Ancient space drawings3/23/2023 "Our scientific interest is the dry limit of photosynthesis, so we wanted to go to the driest part of the Sahara," McKay says.īut exploring this harsh environment is logistically challenging. He and co-author Marinova went to the Egyptian desert to study rock-clinging microbes with the purpose of finding out how these organisms can survive under such extreme conditions, and whether they can give us any clues to potential life on Mars. (Image credit: NASA Photo/Chris McKay) Lake residentsĪs compelling as this connection between art and past climate may be, McKay did not venture into the Sahara to study ancient human artifacts, nor to look for dried-up lakes. ![]() Uweinat is a mountainous area in the southwest of Egypt that is one of the driest places in the world. "Both lakes are located in areas with an exceptionally rich concentration of rock art sites in the immediate vicinity, and I suspect this cannot be a coincidence," Zboray says. Other caves and rocks show scenes of pastoral animals, which would have been unable to survive in the current dry conditions. Still, the idea that water was much more abundant in this part of the Sahara several thousand years ago is supported by other prehistoric art in the region. "They are clearly symbolic, as are the beasts, with an unknown meaning." "The 'swimmers' move towards 'headless beasts' in a straight line, more as if floating in air than swimming" says Andras Zboray, a Sahara explorer and rock art researcher. It should be noted that researchers now question the original interpretation of "swimming." The shallow cave's paintings are about 7,000 years old, give or take a thousand years, and show human figures performing what looks like a kind of Neolithic doggy paddle.Ĭonfronted by the seeming inconsistency of swimmers in a desert landscape, Almásy hypothesized that the artists were realistically depicting their surroundings and that the climate had in fact been wetter back then. The Cave of the Swimmers has captivated imaginations ever since it was discovered by the Hungarian explorer László Almásy in 1933. ![]() ![]() Giraffes and other animals not currently found in this part of the desert, which suggests the area was wetter in the past. ![]() The research at the prehistoric Journal of African Earth Sciences ouwas partly funded by the NASA Astrobiology Program. The age of the lakes seems about right that one could bravely speculate that the prehistoric men or women who decorated the Cave of the Swimmers either knew of the lakes or perhaps even swam in one of them on a wandering voyage. From carbon dating, McKay and his colleagues estimate that the two inferred lakes existed about 8,100 and 9,400 years ago, respectively. The ring-shape and mineral content of the deposits imply that they formed in shallow water along a lake shoreline. "The deposits look like a 'bathtub ring' around the canyon walls," McKay says. "Indeed, we found that there were lakes not far from the Cave of the Swimmers," says Chris McKay from the NASA Ames Research Center.Įarlier this year, McKay and his colleagues h Center.he Cave of the Swimmers, a relatively recent, semi-permanent lake that could have served as a swimming hole carbonate deposits lining the walls of two neighboring valleys in the Gebel Uweinat region, which is about 200 kilometers south of the Cave of the Swimmers.
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