MP Gallery - Markings, Signs, Graphemes; b) koonalda29jfp37

Middle Paleolithic symbol making continues the Early Paleolithic tradition of making meanders and undulating lines. Middle Paleolithic examples include:

• Koonalda Cave, Nullarbor Plain, Australia, C14 c. >20,000 BP, with lowest artifact level 29,400+11,600/-4,600 BP (compare dating of Allen's Cave, Nullarbor, C1418,000 but OSL 39,000±3,100 BP); digital fluting and meanders; this is the oldest Australian marking style, called 'pre-Panaramittee'; New Guinea II, Snowy River, 21,000 BP;
• Cueva Morin, Spain; Level 17, Mousterian, "macaroni' meander engravings on 11 bones, some natural vascular grooves amplified and extended by deliberate engraving, V-shaped grooves, with other natural causes ruled out; one bone has widely spaced parallel sets of meanders; another, is totally covered with macaroni meanders (Freeman 1978; the last instance disputed by Marshack 1991 and D'Errico and Villa 1997); aside: this piece may be a curated nature-fact; it has overall shape of a mammoth

An example from Koonalda is shown below.

Photo © R. Edwards. Flood, J. 1997. Rock art of the dreamtime: Images of ancient Australia. Sydney: HarperCollins. Page 37.