Officials from the Libyan Tourist Police and Antiquities Protection Agency protecting newly discovered rock art in the Jabal al-Hasawna mountains.

Officials from the Libyan Tourist Police and Antiquities Protection Agency are protecting a series of newly discovered rock engravings in the Jabal al-Hasawna mountains. The rock art was discovered by a Libyan citizen who notified the offices of the agency in Sabha, the nearest city. They are currently under investigation by experts from the Fezzan Antiquities Authority, the Archaeology Department at Sabha University, and the Brak Al-Shati Security Directorate, with a view to determining their historical significance, and how they can best be protected.

Newly discovered rock art in the Jabal al-Hasawna mountains of Libya. Libyan Tourist Police and Antiquities Protection Agency.

The new discoveries include artworks in a number of styles previously described from elsewhere in the Sahara, including art attributed to the Buffalo or Large Wild Fauna Period (so called because the art often features Giant Buffalo, Syncerus antiquus, and other extinct African megafauna). This artwork was created between 12 000 and 8000 BC by hunter gatherer populations living in a still green Sahara, and comprises geometric shapes and images of Animals such as Antelope, Aurochs, Buffalo, Fish, Giraffe, Hippopotamus, Ostrich, and Rhinoceros, painted onto wall panels with clay, manganese, iron oxide, and organic dyes. Examples of Buffalo Period rock art are found across Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, and are particularly abundant in the Fezzan Region of southwestern Libya, and around Oued Djerat in the northern part of the Tassili N'Ajjer, Algeria.

Also present is art from the Round Head Period, which was produced by Epipalaeolithic and Mesolithic hunter gatherers from about 7550 to about 5050 BC. Round Head art is painted onto or pecked into rock panel surfaces, and depicts Animals such as Antelope and Barbary Sheep alongside stylised Human figures with rounded heads, often engaged in dancing or other ritual activities. The best known examples of Round Head art come from the Tassili Plateau of southern Algeria, over a thousand kilometres to the southwest of the Jabal al-Hasawna, but examples are also known from the Tadrat Akakas of Libya, and the Djado Plateau of Niger. 

Art from the younger Bovidian, or Pastoral Period, has also been reported. This art style first appears around 6000 BC, and persist to about 700 BC (although most dates to between 5200 and 3800 BC), and contains the first examples of Animal-herding (pastoralism), and depicts Human figures with domestic Animals such as Cattle, Sheep, and Goats, as well as wild Animals such as Antelope, Barbary Sheep, Elephant, and Ostrich. Pastoral Period art contains the oldest known examples of domestic scenes, including women and children, in the Sahara, and is thought to have been made by Neolithic pastoralists migrating seasonally with their herds. The first Pastoral Period art was created while the Sahara was still green, while the latest was made in a desert environment. Over the period the wild Animals depicted in this art reflect this changing climate, as do the locations where it was placed, reflecting changing migration routes as the landscape dried. Examples of Pastoral Period art are common in southwestern Libya and the neighbouring Tassili n'Ajjer area of Algeria.

Younger Horse Period art has also been reported in the Jabal al-Hasawna. This style, dated to between 1200 BC and about 1000 AD, depicts people on Horses and in Chariots, and as well as the first people wearing cloths in Saharan rock art. This style is known from the Tassili n'Ajjer area of Algeria.

Camel Period art appears around 1000 BC and continues to the end of the first millennium BC. This style of art depicts the first Camels in the Sahara, but also domestic Animals such as Cattle and Goats. Men in Camel Period art are often armed with swords, spears, and shields. Examples of Camel Period art are known from Libya, Algeria, and Chad.

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A possible prehistoric hunting wall off the Baltic coast of Germany.

The seafloor is shaped by geological, biological, and to a certain extent anthropological forces, yet to a large extent is hidden from Human view. It has for some decades been possible to map larger seafloor structures with ship- borne multibeam echosounder systems, and to explore areas where there were known sites of interest with both submersible vehicles and Human divers. Nevertheless, huge areas of the seafloor remain effectively unexplored, hiding much information about the geology, biology, and even Human history of the planet.

In a paper published in the journal PNAS on 12 February 2024, Jacob Geersen of the Institute  of  Geosciences at Kiel University, and the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde, Marcel Bradtmöller of the Heinrich Schliemann-Institute of Ancient Studies and the Interdisciplinary Faculty, Department WKT at Rostock University, Jens Schneider von Deimling, also of the Institute  of  Geosciences at Kiel University, Peter Feldens, also of the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde, Jens Auer of the Landesamt für Kultur und Denkmalpflege Mecklenburg- Vorpommern, Philipp Held, Arne Lohrberg, and Ruth Supka, again of the  Institute  of  Geosciences at Kiel University,  Jasper Justus Lutz Hoffmann of the Department of Coastal Geology at the Alfred- Wegener- Institute, and the Department of Geosciences, Marine Geology and Seafloor Surveying Group at the University of Malta, Berit Valentin Eriksen of the Schleswig-Holstein State Museums Foundation Schloss Gottorf of the Centre for Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology, Wolfgang Rabbel, again of the Institute of  Geosciences at Kiel University, Hans-Jörg Karlsen, also of the Heinrich Schliemann-Institute of Ancient Studies at Rostock University, Sebastian Krastel, once again of the Institute  of  Geosciences at Kiel University, David Brandt and David Heuskin of the Institute for the Protection of Maritime Infrastructures at the German Aerospace Center, and Harald Lübke, also of the Schleswig-Holstein State Museums Foundation Schloss Gottorf and the Leibniz  Centre  for  Archaeology of the Centre for Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology, describe a linear stone structure at a depth of 21 m, in the Bay of Mecklenburg, about 10 km northwest off Rerik in the Rostock District of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany, which they interpret as a pre-historic, Human-made wall.

