Stone Age Pebble Holds Mysterious Meaning

24-02-12. The colorful pebble bearing a sequence of lines dates back 100,000 years and may be the first evidence of abstract art.

• The world's oldest known engraved object may be an ochre pebble from Klasies River Cave in South Africa.
• The 100,000-year-old ochre pebble features what researchers believe are at least 23 engraved lines.
• It's possible that the design was a symbol that communicated something meaningful to prehistoric humans.

The object, which will be described in the April issue of the Journal of Archaeology, dates back approximately 100,000 years ago and could also be the world’s oldest known abstract art. It was recovered from Klasies River Cave in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa.

Associated human remains indicate that the engraved piece was certainly made by Homo sapiens,” co-author Riaan Rifkin of the University of Witwatersrand’s Institute for Human Evolution told Discovery News.

Rifkin and colleagues Francesco d’Errico and Renata Garcia Moreno performed extensive non-invasive analyses of the object. Methods like X-ray fluorescence and microscopic analysis enabled the researchers to examine every minute detail of the ochre pebble, which appears to have split off from a once larger piece...

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Link 2: Prehistorialdia: Actualizo post con los recientes hallazgos de otro ocre con motivos geométricos grabados, esta vez en Klasies River, con 100.000 años de antiguedad.
Link 3: 26-02-12. Hallan un fragmento de piedra coloreada con ocre y con un grabado de hace 100.000 años