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WonderEarly material culture fact

Blombos Cave, on South Africa's southern coast, has yielded a 100,000-year-old kit for mixing ochre, a red earth pigment, as well as later shell beads and pieces of ochre engraved with patterns: early signs of planning and symbolic thought.

Blombos Cave

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The story behind the card

The cave lies in a coastal cliff about 300 kilometres east of Cape Town and has been excavated since 1991 by a team led by the archaeologist Christopher Henshilwood. In 2011 the team reported two abalone shells used as containers about 100,000 years ago: people had ground ochre and mixed it with crushed bone, charcoal and other ingredients to make a pigment paste, a recipe that needs several planned steps. Layers from about 75,000 years ago hold pierced beads made from small snail shells, once strung and worn, and pieces of ochre engraved with cross-hatched lines. In 2018 the team described a small stone flake with a cross-hatched pattern drawn in ochre crayon, about 73,000 years old, the oldest drawing known anywhere.

Türkçe oku
Güney Afrika'nın güney kıyısındaki Blombos Mağarası'nda, kırmızı bir toprak boyası olan aşı boyasını hazırlamakta kullanılmış 100 bin yıllık bir düzenek bulundu. Daha genç katmanlardan çıkan deniz kabuğu boncuklar ve desen kazınmış aşı boyası parçaları da planlı ve simgesel düşüncenin erken izleri sayılır.

Mağara, Cape Town'ın yaklaşık 300 kilometre doğusunda, kıyıdaki bir yarın içindedir ve 1991'den beri arkeolog Christopher Henshilwood'un yönettiği bir ekip tarafından kazılıyor. Ekip 2011'de, 100 bin yıl kadar önce kap olarak kullanılmış iki deniz kulağı kabuğunu tanıttı. İnsanlar aşı boyasını öğütmüş, ezilmiş kemik, kömür ve başka malzemelerle karıştırarak boya macunu yapmıştı; bu, birkaç adımın önceden düşünülmesini gerektiren bir tariftir. Yaklaşık 75 bin yıllık katmanlarda, küçük salyangoz kabuklarından yapılmış, delinip ipe dizilerek takılmış boncuklar ve üzerine çapraz çizgiler kazınmış aşı boyası parçaları bulundu. Ekip 2018'de, aşı boyası kalemiyle çapraz çizgiler çizilmiş, 73 bin yıllık küçük bir taş parçasını tanıttı: bugün bilinen en eski çizim.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Blombos Cave
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