The Bay of Mecklenburg was shaped during the Weichselian Glaciation (i.e. the most recent glacial interval), and since the retreat of the ice has been significantly uplifted by isostatic rebound (the weight of the ice pushed the solid lithosphere down into the liquid mantle, and when removed it bobbed up). At the same time, the sea level in the area has been calculated to have risen significantly, as water locked up in glacial ice was released, from about 40 m below its current level to about 20 m below, between 13 300 and 12 700 years before present, and from about 28 m below the current level to about 10 m below between 8570 and 8000 years before the present. Since the water in the Bay of Mecklenburg current maximum depth of 28 m, this implies an extended period between the retreat of the ice and the area being covered by the sea. The seafloor over much of the bay is covered by Holocene mud and sand (sandier towards the shore), overlying a glacial till, which is exposed in places.

The seafloor of the Bay of Mecklenburg has a high density of archaeological sites, many of which were documented by the Sinking Coasts project between 2002 and 2009/ Much of this work concentrated on the period after the Littorina Transgression (i.e. following the first establishment of a sea within the Baltic Basin), with 23 sites discovered which date to between 8500 and 5000 years ago, which currently lie in waters between two and eleven meters deep. Older sites are known from the shores of Scandinavia and the Eastern Baltic, but most of the known older sites in Germany are further to the south, away from the Baltic Coast. The putative wall discovered by Geersen et al. lies at a depth of about 21 m, and presumably therefore predates the Littorina Transgression.

During recent decades, the seafloor of the Bay of Mecklenburg has been extensively explored by hydroacoustic surveys.  In 2021 one of these surveys recorded a linear structure almost a kilometre long and slightly less than a metre in height. This structure, which Greersen et al. refer to as the Blinkerwall, is located on the southern, landward, side of a northeast–southwest trending bathymetric ridge. At its northeast end, the structure abuts a conical mound which rises to 13.5 m below sealevel. The Blinkerwall runs for 971 m, sinking from a depth of 21 m at the eastern end, to 21.5 m in the west. 

The study area in the Baltic Sea. (A) Overview map of the Western Baltic Sea. (B) Detailed structure of the Bay of Mecklenburg including the location of the Blinkerwall. Greersen et al. (2024).

The majority of the Blinkerwall is less than a metre high, and visits by divers and autonomous underwater vehicles have shown that it is made of a succession of individual stones. 1673 individual stones were identified, with a combined volume of 52.75 m³, and a calculated combined mass of 142 473 kg (based upon the assumption that the average density of the rocks is equivalent to that of granite). Most of the stones have calculated masses below 100 kg, but 288 were identified as likely to be heavier, with the largest, towards the centre of the wall, having a calculated weight of 11 389 kg. This rock marks a turn in the direction of the wall, which runs east-west  to the west of this rock, and southwest-northeast to the east. The next three largest rocks, with masses of 2083 kg, 2506 kg, and 5792 kg are all located towards the western end of the wall, with the largest one marking the end of the wall. The ten heaviest stones are all associated with slight changes in the direction of the wall.

Morphology of the southwest–northeast trending ridge that hosts the Blinkerwall and the adjacent mound. (A) Multibeam bathymetry collected with RV ALKOR (2021) and FK Littorina (2023). (B) Multibeam bathymetry collected with an autonomous underwater vehicle. (C) Side- scan image (bright colors equal high backscatter) collected with RV Elisabeth Mann Borgese in 2020. White arrows point at the Blinkerwall. Greersen et al. (2024)

The heights of the rocks were measured with several different techniques, producing consistent results, which increased Greerson et al.'s confidence in their findings. There are almost no stones of similar size within 10 m on the northward side of the wall, particularly towards its western extent, and the density of such stones is depleted compared to the rest of the bay further north than this, not reaching typical levels till about 50 m north of the wall. No stones of similar size could be found south of the wall.

Bathymetric scans show that the wall runs along a bathymetric ridge, with sedimentary basins to the north and south. Within the basin to the south there are two sedimentary units, the lower of which is 3,5 m thick and has an erosional upper surface, while the upper unit is about 2.5 m thick. A sediment core sunk in this area recorded an upper layer 1.8 m thick, which was comprised of Holocene mad, over a thin peat layer, then an eroded surface from which some wood fragments were recorded. The wood was dated to 10 578 years before the present, leading Greersen et al. to suggest that the eroded layer probably corresponds in time to the Yoldia to early Ancylus Lake lowstand, about 11 700 years ago; similar unconformities have been recorded at this time from other locations in the region. Another piece of wood, recovered from the upper layer of sediment, was dated to 9886 years before the present. Based upon this, Greerson refer to the upper layer as Holocene sediments and the lower layer as Baltic Ice Lake sediments.

North- south- oriented sediment echosounder profile across the east–west trending ridge that hosts the Blinkerwall and the sedimentary basin to the south. The erosional unconformity of the Yoldia to early Ancylus Lake lowstand land surface is located at 1 to 3 m depth in the basin and crops out slightly south of the Blinkerwall. The peat layer (dated to 10 662 to 10 494 years before present) that hindered a deeper penetration of gravity core is visible as a layer with low reflectivity located above the erosional unconformity. The latter is underlain by the sediments of the Baltic Ice Lake. Greersen et al. (2024).

The eroded layer reaches the surface slightly to the south of the Blinkerwall, with till sediments on the  ridge not covered by Holocene muds. This also occurs at the southern margin of the basin, towards the shore at Rerik and the islands of Wustrow and Poel. The bathymetric results suggest that at the Yoldia to early Ancylus Lake lowstand, if  the Blikerwall already existed, then it would have run along an east-west running promontory, connected to the German mainland to the southeast.  To the south of the wall would have been a 5 km wide basin with a maximum depth of 25 m.

The Blinkerwall is a remarkable  topographic feature, unlike anything else which has previously been detected beneath the Baltic Sea, located upon  reworded  till deposits  associated with the Weichselian  Glaciation. The Weichselian ice retreated from the area about 17 000 years ago, leaving an exposed till deposit, which was covered by floodwaters and then exposed several times before the final development of the Baltic Sea in the early Holocene. The Blinkerwall is currently 21 m below sealevel, but would have been exposed above the surface during the Baltic Ice Lake phase, around 12 800 years ago, and the Yolida Sea phase, about 11 700 years ago, both of which fall within the Younger Dryas interval. The wall would also have been exposed on the surface during the Early Holocene Ancylus Lake regression, about 9500 years ago, before finally being covered by the Baltic Sea during the Littorina trans­gression, between 8600 and 8000 years ago.

