Fossilised circles in the sand on South Africa’s coast may be artwork by our early ancestors

If you have walked on a dune surface after windy conditions have settled, you may have been privileged to recognise one of Nature’s wonders: scratch circles. These are structures formed when the end of a tethered object is passively rotated into the surrounding sediment.

After further investigation we’ve published our findings. We’re particularly excited about two key takeaways. Secondly, there appear to be two possible explanations for circular patterns with central depressions in Pleistocene deposits on the Cape coast. One is the typical scratch circle or scratch arc as described above, made by a plant. The second is an ammoglyph, a pattern made by ancestral hominins in sand, that is now evident and interpretable in a rock type known as aeolianite.

There is a precedent for astute ancestral humans being acutely aware of their environment and mimicking what they encountered. It has been suggested that ochre used in body decoration may have originated after people observed the bearded vulture bathing in ochre and covering its feathers with red pigment. This would be an example of bio-mimicry – humans copying what they saw in the world around them.

Biomimicry Blombos Cave Fossils Plants Vultures Ochre

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