In African Cave, Signs of an Ancient Paint Factory

[alp227]

Source: NY Times

Digging deeper in a South African cave that had already yielded surprises from the Middle Stone Age, archaeologists have uncovered a 100,000-year-old workshop holding the tools and ingredients with which early modern humans apparently mixed some of the first known paint.

These cave artisans had stones for pounding and grinding colorful dirt enriched with a kind of iron oxide to a powder, known as ocher. This was blended with the binding fat of mammal-bone marrow and a dash of charcoal. Traces of ocher were left on the tools, and samples of the reddish compound were collected in large abalone shells, where the paint was liquefied, stirred and scooped out with a bone spatula.

In the workshop remains, archaeologists said they were seeing the earliest example yet of how emergent Homo sapiens processed ocher, one of the species’ first pigments in wide use, its red color apparently rich in symbolic significance. The early humans may have applied the concoction to their skin for protection or simply decoration, experts suggested. Perhaps it was their way of making social and artistic statements on their bodies or their artifacts.

Of special importance to the scientists who made the discovery, the ocher workshop showed that early humans, whose anatomy was modern, had also begun thinking like us. In a report published online on Thursday in the journal Science, the researchers called this evidence of early conceptual abilities “a benchmark in the evolution of complex human cognition.”

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/14/science/14paint.html?pagewanted=all

[aquart]

1. We find red ochre in burials.

Blood is life.

[RebelOne]

2. But, but, but, the earth is only 6,000 years old.

How could these painters have existed 100,000 years ago? :sarcasm:

[ooglymoogly]

4. Yes for born again pukes...the depth of their minds and thinking

began to hallucinate only a few years ago, whereas the minds of Democrats began to develop hundreds of thousand years ago.

Hence the big difference between pukes and Democrats, except for Dino's, who's minds never developed at all.

[razorman]

3. The first Sherwin-Williams store.

[AlbertCat]

6. The first Sherwin-Williams store.

Clan of the Cave Behr

[Blue_Tires]

9. they actually found this little statue:

[iandhr]

5. this is pretty cool.

[izquierdista]

7. But was it a UNION factory?

Or was there a cave a little higher up on the hill with a better view that had all the abalone shells?

[Downwinder]

8. Poor starving artists

living in a cave.

[greiner3]

14. "But was it a UNION factory?"

Not if Gov. Scott had his way.

[yurbud]

10. soon we'll have a free trade agreement with the cavemen...

[Downwinder]

11. I'll bet they get the best of the deal.

[yurbud]

13. nope--cave paint factory llc will gt the best of the deal.

[separationcs]

12. I hope they had a wastewater permit!