The deposition of Holocene muds has led to a thick sediment cover over much of the Baltic seafloor, burying many topographic features. The Blinkerwall lies upslope of a basin now largely infilled with stratified muds. Greersen et al. reason that the lowest sediment layers in the basin predate the Yoldia to early Ancylus Lake lowstand unconformity, and probably therefore date from the time of the Baltic Ice Lake or Baltic Ice Lake II. Exposure and erosion of the till layers would have led to the concentration of rocks upon the surface, although south of the Blinkerwall these are now largely covered by subsequent sediments. However, these processes are likely to have contributed to the presence of at least some of the rocks that make up the 971 m long Blinkerwall.

Autonomous underwater vehicle multibeam data from sections along the Blinkerwall. Greersen et al. (2024).

Stones can be moves and emplaced by natural processes. The largest tsunamis are capable of shifting boulders with diameters of several metres, and depositing them in strewn fields. No tsunami, however, has ever been recorded placing rocks in a neat line along a promotory, and it is difficult to conceive of one ever doing so. 

Glaciers are also capable of moving rocks. The retreat of the Weichselian Ice Sheet left a variety of landforms across northern Europe, which are still largely responsible for the landscapes seen today. These include a variety of moraines, linear structures caused by rocks and till being pushed into place by the movement of glaciers, but these take the form of ridges of unconsolidated debris, including gravels and clays as well as rocks and boulders. 

Eskers are linear structures formed beneath glaciers, from material deposited in streams running beneath the glacier. In the Baltic region eskers with high-stone compositions up to 7 m high and a few hundred metres in length have been recorded, and in other parts of the world, eskers up to 50 m high, 150 m in width, and several tens of kilometres long have been recorded. All eskers, however, are comprises of a mixture of sand, gravel, and rocks, and they do not contain neat linear arrangements of rocks. 

The deposition of material by floating ice has been cited as a cause for beach ridges elsewhere around the Baltic, although these are again generally made up mostly of sand and gravel. Furthermore, a large beach ridge would require a stable coastline over a long period of time, so that the material was always placed in the same position. The Blinkerwall is located at a depth of 21 m, and while beaches at 21 m below sealevel undoubtedly existed during the Younger Dryas, the sealevel is known to have fluctuated significantly over this interval, making it unlikely that a particularly large beach ridge would have built up during this interval.

The most plausible natural cause for the Blinkerwall would be ice thrusting associated with the Baltic  Ice Lake, about 13 000 years ago. This could conceivably have formed a shoreline at -21 m, and occurred at a time when the glacial till was not covered by significant amounts of sediments. However, a wall formed at this time would have had to endure several subsequent emersions in high-energy coastal waters during the subsequent transgressions and regressions of the sea, and it seems unlikely that the Blinkerwall, less than 2 m wide and made mostly of rocks weighing less than 100 kg, would have survived this as intact as it is. Nor is the form of the Blinkerwall consistent with such an origin, as such thrust ridges tend to be several, often tens of, metres wide, and contain significant proportions of sand and gravel, whereas the Blinkerwall is less than 2 m wide, and made entirely of large rocks and boulders.

Taken together, these lines of evidence suggest that it is highly unlikely that the Blinkerwall is a natural phenomenon, and that therefore it was most likely formed by the activity of prehistoric Humans.

The Blinkerwall is located at a depth of 21 m, in a location which would have been covered by the waters of the Baltic for a final time between 8570 and 8000 years ago, giving a minimum possible age for its construction. Preserved wood in the basin to the south of the Blinkerwall has been dated to 9100 years before the present, indicating that this basin must have flooded after that time. This is long before the appearance of agrarian societies in Europe, at a time when the Baltic Basin was known to have been inhabited by hunter gatherer societies living in small bands and forming non-permanent camps. The Blinkerwall is made up of 1385 smaller stones with masses of less than 100 kg, which could conceivably have been moved by small groups of Humans, connecting 288 larger stones, which it is unlikely that Humans of the time would have been able to move with the tools available to them. All of the rocks are emplaced on the southern flank of a ridge made of glacial till, where rocks of this size would have been readily available; the absence of such rocks in the zone to the north of the wall supports the idea that the rocks were sourced from close by and deliberately emplaced, and that most of them were moved downslope to get them into position. It has been estimated that about 1281 people were living in Germany and Poland during the latest glacial interval, in bands of 40-45 people. For a group of this size to construct a stone wall almost a kilometre in length would not be impossible, but the project would have had to have been of considerable benefit to them to have been considered worthwhile.

No similar structures are known from the region. Late Mesolithic communities are known to have made extensive use of coastal resources, including fishing with static wooden weirs. These structures would have been at most a few hundred metres in length, significantly smaller than the Blinkerwall, and are generally emplaced on rivers or on coastal sections with a strong tidal range, so while stone Fish weirs have been recorded in other parts of the world, it is unlikely that this was the intended purpose here. 

Groins for sea defence purposes have been recorded in the Neolithic of the Middle East, though the Blinkerwall appears too small to have served such a purpose. Nor is it likely to have formed part of an artificial harbour, since it predates the documented use of boats in the region significantly, making it likely that even if boats did exist, they would have been small structures easily dragged up a beach to safety. Furthermore, both a groin and an harbour wall are structures likely to be built only by people with a permanent claim to the land, which is contrary to our understanding of roaming Mesolithic bands of hunter gatherers, Rather, for such a structure to have purpose, the people who made it would have needed to have been able to leave it unattended for much of the year without any maintenance, and to have been confident it would have been ready to use at any time when they did return.

