"I think we have to remain a bit prudent," she said. It's unclear why the ancient people at Wadi Sūra II used reptile hands as stencils, but Honoré said she's working on a new study that analyzes possible reasons. For example, the Aboriginal people used emu foot stencils in the Carnarvon Gorge and Tent Shelter in Australia, and choike/nandu (birds in the genus Rhea) stencils are in the rock art at La Cueva de las Manos in Argentina, the researchers wrote in the study. Other prehistoric cultures used animals as stencils for their rock art. The rock walls at Wadi Sūra II are filled with intricate images. ![]() However, crocodiles likely didn't live in the desert at that time, so a person would have needed to transport one over from the Nile or another watery region, Honoré said. A baby crocodile ( Crocodylus) was another possibility. The front feet of the desert monitor lizard ( Varanus) had the closest match to the wall paintings, she found. Then, when she was doing research at a crocodile farm in Zambia, she realized that the prints belonged to a reptile. But none of the thousands of monkey hand pictures she researched looked like those on the wall at Wadi Sūra II. "We were completely shocked by our own research because it brought up the question - if it's not babies, what is it?" Honoré said.Īt first, Honoré thought the tiny hands belonged to a small monkey. That's much smaller than a human baby hand, which measures an average of 2.4 inches (6.2 cm) long, she said Though the stenciled fingers were long, overall the hands were small - just 1.8 inches (4.5 centimeters) from the base of the palm to the end of the middle finger. (The other two were incomplete and difficult to measure, she said.) In addition, they measured 30 of the large hands at Wadi Sūra II and 30 hands from living adults, and found that they matched well, she said.īut several parameters indicated that the tiny hands were not human. Honoré and her colleagues also measured 11 of the tiny hands at the Wadi Sūra II site. "They were very enthusiastic that their babies could contribute to a scientific study." "We were really surprised all of the parents agreed to take part in the experiment," Honoré said. So Honoré worked with the Lille University Hospital in northern France, and ended up getting the hand measurements of 25 preterm babies and 36 typical babies who survived birth. A simple comparison showed that the ancient prints were too small to be human, but she needed a larger sample of hands to say for sure. Initially, Honoré compared the hands of her newborn niece and cousins to the rock art. "It came back to my mind every day, and I decided I had to test it." "After a few years, I was obsessed by this idea ," Honoré told Live Science. In contrast, human babies have fingers that are roughly the same length as their palms. Moreover, the digits were pointy and " very long and very thin," Honoré said. Yet, shortly after looking at the 13 "baby" hand drawings, Honoré concluded that they weren't human.įor one thing, they were too small to belong to a human infant, she said. In earlier studies, researchers hypothesized that the large and small hand paintings were stenciled around adult and baby hands. "I immediately saw those tiny hands among thousands of paintings," she said. Honoré was stunned the first time she walked into Wadi Sūra II in 2006. Roughly 900 stencil paintings of arms, feet, discs, sticks and tiny and large hands cover the rock walls inside the cave. In addition, there are arteries, veins and nerves within the hand that provide blood flow and sensation to the hand and fingers.The Wadi Sūra II cave, which can also be described as a shelter because it's more of a rocky overhang, is about 66 feet (20 meters) long and 26 feet (8 m) deep. The tendons connect muscles in the arm or hand to the bone to allow movement. The sheaths are tubular structures that surround part of the fingers. The ligaments are fibrous tissues that help bind together the joints in the hand. The muscles are the structures that can contract, allowing movement of the bones in the hand. Numerous muscles, ligaments, tendons, and sheaths can be found within the hand. The 2 rows of carpal bones are connected to 2 bones of the arm-the ulna bone and the radius bone. The 5 bones that compose the middle part of the hand.Ĭarpal bones. Each finger has 3 phalanges (the distal, middle, and proximal) the thumb only has 2. The 14 bones that are found in the fingers of each hand and also in the toes of each foot. There are 3 major types of bones in the hand itself, including: The hand is composed of many different bones, muscles, and ligaments that allow for a large amount of movement and dexterity.
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