Engraved Pigments Point to Ancient Symbol Tradition

Hello Ece, are you reading this? This one is just for you. Story from Sciencenews.org Engraved pigments point to ancient symbolic tradition Incisions on ochre from a South African cave suggest modern human behavior emerged around 100,000 years ago (Image: Geometric patterns incised on pieces of ancient pigment, such as these 100,000-year-old finds, may reveal the surprisingly ancient origins of modern human behavior.Credit: Courtesy of C. Henshilwood and F. d’Errico) By Bruce Bower Web edition : 1:03 pm Scientists excavating a Stone Age cave on South Africa’s southern coast have followed a trail of engraved pigments to what they suspect are the ancient roots of modern human behavior. Analyses of 13 chunks of decorated red ochre (an iron oxide pigment) from Blombos Cave indicate that a cultural tradition of creating meaningful geometric designs stretched from around 100,000 to 75,000 years ago in southern Africa, say anthropologist Christopher Henshilwood of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and his colleagues. Their report appears online and in an upcoming Journal of Human Evolution. Much debate surrounds the issue of when and where language, religion, symbolic decorations and other facets of modern human behavior originated. Researchers such as Henshilwood hypothesize that modern human behavior developed gradually in Africa, beginning more than 100,000 years ago. Others posit that a brain-boosting genetic mutation around 50,000 years ago fostered modern behavior in Africa. Some researchers suspect that behavioral advances first appeared in Europe, Asia and Africa at that later time. Possible examples of symbolic behavior from around 100,000 years ago — such as proposed human burials in the Middle East and pigment use in Africa — have been controversial. "What makes the Blombos engravings different is that some of them appear to represent a deliberate will to produce a complex abstract design," Henshilwood says. “We have not before seen well-dated and unambiguous traces of this kind of behavior at 100,000 years ago.” Further studies need to confirm that the ancient incisions were not the result of, say, slicing into ochre with stone tools in order to remove powder quickly, cautions anthropologist Curtis Marean of Arizona State University in Tempe, who studies ancient human behavior at another South African cave (SN: 10/20/07, p. 243). [Anyone looking at the patterns scored into the small pigment stones would probably conclude otherwise. One would not have to score a specific geometric pattern into a pigment stone in order to remove colored pigment to mix paint. Any way of pulverizing pigment off the stone would do, including just making gouges. This is just common sense.] Even if the Blombos pigments contain intentional designs, fully modern human behavior — such as the use of figurative art (SN: 6/20/09, p. 11) — didn’t emerge until tens of thousands of years later, contends archaeologist Nicholas Conard of the University of Tuebingen, Germany. [Hmmm, could this contention possibly have anything to do with the fact that, for instance, the Willendorf Venus was found in Germany, and dates to c. 35,000 years ago?] Henshilwood and study coauthor Francesco d’Errico of the University of Bordeaux I in Talence, France, disagree. In their view, the Blombos pigments bear intentionally fashioned designs that held some sort of meaning and were passed down the generations for 25,000 years. Thus, the two researchers say, it’s likely that a 100,000-year-old society already steeped in symbolic behavior originally produced the ochre engravings. In 2002, Henshilwood’s team described evidence of symbolic engravings on two other ochre pieces from Blombos Cave. Those 77,000-year-old finds were excavated in 1999 and 2000. Engraved chunks of pigment in the new analysis were unearthed during the same excavations. Specimens came from either of three sediment levels with estimated ages of 72,000 years, 77,000 years and 100,000 years. A microscopic analysis indicates that ochre designs were made by holding a piece of pigment with one hand while impressing lines into the pigment with the tip of a stone tool. On several pieces, patterns covered areas that had first been ground down. Geometric patterns on the ochre pieces include cross-hatched designs, branching lines, parallel lines and right angles. [See images at beginning of article]. Pigment powder had also been removed from many of the recovered ochre chunks. Incised patterns may have served as models for pigment designs applied to animal skins or other material, the scientists speculate. Excavations of Blombos Cave sediment from before 100,000 years ago have begun. “The discovery of more, and perhaps even more striking, engravings is very possible,” Henshilwood says. [That remains to be seen...]

Bone Carving Confirms Man's Presence 12,000 Years Ago

Ancient carvings of elephants and their ancestors, mammoths and mastodons, fascinate me, probably because of their very old connection to the game of chess. The bishop piece in modern Western chess started out his life as an elephant, after all :) Check out this beautiful carving from Vero Beach, Florida, confirmed to be between 12,000 to 14,000 years old. (Image from Vero Beach 32963 article - see link below). It is a never-ending source of amazement to me how artists (ancient and modern), can catch the living essence of an animal with seemingly a few lines! (Compare to this rock-carved image from the other side of the Atlantic, in Somerset, England, dated to circa 13,000 years ago). University of Florida: Epic carving on fossil bone found in Vero Beach BY SANDRA RAWLS, CORRESPONDENT © 2009, VERO BEACH 32963 In what a top Florida anthropologist is calling “the oldest, most spectacular and rare work of art in the Americas,” an amateur Vero Beach fossil hunter has found an ancient bone etched with a clear image of a walking mammoth or mastodon. According to leading experts from the University of Florida, the remarkable find demonstrates with new and startling certainty that humans coexisted with prehistoric animals more than 12,000 years ago in this fossil- rich region of the state. No similar carved figure has ever been authenticated in the United States, or anywhere in this hemisphere. The brown, mineral-hardened bone bearing the unique carving is a foot-long fragment from a larger bone that belonged to an extinct “mammoth, mastodon or ground sloth” according to Dr. Richard C. Hulbert, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History museum. These animals have been extinct in Florida for at least 10,000 years. Etched into the bone by a highly sharpened stone tool or the tooth of the animal is the clear image of a walking adult mammoth or mastodon. Extensive tests over the past two months have shown that the image was created when the bone was fresh, presumably right after the animal it belonged to was killed or died. Experts who have examined the bone, found at a location which has not been publicly disclosed on the northern side of Vero Beach, concluded the carving and surface are of the same age – 12,000 to 14,000 years old — with no evidence of recent tampering (see accompanying story on tests that have been performed to date). Rest of article.