The purpose that Greersen et al. suggest for the wall is as a piece of hunting architecture, used to control the movements of herds of Ungulates as they were driven by hunters. While we do not today associate hunter gatherer societies with large architectural projects, recent studies in the Middle East, where an arid climate tends to favour preservation of such structres, have shown the presence of numerous long stone walls, and evidence of such stuctures has also been uncovered in western Greenland and the Great Lakes Region of North America. These structures vary in form, and often include features such as multiple drive lanes, enclosures for trapping Animals, and blinds where hunters could have hidden. In the Middle East these walls are presumed to have been used to hunt Gazelles or other Antelopes, and while such Animals would not have been present in the Baltic region, such a wall would have been equally effective in controlling the movements of Bison or Reindeer.

The dating of large stone walls has proven problematic, beyond stating that they are clearly prehistoric, although walls apparently used for hunting Reindeer and now submerged by changes in sea-and/or-lake level, such as the Blinkerwall and the 'Drop 45' structure on the Alpena-Amberley Ridge beneath Lake Huron in North America can be presumed to date from the Late Glacial/Early Holocene transition. The Blinkerwall and 'Drop 45' structures share a number of features, including a location near the top of a slope, but below the crest, a subparallel trending marsh/lakeshore on one side, construction on bedrock, and solid and continuous construction. The 'Drop 45' site is also presumed to be a drive lane used in the hunting of Ungulates, something which in this case has been supported by the recovery of numerous stone tools associated with hunting by divers, which were concentrated at points interpreted as hunting blinds. It is possible that the large erratic blocks which served as part of the Blinkerwall could also have served as hunting blinds, giving a potential target for future archaeological surveys.

In other ways, however, 'Drop 45' differs significantly from the Blinkerwall, comprising two stone lines which narrow towards a funnel through which the hunted Animals were presumably driven, and covering a total area of only about 30 m by 100 m. It is possible that another line of stones is present to the south of the Blinkerwall, which has now been covered by Holocene mud, or it is possible that the second limb of the trap was formed by the former lake in the basin to the south of the wall. Reindeer will enter water, and are fairly good swimmers, but are much slower in water than they are on land, which would make it easy to target them from nearby boats.

Most ancient drive lane traps are believed to have been placed on the migration routes of Ungulates, effectively allowing a herd to be targeted twice a year, and significantly increasing the yield of meat achieved in those hunts. The 'Drop 45' site is thought to have been associated with Caribou, and the most likely candidate for the target of the Blinkerwall would have been Eurasian Reindeer (which are the same species). Reindeer are known to have been targeted as a prey species since at least the Middle Palaeolithic, and would certainly have been a familiar prey species to any hunting population living in the Baltic region. Such hunters would have been familiar with the behaviour of Reindeer, and able to predict how they would react to a structure like the Blinkerwall. Furthermore, the Reindeer population of the period is thought to have migrated east-to-west, making a location on am east-west oriented ridge an ideal location for such a trap.

As the Holocene progressed, the area would have become more forested, changing the seasonal climatic patterns, and causing the Reindeer herds to shift their migrations northward. By around 9800 years ago, they would have been absent from the region, which implies that if the Blinkerwall was used for hunting Reindeer, then it is probably Pre-Boreal in origin, making it one of the oldest known hunting structures in the world, and possibly the oldest known megastructure in Europe. However, direct dating of such structures is notoriously difficult, as datable remains such as carcasses were generally cleared away by the site's users. The oldest known structure for which a direct date exists is a desert kite in Jordan, which has been dated to 10 000 years before the present. The Blinkerwall is potentially older than this structure, though direct dating of it is likely to be extremely problematic.

3D model of a section of the Blinkerwall adjacent to the large boulder at the western end of the wall. The scale bar at the Top- Right edge of the image is 50 cm. Philipp Hoy & Jens Auer in Greersen et al. (2024).

Based upon analysis of sedimentological, geophysical, and archaeological data, Greersen et al. suggest that the Blinkerwall dates from the End Pleistocene or very earliest Holocene. There is an absence of similar structures from this period in Europe, but that does not indicate that they were not being built, rather it is likely that they have simply not survived the to modern times on the densely populated European continent, or that other surviving structures have not been identified. In offshore environments, the most likely environment for such a structure to survive, the identification of walls is at the limit of capability of hydroacoustic surveys. Furthermore much of landscape which would have been exposed at the end of the Pleistocene has subsequently been covered by Holocene mud, so structures would only be visible if they were located on highgrounds which still remain exposed. There are, nevertheless, a number of areas beneath the Baltic where moraines associated with the Weichselian Glaciation are known to still be exposed, at depths of 20 m or more, providing locations which could provide further insights into Late Glacial and Mesolithic cultures during phases of rapid advance of the Baltic Sea.

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Evidence for Late Pleistocene net-hunting in southern Somalia.

Humans have been farming for about 12 000 years, a period which was preceded by hundreds of thousands of years of living a hunter/gatherer existence. It is logical to assume, therefore, that the social networking skills which made modern civilization possible developed largely before the event of farming. The advent of specialist hunting techniques such as net-hunting, which require advanced planning and co-operation between groups of hunters, and which can produce large amounts of meat in single events, are thought to have been a significant step in the development of Human social networks, connected to the emergence of social hierarchies and concepts of land ownership.

The lifestyle of Homo sapiens in East Africa from our emergence as a species onwards has been heavily investigated for decades, although curiously, despite the importance placed on the role of hunting as a driver of Human evolution by many early archaeologists, the techniques used to hunt have been relatively neglected, with an assumption that big game hunting was the dominant behaviour. Recent studies, however, have suggested that while big game hunting was important on the grassy plains of East Africa, in the coastal forests of the region, remote capture devices, such as snares, traps, or nets, used to target small Animals have been important for at least 125 000 years.

Given that such methods are thought to be closely associated with the emergence of social networks, the nature these hunting practices, and the ways in which they evolved over time, must be seen as an important part of the Human story. Examination of Later Stone Age sites in the semi-arid environment of southern Somalia, have shown that nets were being used to intensively hunt Dwarf Antelopes between about 26 000 and about 6000 years ago.

