These prehistoric ‘baby hands’ are not what you think

When the site of Wadi Sura II was discovered in Egypt's Western Desert in 2002, researchers were taken aback at the thousands of decorations painted on the walls of the rock shelter as much as 8,000 years earlier. Not only are there wild animals, human figures, and odd headless creatures that have led people to nickname it the "Cave of the Beasts," but also hundreds of outlines of human handprints — more than had ever been seen before at a Saharan rock art site. 

Even more unusual were outlines of 13 tiny handprints. Until the discovery of Wadi Sura II, the stenciled hands and feet of very small children had been seen in rock and cave art in other parts of the world, but never in the Sahara. One notable, touching scene even features a pair of "baby" hands nestled inside the outlines of a larger, adult pair.   

Now it gets even odder: The tiny hands weren't even human. 

Seeking answers in a French hospital  

Wadi Sura II is considered one of the greatest rock art sites of the Sahara, although it lacks the popular fame of nearby Wadi Sura I, the "Cave of the Swimmers," which was discovered by Hungarian count Láslo Almásy in 1933 and popularized in "The English Patient."

Anthropologist Emmanuelle Honoré of the Free University of Brussels describes how she was "shocked" by the shape of the unusually small hand outlines when she saw them at her first visit to Wadi Sura II in 2006. "They were much smaller than human baby hands, and the fingers were too long," she explains.   

Honoré decided to compare measurements taken from the hand outlines with those taken from the hands of newborn human infants (37 to 41 weeks gestational age). Since the site samples were so physically small, she also included measurements taken from newborn premature babies (26 to 36 weeks gestational age). 

For that, the anthropologist recruited a team that also included medical researchers to collect the infant data from the neonatal unit of a French hospital. "If I went to a hospital and just said, 'I'm studying rock art. Are there babies available?' they'd think I'm crazy and call security on me," she laughs. 

The results revealed that there's an extremely low probability that the "baby" hands in the Cave of the Beasts are actually human. 

Child artists

This discovery paradoxically happened in light of a growing realization that children’s role in the creation of rock and cave art was often underestimated or dismissed outright by early researchers. “It’s ironic, considering that in any Western household, the person most making art is a child,” says Jane Eva Baxter, an archaeologist at DuPaul University who studies childhood. “So the idea that [prehistoric] children would not be allowed to produce art is a funny thought.”

Most recently, a 2022 study revealed that up to 25% of the stenciled hands found in Paleolithic cave sites in Spain were those of children—and even toddlers.

So if the Wadi Sura II prints weren't human, what were they? The positioning of the tiny hands and their fingers varies from outline to outline, which led the research team to conclude they were flexible and articulated and ruled out the possibility of a stencil fashioned from a static material like wood or clay. 

Honoré initially suspected monkey paws, but when those proportions were also off, colleagues at the Museum of Natural History in Paris suggested she take a look at reptiles. Turns out, the proportions closest to the "baby" hands come from the forelegs of desert monitor lizards , which still live in the region today and are considered protective creatures by nomadic tribes in the area.  Honoré later determined that the “baby” prints were made by a single lizard, accompanied by at least two adult artists.

Honoré is reluctant to speculate too much on the meaning of the non-human prints. "We have a modern conception that nature is something that humans are separate from," she says. "But in this huge collection of images we can detect that humans are just part of a bigger natural world. " 

Meanwhile, many of the parents whose babies participated in the research were thrilled to be part of the rock art revelation. "They were really enthusiastic about the idea that their newborns could make such a contribution to science," says Honoré.

Editor's note: This story was originally published on March 2, 2016. It has been updated.