New "Venus" Figurine Discovered

Story from AP:

By PATRICK McGROARTY, Associated Press Writer Patrick Mcgroarty, Associated Press Writer – Wed May 13, 3:42 pm ET

BERLIN – A 35,000-year-old ivory carving of a busty woman found in a German cave was unveiled Wednesday by archaeologists who believe it is the oldest known sculpture of the human form. The carving found in six fragments in Germany's Hohle Fels cave depicts a woman with a swollen belly, wide-set thighs and large, protruding breasts.

"It's very sexually charged," said University of Tuebingen archaeologist Nicholas Conard, whose team discovered the figure in September.

Carbon dating suggests it was carved at least 35,000 years ago, according to the researchers' findings, which are being published Thursday in the scientific journal Nature.

"It's the oldest known piece of figurative sculpture in the world," said Jill Cook, a curator of Paleolithic and Mesolithic material at the British Museum in London.

Stones in Israel and Africa almost twice as old are believed to have been collected by ancient humans because they resembled people, but they were not carved independently.

The Hohle Fels cave discovery suggests the humans, who are believed to have come to Europe around 40,000 years ago, had the intelligence to create symbols and think abstractly in a way that matches the modern human, Conard said

"It's 100 percent certain that, by the time we get to 40,000 years ago in Swabia, we're dealing with people just like you and me," Conard told The Associated Press, referring to the southern German region where the sculpture was recovered along with other prehistoric artifacts.

Conard believes the 2.4-inch-tall (6-centimeter) figure may have been hung on the end of a string. The left arm is missing, but Conard said he hopes to find it by sifting through material from the cave.

The Hohle Fels sculpture is curvaceous and has neither feet nor a head, like some of the roughly 150 so-called Venus figurines found in a range from the Pyrenees mountains to southern Russia and dating back about 25,000-29,000 years.

But Cook warned against trying to draw any connections between the Venuses and the Hohle Fels figure, saying that would be like comparing Picasso to a classical sculptor — too much time had passed.

"I wonder whether at this point we're looking at figures which are unique within themselves and unique within the cultures that they're arising in," she said.

Archaeologist Paul Mellars, of the University of Cambridge, suggested a clearer continuum. "We now have evidence of that sort of artistic tradition of Venus figurines going back 6,000 years earlier than anybody ever guessed," he said.

Neanderthals also lived in Europe around the time the sculpture was carved, and frequented the Hohle Fels cave. But Mellars said layered deposits left by both species over thousands of years prove the sculpture was crafted by humans.

"Nothing within a million miles of this has ever been found in a Neanderthal layer," Mellars said.

The archaeologists agreed the sculpture's age and features invite speculation about its purpose and the preoccupations of the culture that produced it.

Cook suggested it could be symbol of fertility, perhaps even portrayed in the act of giving birth. Mellars suggested a more basic motivation for the carving: "These people were obsessed with sex."

Conard said the differing opinions reinforced the connection between the ancient artist and modern viewer.

"How we interpret it tells us just as much about ourselves as about people 40,000 years ago," he said.

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Hmmm, the experts know better, I guess... All I can say is that when I looked at this image of the "Venus" and the other two images I saw, I thought it depicts two people intertwined in an embrace. Perhaps it's just the way the object was photographed that makes it appear that way.

12,000-15,000 Year Old Carving Found In China

Unfortunately, no images of the carving were provided. China's earliest known carving found in central Henan Province www.chinaview.cn 2009-04-28 19:23:38 ZHENGZHOU, April 28 (Xinhua) -- Chinese archaeologists say they have identified the country's earliest known carving -- a deer antler sculpted into the shape of a bird -- dating back 12,000 to 15,000 years. The fossilized grey figurine, which is 2.1 centimeters long, 1.2 centimeters high and 0.6 centimeters thick, was found in Xuchang County in China's central Henan Province in March. It is made from evenly-heated antler, and vividly carved with amicrolithic cutting tool. "The carving technique is more exquisite than the western carvings of its time," said Li Zhanyang, head of the archeological team in Xuchang, and a researcher with the Henan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archeology. [Er, wouldn't you expect a Chinese archaeologist to say this when his country's oldest carving to date is 15,000 years younger than the oldest western carving to date?] Carvings of the late Paleolithic Age have been found in western countries, such as 30,000-year-old ivory horse and mammoth carvings at Vogelherd Cave in Germany, and human profile carvings at a cave in La Marche, France, that are about 10,000 years old. The bird figurine was unique in its feet that were carved with symmetrical sockets that enable it to stand stably, said Li. "This demonstrates that human beings already had a good grip of the equilibrium principal then." Li said the bird carving might have been left by hunters when they were very active in Henan Province around the Last Glacial Maximum period, which started about 25,000 years ago. It could have been a totem to represent good luck and freedom. If the bird carving could be exactly dated, it would provide important background for the research on the techniques, aesthetic and expression, as well as inter-regional migration and communication of human beings of that time, said Gao Xing, head of National Natural Science Foundation of China. The bird carving is not the first find at that site. In 2007 and 2008, Chinese archaeologists announced that they found more than 30,000 relics in Xuchang, including human skull fossils dating back 80,000 to 100,000 years. The ancient skull was named Xuchang Man after the location. Scientists said the discovery was expected to provide direct evidence for the origins of modern Chinese and East Asian human species. Editor: Bi Mingxin