In a paper published in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences on 2 December 2023, Mica Jones of the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford, presents the results of a study of Animal bones from the Late Pleistocene Guli Waabayo rock shelter in the Buur Heybe inselberg cluster, and the implications of this for the use of net-hunting by the Later Stone Age hunter/gatherers of the area.

Inselbergs are hills made from hard volcanic rock, which persists when other deposits are eroded away, typically forming elongate structures. In Somalia such structures are known as 'buurs', and in the inter-riverine region of southern Somalia, where rainfall is typically between 400 mm and 600 mm per year, clusters of these buurs can help to trap nutrient-rich soils and collect rainwater in pools and ponds, providing favourable habitats for a range of Plants and small Animals.

A previous study of the Rife Range Site at Buur Hakaba found that Later Stone Age hunters there specialised in hunting Dwarf Antelope, probably with nets, leading to the development of a more sedentary lifestyle and the holding of territories in the Early-to-Middle Holocene, a period of increased rainfall. However, the small number of remains recovered from this site, combined with an absence of dates, limits the usefulness of this study. The Guli Waabayo rock shelter at Buur Heybe, about 25 km to the northeast of Buur Hakaba, has yielded a much more extensive collection of Animal remains, combined with a series of robust dates, covering a period of 20 000 years, potentially enabling a good test site for hunting practices in the region before the start of the Holocene.

Map of inter-riverine southern Somalia with locations of the Buur Heybe and Buur Hakaba inselberg clusters. Jones (2023).

More than a hundred rock shelters and other archaeological sites have been identified in the inter-riverine region of southern Somalia since the 1930s. However, only three of these sites have been subject to any organised excavation work. The Gogoshiis Qabe site was excavated in the 1940s by the Italian archaeologist Paolo Graziosi. In the 1950s British archaeologist John Desmond Clark investigated the Guli Waabayo and Rife Range sites, establishing that there was a degree of cultural continuity between the two. Following Clark's activities, no further organised archaeological work was carried out in the region until the 1980s, when Steven Brandt and the Buur Ecological and Archaeological Project returned and carried out further excavations at all three sites. These excavations were brought to an abrupt halt with the onset of the Somali Civil War in 1989, although, with the consent of the Somali Academy of the Arts and Sciences, much of the excavated material was exported to the US, where it has been held in the collections of several institutions. 

Jones examined the material brought back from Guli Waabayo to establish the identity of the small Antelope bones present; these had previously all been assigned to the genus Madoqua (Dik Diks), but this is not the only genus of small Antelopes in the Horn of Africa, and, since different Antelope have different ecologies, the identity of these bones has implications for the techniques which would have been effective when hunting them. Next Jones looked at the overall assemblage, and calculated the proportion of remains coming from each type of small Mammal, and then the proportion of each age-set within the overall sample.

Studying hunting methods used to on large prey can be achieved by looking at the weapons involved, or the use and modification of the landscape by the hunters, such as cliff jumps or kite structures. However, the study of how small game is hunted requires less direct approach, as such Animals are often captured with snares, nets, or traps made from perishable materials such as plant fibres, wood, or leather. In order to address this Zooarchaeologists have developed methods of analysing the ways in which people in the past hunted small game, based upon analysis of the variety of remains.

The composition of collections of small Animal remains will vary depending on the hunting method used. Studies conducted in places where net-drives (driving Animals into net traps) are still used, such as the Congo Basin, Australia, and the southwestern United States, has shown that this method will tend to target only one or two species, but will trap almost all members of those species within the target area. This method is most useful for targeting small Animals in forested, bushy or rocky habitats. Pursuit hunting and setting of individual traps such as snares both tend to produce a more diverse range of prey, which will be reflected in the bone assemblage left behind. 

Furthermore, while net hunting captures individuals of all ages, both snare hunting and persuit hunting tend to produce a high proportion of remains from a single age group, since the young of small Animals generally lack the weight to trigger snares designed for adult Animals, and Humans hunting with bows or clubs will generally take a higher proportion of slower, juvenile Animals.

The excavations carried out at Guli Waabayo comprised 11 one metre by one metre pits, each excavated to a depth of 2.5 m. These uncovered a sequence of three Middle Stone Age/Later Stone Age technologies, although, the lower part of the exposed sequence could not be dated due to an absence of Animal remains. Dates were obtained from Ostrich shell fragments for the upper 1.5 m of the sequence, demonstrating at least sporadic occupation of the shelter from 26 000 to 6000 years ago. Two distinct Later Stone Age technologies could be seen within the sequence, the Eibian, which was used during the arid Marine Isotope Stage 2 from about 29 000 to about 14 500 years ago, and the Bardaale, used in the wetter African Humid Period from about 14 500 to about 6000 years ago.

Analysis of the faunal remains found at Guli Waabayo showed that Later Stone Age hunters across the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary targeted a diverse range of game, including large and small Mammals, Birds, Reptiles, and Fish, although they had a clear preference for Mammals massing less than 20 kg. This preference for small Mammals seems to have increased slightly in the African Humid Period, although this change in climate appears to have made relatively little difference to the site's occupants, probably because the African Humid Period was a lot less pronounced in southern Somalia than in other areas.

Of the bones present at Guli Waabayo, 3104 could be identified as coming from small Mammals, with 2111 identifiable to a lower taxonomic level. Of these 1263 have previously been identified as coming from Dwarf Antelope, with the assumption that they originated from Dik Dik. However, this assumption was never actually put to the test, and there is another form of Dwarf Antelope present in the Horn of Africa, the Suni, Neotragus moschatus.

Jones selected all of the first phalanges assigned to Dwarf Antelopes in the Guli Waabayo collection, and compared them to first phalanges from Dik Dik and Suni in the collection of the Field Museum in Chicago. The size ranges of the first phalanges did not overlap, and all of the specimens from the Guli Waabayo collection conformed with the Dik Dik form, although it was not possible to tell which species of Dik Dik they belonged to.

