> as far as eight thousand years

Given that the oldest written records are only 5,000 years old (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_documents ), I'm curious as to what that source might be. The Tassili cave art mentioned is 10,000 years old. I suspect the page you linked to made a mistake when writing that information.

I'll also point out that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowsing says "Dowsing as practiced today may have originated in Germany during the 16th century, when it was used in attempts to find metals.".

While the site you point to says: "Today’s European method of dowsing (the method we use at Springbank Energy Healing) evolved from the system practiced in ancient Egypt. This system was based on quantum physics and sacred geometry; and some of the pendulums in use today were modeled on the originals found in these ancient tombs."

This sounds like standard pseudoscience nonsense to me.

But I can be wrong. Where is the evidence? How do we know that "Cleopatra ... had dowsers with her at all times"? I just searched Plutarch's "Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans" at https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/674 and found no mention of that.

Concerning the Tassili caves, the site you pointed to in turn cites https://dowsers.org/dowsing-history/ , which claims "Among the many fascinating wall murals, not only did they locate an art gallery devoted exclusively to the depictions of spacecraft and ET’s, they also found a remarkable huge wall painting of a dowser, holding a forked branch in his hand searching for water, surrounded by a group of admiring tribesmen. These wall murals were carbon dated and found to be a least 8000 years old."

So you aren't exactly pointing to a good reference but an edited version of another source with introduced errors.

And .. really? Spacecraft and ET's as well as dowsing? There's a long tradition of finding old things and claiming aliens did it. But was also know it's easy to look at something old, when we don't know the historical context, and read the wrong thing into it. Like this "time-traveling hipster" - https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/time-traveling-hipster/ or this 1943 beachgoer seemingly checking his mobile phone - https://www.foxnews.com/science/conspiracy-theorists-spot-ti... .

That other site claims things like "how [in the Bible] both Moses and his son, Aaron, used a dowsing device referred to as “the Rod” to locate and bring forth water". But that 1) wasn't a dowsing rod but a staff or walking stick, and 2) Aaron was Moses's brother, not son, and 3) it wasn't dowsing for existing water because God told Moses that striking the stone would cause water to come out.

It also says "The Jews learned the ancient art from their captors and in the Old Testament Prophet Hozea [sic] wrote: “They now consult their pieces of wood then the wand makes pronouncements from them!”". That appears to be Hosea 4:12 "My people ask counsel from their wooden idols / And their [a]staff informs them. /
For the spirit of harlotry has caused them to stray, / And they have played the harlot against their God." https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hosea%204%3A12&... . The [a] is "Diviner’s rod", and divining is indeed an ancient practice - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divination . But it isn't dowsing. Wikipedia even cross-references ""Divining" redirects here. For pseudoscientific attempts to find water or other things, see Dowsing."