There’s a lot that can be done with a blank slab of stone. It can be scored, splattered with paint, or plastered with clay. Transformed with a smattering of scrapes or scratches or a smear of red ochre, its surface can become a swirl of abstract shapes or a field of frolicking antelopes. Ancient rock artists tried it all, becoming remarkably skilled at representing themselves and their surroundings in stone.
In the Later Stone Age of southern Africa between around 5,000 years and 1,000 years ago, for instance, ancient artists covered the surface of cliffs in modern-day Namibia with carvings of human and animal footprints.
According to a paper published in PLOS ONE, the carvings that still survive are so crisp and complex that they communicate all sorts of details about the creatures they were carved to represent, including their species, sex and maturity.