The Dik Dik genus, Madoqua, first appears in the fossil record in the Miocene. There are four living species within the genus, Madoqua guentheri, Madoqua saltiana, and Madoqua piacentinii are endemic to the Horn of Africa, while the fourth, Madoqua kirkii is found from Somalia south to Tanzania and eastern Uganda, as well as on the west coast of Southern Africa in Namibia and Angola. All species favour rocky environments with low thicket vegetation, with the inselbergs of southern Somalia providing an excellent environment, that today supports a large population of Dik Dik, which live in monogamous pairs, with each pair occupying and defending a territory with an area of about 1 km².

A Salt's Dik Dik, Madoqua saltiana, in the wild. David Castor/Wikimedia Commons.

Dik Dik are not widely hunted in Africa today, although in places they are targeted for their meat and skins, which are used to make gloves and cloaks. The Hadza people of northern Tanzania occasionally hunt Dik Dik with bows and arrows, while the Mukogodo people, who lived in the area around Mount Kenya in the eighteenth century are believed to have hunted Dik Dik both with snares and by stalking. 

Modern Somali pastoralists have been recorded to chase down Dik Dik, which seems surprising, given that these Dwarf Antelopes can reach speeds of about 42 km per hour, but is possible because they are so reluctant to leave their territories that they will often run around the perimeter when chased, allowing much slower Human pursuers to keep them in sight until they become exhausted and are easily captured. In the 1940s and 1950s several agropastoralist groups in Somalia were reported to capture Dik Dik in net hunts.

During these hunts, the men used nets about 5 m in length, strung between 2 m long poles. These nets would be used to create semi-circular traps, into which Dik Dik could be driven by men and Dogs, before being dispatched with bows and arrows, a methodology which could conceivably have been used by Later Stone Age hunters in the same region.

Having established the Small Antelope remains at Guli Waabayo came from Dik Dik, Jones next sorted the remains into age groups, based upon examination of complete and partial tooth rows, as well as loose lower 3rd molars and 4th premolars. The dental aging of modern Dik Dik has not been extensively studied, but it was still possible to separate the remains into juvenile, older juvenile, adult, and older adults, based upon the relative eruption and wear seen in the teeth. 

Madoqua mandibles of different age sets from Guli Waabayo. Jones (2023).

Dik Dik remains dominated the faunal assemblage at Guli Waabayo in both Marine Isotope Stage 2 and the African Humid Period. Roughly twice as many remains assignable to Madoqua were found in Marine Isotope Stage 2 selection as in the African Humid Period selection, but this was also true of other Animals present, ab probably reflects the fact that Marine Isotope Stage 2 lasted about 14 000 years, while the African Humid Period lasted only about 6000 years. Nevertheless, the proportion of the assemblage made up by Dik Dik bones did increase, from 55.2% in Marine Isotope Stage 2, to 71.9% in the African Humid Period.

Small Mammal frequencies from Guli Waabayo, presented as % (number of identifiable specimens). Abbreviations: MIS 2, marine isotope stage 2; AHP, African humid period; ka. thousand years ago. Jones (2023).

In both intervals, the age-profile of the Dik Dik remained fairly constant, with all age groups present, but adults making up almost half of the assemblage in both cases, while the other three age groups each made up between 13.3% and 21.3% of the assemblage, although Jones notes that the sample size is very small for the African Humid Period, which may mask greater variation than is recorded.

Dik-dik mortality profiles from Guli Waabayo, presented as % (minimum number of individuals). Abbreviations: MIS 2, marine isotope stage 2; AHP, African humid period; ka, thousand years ago. Jones (2023).

There was a relatively high proportion of Carnivore remains in both Marine Isotope Stage 2 (4.4%) and the African Humid Period (5.4%). This could potentially indicate that the site had at times been occupied by Carnivores (for example Hyenas), and that they would have been responsible for some of the other remains present. Signs of such denning behaviour are considered to include juvenile Carnivore bones, gnaw marks on the bones of other Animals. Of 88 identified small Carnivore bones present in the total collection from Guli Waabayo, only three had unfused epiphyses (two from indeterminate Carnivores and one from a small Felid). In addition a mandible was identified with an erupting third molal (a sign that it came from a juvenile Animal), which could be assigned to a Dwarf Mongoose, Helogale sp.. No bones could be attributed to juvenile medium or large Carnivores, such as Hyenas or Lions, and no neonatal Carnivore bones of any type were found. A single Dik Dik bone from Marine Isotope Stage 2 showed signs of gnawing, but this was clearly by a Rodent Three Dik Dik bones from the African Humid Period also showed signs of gnawing, with two of these again clearly having been gnawed by Rodents. Conversely, none of the Dik Dik bones showed signs of butchery with tools, although this would not typically be expected with the bones of an Animal this small. Signs of burning, another clear indicator of a Human predator, were found on 12.3% of the Marine Isotope Stage 2 Dik Dik remains, and 7.8% of the African Humid Period Dik Dik bones.

Jones's investigation confirmed that Later Stone Age hunters had extensively targeted Dik Dik, small territorial Bovids, during both Marine Isotope Stage 2 and the African Humid Period, something in line with previous research at the site. However, unlike previous researchers, Jones did not concentrate on the toral diversity of remains at the site, but specifically upon the most abundant item, the Dik Dik, with a view to understanding the importance of these Antelopes to Later Stone Age hunting communities in the area. The evidence strongly suggests that the people here became specialist hunters of Dik Dik during the arid Late Pleistocene. 

This is different to the pattern observed at the Riffle Range Site, where a specialisation in net-hunting of Dik Dik appears to have developed during the African Humid Period, alongside a more general shift towards a more settled lifestyle and the permanent holding or territory by Later Stone Age groups. At Guli Waabayo the proportion of Dik Dik among the Animal remains increased in the African Humid Period, suggesting that they became a more important resource during this time, but they were clearly already a major prey species in Marine Isotioe Stage 2. This suggests that the change in climate did not provoke a major change in hunting methods or other behaviours at Guli Waabayo. This raises the possibility that the apparent change in behaviour at the Riffle Range Site 12 000 years ago may be actually indicate that the site was only sporadically inhabited prior to this, or simply that earlier remains have not been preserved. An increase in usage of the Riffle Range Site during the Holocene appears to be the more likely scenario, but why that should be is unclear.

