For You Lot Data - Uncovering Of The Earliest Drawing

What is a symbol? This is a tough enquiry to answer when tasked alongside analyzing the earliest graphic productions. What nosotros mightiness today translate equally figurative representations mightiness simply survive an ancient doodle that had no exceptional purpose. For a long time, archaeologists were convinced the showtime symbols appeared when Homo sapiens colonized areas of Europe nearly 40,000 years ago.

The exterior of Blombos Cave inward the southern Cape inward South Africa
[Credit: Magnus Haaland]

However, recent archaeological discoveries inward Africa, Europe, as well as Asia advise the creation as well as work of symbols emerged much earlier. For example, the oldest known engraving is a zigzag carved into the musical rhythm out of a freshwater mussel constitute inward Trinil (Java) inside 540,000-year-old archaeological strata. And objects for personal adornment accept been unearthed at several archaeological sites inward Africa dating dorsum to 70,000 to 120,000 years before the present.

In the novel article published inward the journal Nature, the international squad that includes scientists from the PACEA (CNRS / University of Bordeaux / French Ministry of Culture) as well as TRACES (CNRS / University of Toulouse-Jean Jaurès / French Ministry of Culture) enquiry units push clit the oldest known abstract drawing made alongside a slice of ocher used equally a pencil. It was identified on the surface of a pocket-size slice of siliceous stone (silcrete) spell analyzing stone tools collected during an earthworks at Blombos Cave inward South Africa. The silcrete fragment came from a 73,000-year-old archaeological stratum as well as bears a crosshatched designing made upwards of nine fine lines.

This silcrete chip displays a drawing made upwards of nine lines traced on 1 of its faces
with an ocher implement [Credit: D'Errico/Henshilwood/Nature]

H5N1 major methodological challenge was to seek out these lines were deliberately drawn past times humans. It was primarily tackled past times the team's French members, experts inward these matters as well as specialized inward the chemic analysis of pigments. First they reproduced the same lines using diverse techniques: They tried fragments of ocher alongside a betoken or an border as well as also applied unlike aqueous dilutions of ocher pulverization using brushes.

Using techniques of microscopic, chemical, as well as tribological analysis, they as well as so compared their drawings to the ancient original. Their findings confirm the lines were intentionally drawn alongside a pointed ocher implement on a surface showtime smoothed past times rubbing. The designing therefore constitutes the earliest known drawing, preceding the oldest previously discovered plant past times at to the lowest degree 30,000 years.

An abstract designing has been engraved on this slice of ocher constitute at Blombos Cave
 in the same archaeological stratum that yielded the silcrete chip
[Credit: D'Errico/Henshilwood/Nature]

The archaeological stratum inward which the silcrete chip lay had already yielded many other objects alongside symbolic markings, including ocher fragments that characteristic rattling like crosshatched engraving. These finds demonstrate that the showtime Homo sapiens inward this portion of Africa used unlike techniques to scope like signs on unlike materials, which supports the hypothesis that these markings served a symbolic function.

Source: CNRS [September 11, 2018]

Sumber http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com

Buat lebih berguna, kongsi: