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Scientists have discovered what they claim to be the oldest human drawing in South Africa.
The engraving, reminiscent of a hashtag, was drawn with an ocher pencil on silcrete and was discovered in the cave of Blombos, located 300 kilometers west of Cape Town.
It is estimated at 73,000 years, at least 30,000 years before the known abstract and figurative drawings of humans from Africa, Europe and Southeast Asia.
The results of the discovery were published in the journal Nature by researchers from Europe and South Africa, including Francesco d'Errico, Karen L. van Niekerk, Laure Dayet, Alain Queffelec and Luca Pollarolo.
Christopher Henshilwood, a professor at the Norwegian University of Bergen who led the discovery team, told The Conversation that his team "hesitated to call it" art ".
"This is an abstract drawing, which certainly had a meaning for the creator and was probably part of the common symbolic system understood by other members of this group.It also shows the ability of early humans to store information in out of the man. " brain, "he said.
Archaeologists work in the cave of Blombos.
Henshilwood added that hatch patterns were found on ocher pieces in other sites, indicating the ability of our early ancestors to replicate graphic designs with different techniques.
"The discovery adds to our current understanding of Homo sapiens in Africa. They were modern behavioral: they behaved essentially like us. They were able to produce and use a symbolic material culture to mediate, as we do now, "he added.
"They also had a syntactic language – essential for conveying symbolic meaning within and through hunter-gatherer groups present in southern Africa at that time."
Formerly used as a refuge by hunter-gatherers, the cave of Blombos is now an important archaeological site for researchers seeking to understand our early ancestors.
In 2011, a painting kit consisting of abalone shells dating back 100,000 years was discovered in the cave, as well as an earlier discovery of ocher-painted pearls.
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