The hunters of Guli Waabayo appear to have taken far more Dik Dik than any other Animal, even similar sized small Mammals, such as Hares or Hyraxes. Thus suggests that they had developed a specialised hunting technique which enabled them to reliably capture large numbers of Dik Dik, bur which did not work as readily on other prey. Furthermore, the Dik Dik remains have a distinct age profile, with all age groups present but adults being the most abundant. Based upon studies of modern Dwarf Antelope hunters, the most likely explanation for this is that communal net drives were used to target Dik Dik on a regular basis, but that other hunting methods were also used to catch other prey.

The selection of faunal remains present at Guli Waabayo makes it likely that both snare and pursuit hunting were also practiced, but the large proportion of Dik Dik in the remains cannot be explained by this. Snares will tend to target a range of Animals of the same size, including small Carnivores, which are present in the Guli Waabayo assemblage, but do not tend to capture juvenile Animals, which are typically too small to trigger them. Had snares been the primary hunting method at Guli Waabayo, then the overall assemblage of Animals would have been more varied, without any single species dominating, and juvenile Dik Dik would have been largely absent. Pursuit hunting, in contrast, tends to produce a far higher proportion of juvenile Animals, which are easier to run down, but again does not tend to produce an assemblage dominated by a single species. 

The bone assemblage from Guli Waabayo was accumulated over thousands of years, making it unlikely that all of the Dik Dik remains there are the result of a single hunting method. Nevertheless, it does appear likely that net hunting played a significant role in the life of Later Stone Age hunters in the region.

The most egalitarian hunter/gatherer societies tend to invest little effort in the manufacture of material goods. However, as societies become more complex, an increasing emphasis is placed upon resource management, and delayed-return technologies, which ensure the future supply of food. Such technologies include both devices used to store food, and to capture Animals for consumption, and are in turn associated with a decrease in mobility, with groups tending to remain in one place for longer. In environments with strong seasonal variations in the availability of food, this can lead to the development of flexible political systems or large resource-sharing networks. 

The Holocene Kansyore people of the Lake Victoria Basin are known to have used pottery and Fish weirs d to exploit seasonal Fish stocks, a specialization which resulted in long-term occupation of sites, and presumably a sense of ownership of those sites. The connection between subsistence, land use, and technology during earlier periods in East Africa is less clear, although the specialisation in hunting Dik Dik in the pre-Holocene Later Stone Age at Guli Waabayo suggests that these people had developed a lifestyle in Marine Isotope Stage 2 which was tied to long term resource management within a single environment, and the use of specialist equipment, in the form of nets, which would have required considerable investment in time to construct and maintain.

The traditional view of Late Pleistocene hunters in East Africa has been one of highly mobile groups which placed an emphasis on the hunting of large game. However, the evidence from s coastal and forested regions suggests that small game may have been a far more important resource than was previously thought, to at least some groups of hunter/gatherers. The use of delayed-return hunting technologies, such as snares, traps, or nets, would have allowed more settled populations in coastal and forested environments, enabling a diversity of survival strategies to survive alongside one another in East Africa during the Late Pleistocene. The evidence for specialist Dik Dik hunting at Guli Waabayo adds to this understanding, giving an example of a community surviving in a semi-arid environment by adopting a more settled lifestyle and a specialist method of hunting.

Most hunting methods target one Animal at a time, but net drives can trap numerous Animals at the same time, potentially leading to surpluses of meat following the hunt. Among modern communities which practice net hunting in the Congo Basin, hunts are typically communal activities, involving men, women, and children, and the re-enforcement of social bonds. In Australia the organisation of net-hunts has been associated with the emergence of political hierarchies, while in the southwestern US the organisation of communal net hunts for Rabbits has been associated with both forming co-operative bonds between different groups, and the establishment of temporary leaders.

No direct evidence of netting has been found at Guli Waabayo, however, the pattern of remains suggests that the hunters here were using communual net-drives to capture large numbers of Dik Dik during the Later Stone Age. Such hunts would likely have resulted in considerable amounts of meat becoming available at certain times, enabling the surplus to be shared among large extended communities.

If this were the case, then Dik Dik hunting would have enabled large communal gatherings, promoting social cohesion between groups and promoting further co-operation. However, the faunal data is not enough in itself to make many assumptions about these ancient societies, and further analysis of Human burials from Guli Waabayo and Gogoshiis Qabe, combined with studies of lithic tools from these sites and the Riffle Range Site, should help us gain a better understanding of these ancient East African communities.

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Investigating the illegal trade in Clouded Leopards.

The Sunda Clouded Leopard, Neofelis diardi, and Indochinese Clouded Leopard, Neofelis nebulosa, are medium-sized Felids native to tropical South and Southeast Asia. The Indochinese Clouded Leopard is found from Nepal, through Southeast Asia as far east as Vietnam and south into the Malay Peninsula, while the Sunda Clouded Leopard is found on Borneo and Sumatra. 

Both species are thought to be primarily arboreal, inhabiting tropical forests across their range, particularly lowland Dipterocarp forests, though limestone forests, upland tropical evergreen and deciduous forest, lowland seasonal and mixed deciduous forest, and peat swamp forest, all also appear to be suitable habitats. They can also survive to a degree in fragmented forests and forests with selective logging, but not Oil Palm plantations or similar environments. They are threatened by deforestation, indiscriminate hunting techniques such as hunting, as well as targeted hunting for their skins or other body parts. Both species are listed under Appendix I of the CITES Treaty, which bans trade in either live animals of their body-parts without a permit from the government of a country which forms part of the natural range. 

