Oldest Man-Made Image Found in South Africa

Oldest Man-Made Image Found in South Africa

The oldest man-made image was found on a small rock in a cave on the south coast of South Africa. Archaeologists found this 73,000-year-old picture at Blombos Cave overlooking the Indian Ocean. This cave is 300 kilometers from Cape Town, the capital of South Africa.

This ancient image found is in the form of a set of six straight lines crossed by three slightly curved lines. The color of these lines is red from ocher pigments, wall dyes made from soft soil mixed with iron oxide, clay, and sand.

Oldest Man Made Picture

This picture at first glance looks like a fence sign or hashtag. This image is allegedly made by hunter-gatherer communities who live in the Blombos Cave

This discovery is evidence of the development of intelligence from Homo sapiens in the Middle Stone Age, aka Mesolithic.

"A line that is suddenly broken at the edge of the fragment indicates that the image was originally larger and drawn on a larger surface. The image pattern may be more complex and structured as a whole, "said Christopher Henshilwood, an archaeologist from the University of Bergen in Norway and the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa as the leader of this image research told Reuters.

"We would hesitate to call it a work of art. (But) this is clearly an abstract design and almost certainly has meaning for the maker and may have a symbolic meaning that is understood by their group, "explained Henshilwood.

Other artifacts found in the Blombos Cave are drawing equipment in the form of two shells coated with ocher coloring. This artifact is around 100,000 years old. In addition, there are also many other artifacts that have abstract carvings similar to the ones they found on a small rock before.

"All of these findings indicate that early Homo sapiens to the south of the Cape used different techniques to draw the same markings on different media," said Henshilwood.

"This supports the hypothesis that these signs are symbolic and represent an inherent aspect of the cognitive abilities of Homo sapiens in Africa, our ancestors."

Homo sapiens first appeared more than 315,000 years ago in Africa. After that, they migrated until they finally spread throughout the world.

Source: kumparan.com