Ritual at Tsodilo's Rhino Cave
Ritual en la Cueva del Rinoceronte de Tsodilo
- Date
- c. 70 ka (propuesto) · confidence low
- Place
- Tsodilo Hills, North-West, Botswana
- Credited to
- Middle Stone Age hunter-gatherers (San ancestors, on the hypothesis)
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Exotic-coloured spearpoints, burned and apparently destroyed before a snake-shaped rock wall. Its excavators interpret it as the oldest known ritual, linked to the python.
Sheila Coulson and colleagues' hypothesis (2006, 2011) is widely contested: the age rests on Middle Stone Age stratigraphic levels, and the ritual reading has no direct support beyond the spatial coincidence with the rock.
What it led to
- debate over when symbolic and religious thought arose
- a hypothetical link with the San snake myth
- protection of the sacred Tsodilo landscape as a World Heritage Site