In a paper published in the Journal of Threatened Taxa on 26 June 2023, Anthony Giordano and Leah Winstead of the Society for the Preservation of Endangered Carnivores and their International Ecological Study, Muhammed Ali Imron, also of the Society for the Preservation of Endangered Carnivores and their International Ecological Study, and of the Department of Forest Resource Conservation at Universitas Gadjah, Rustem, again of the Society for the Preservation of Endangered Carnivores and their International Ecological Study, and of the Wildlife Ecology and Biodiversity Laboratory at Mulawarman University, Jephte Sompud of the Agroforestry and Forest Plantation Program at the Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Jayaraj Vijaya Kumaran again of the Society for the Preservation of Endangered Carnivores and their International Ecological Study, and of the Faculty of Earth Science at the  Universiti Malaysia Kelantan, and Kurtis Jai-Chyi Pei, once again of the Society for the Preservation of Endangered Carnivores and their International Ecological Study, and of the Institute of Wildlife Conservation at the National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, present the results of an investigation into the trade in Clouded Leopards, and their body parts, inspired by a social media post about a Sunda Clouded Leopard being kept by an exotic pet dealer in Indonesia in 2019.

Screen grab of a ‘pet’ Sunda Clouded Leopard Neofelis diardi on Facebook in Indonesia. Giordano et al. (2023).

Giordano et al. subsequently discovered a number of social media and local language news articles concerning the trade in Clouded Leopards, apparently without concern to the laws and government policies regulating this trade. On the basis of this, they believe that there is an active illegal trade in Sunda Clouded Leopards in Indonesia. A number of these reports included photographs of Clouded Leopards in small cages, of a kind often used at wildlife markets in Indonesia. They also discovered one incident involving an Indochinese Clouded Leopard, which was confiscated at the border between Thailand and Myanmar, having apparently been sourced from Laos. 

Screen grabs of Facebook postings: (a) Wildlife seized by Jakarta Police, including a Sunda Clouded Leopard and a Sun Bear. ( b) A posting purportedly showing a Sunda Clouded Leopard kitten for sale in Europe. Giordano et al. (2023).

Other recent studies of the trade in Clouded Leopard and wild Carnivores in general have indicated a change in the purpose for which these species are hunted, with their apparently becoming more specifically targeted for commercial reasons. Giordano et al.'s work builds upon this, providing evidence of Sunda Leopards being actively traded in Indonesia and Southeast Asia. Other species which have not historically been traded as live Animals also appear to be entering the exotic pet trade, including Small-clawed Otters, Aonyx cinereus, Smooth-coated  Otters, Lutrogale perspicillata, and Otter Civets, Cynogale bennettii. This trade appears to be at least in part driven by popular social media posts depicting these Animals as interesting 'novelty pets'. 

Two Clouded Leopards confiscated by Thai authorities en route from Laos. Here they are being temporarily cared for by the local zoo. Terry Whittaker in Giordano et al. (2023).

Interestingly, Giordano et al. only came a across a single instance of trade in the Indochinese Clouded Leopard. This is surprising, as there is known to be an active trade in other Felid species, such as Leopards and Tigers in Southeast Asia, and may indicate that the trade exists and has not been detected by this study.

The trade in large Felids has its origins in traditional practices in some parts of the world, for example in the Middle East, where Cheetahs have long been captured for use as hunting Animals, but the trade in Clouded Leopards in Indonesia appears to be a new development, and may be linked to opportunistic hunting. Widespread deforestation in Borneo has led to more conflict between Humans and forest species, and the killing of (aggressive) adult female Clouded Leopards could well result in kittens becoming available for trade as a biproduct. Whatever the source of the Animals being traded, their normalization as an exotic pets is clearly an additional threat to the species, as well as potentially to Humans handling them.

Giordano et al. recommend that governments and conservation organisations pay more attention to this trade, and focus more attention on monitoring and combating the illegal trade in Clouded Leopards. They also note the dangers to public health caused by the trade in exotic pets, observing that wild Felids are known to have the ability to carry a variety of infections potentially harmful to Humans, including Coronaviruses.

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New reports of Leopard-hunting in Yemen.

The Arabian Leopard, Panthera pardus nimr, is a subspecies of Leopard endemic to, and once found across, the Arabian Peninsula, but now considered to be Critically endangered under the terms of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species, with less than 200 Animals thought to be surviving in Oman, Yemen, and possibly Saudi Arabia, although the species hasn't been seen in Saudi Arabia since 2014. Oman is thought to have a steady population of about 50 Leopards, where the species is protected, but the situation in Yemen is less clear. Leopards are known to be hunted in the south and southeast of Yemen, where there is an ongoing civil conflict, and Leopard killings in Lawdar in Abyan, north of Lahij and Ad Dali, have been reported since 2021.

In a letter published in the journal Orynx on 22 May 2023, Hadi Al Hikmani of the Royal Commission for AlUla, and Andrew Spalton of the IUCN Species Survival Commission Cat Specialist Group, discuss new reports of the hunting of Arabian Leopards in the Hawf Mountains of eastern Arabia.

The Hawf Mountains are outside of the conflict zone in Yemen, lying close to the border with Oman. The killing of two Leopards was reported here in 2014, but there have been known further instances for almost a decade. In November 2022 images of a Leopard killed in the Hawf Mountains in response to livestock losses appeared on social media sites, with reports of a second Animal apparently killed for similar reasons, appearing in January 2023.

An Arabian leopard, Panthera pardus nimr, caught on a camera trap in Dhofar, southern Oman. Hadi Al Hikmani in Al Hikmani and Spalton (2023).

Killing in response to the taking of livestock, whether real or perceived, is considered to be the major reason for the decline of the Arabian Leopard across the entirety of its range. In Oman and active program of interventions has largely ended such persecution of the species, but this is not the case in Yemen, raising concerns about the future of the species there. The apparent resumption of Leopard hunting in the Hawf Mountains, far from the country's conflict zone, is particularly troubling, as the population here is thought to be small, and could easily be wiped out quite quickly.

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