ........
A large rock in Botswana's Rhino Cave marks the site of humankind's oldest known rituals, according to a team of archaeologists. Africa's San people may have used the remote cave for ceremonies of python worship as much as 70,000 years ago—30,000 years earlier than the oldest previously known human rites—the team says.Photograph courtesy Sheila Coulson
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