About 100 000 years ago, a Middle Stone Age person sat in Blombos Cave near the beach on the southern Cape coastline and used a finger to stir an ochre mixture in a perlemoen shell. Then, he or she used a tiny bone “paint brush” to transfer the mixture to a surface that may have been human skin – for decoration or as an early sunscreen – but possibly the cave wall.
Just a day or two later, this person and at least one companion deserted the cave, leaving behind their “toolkits” that each comprised a perlemoen shell storage container for the “paint” and several accessories in the form of stone and bone tools.
In the following months and possibly years, wind-blown sand swept into the cave, gradually covering these artefacts with increasing layers that protected them from any subsequent visits by the “artists” and/or their descendants.
Then, in 2008, the near-pristine toolkits were discovered by an international archaeological team led by Professor Christopher Henshilwood, a scientist who holds chairs at Wits University in Joburg and at the University of Bergen in Norway and who also maintains a small research facility in Cape Town.
Incredibly, they found that the impression left by the outline of the finger-stirring was still visible on the inner surface of the perlemoen shell, as were remnants of the ochre “paint” on the tip of the delicate bone instrument and even on its shaft where it had been held between the worker’s thumb and forefinger.
The researchers’ careful analysis of the perlemoen shells – the oldest human use of containers yet found – and the tools and the remnant ochre “paint” discovered in Blombos is reported today in the prestigious international journal Science, and their findings push back the earliest evidence of complex cognitive behaviour by modern humans a full 20 000-plus years.
It is not Henshilwood’s first find from this incredibly rich Middle Stone Age archaeological repository to have been reported in the journal.
In 2002, he and colleagues generated huge excitement when they published an article describing their discovery of pieces of ochre that had been carefully engraved with a cross-hatching pattern. (Ochre is the colloquial term used by archaeologists to describe an earth or rock containing red or yellow oxides or hydroxides of iron.) Dating back 77 000 years, this was the oldest artwork yet found and it symbolised the ability for abstract thought in people of this era – one of the signals of truly modern behaviour.
Then, there was an equally important article in 2005 describing the find in Blombos of perforated shell beads, the oldest known evidence of human decoration.
“The beads really were one of our most important finds because that talks to personal ornamentation and symbolic behaviour, also (dating) from 77 000 years onwards,” said Henshilwood.
“But I think the new find is for me really significant because, firstly, it’s a lot older at 100 000 years old, and secondly, it’s really the ‘smoking gun’ (evidence for modern human behaviour).”
This is because the recovery of the toolkits documents the ability of these early modern humans to deliberately plan, produce and curate pigmented compound or “paint” – in other words, it demonstrates that humans had an elementary knowledge of chemistry, and that they also knew how to use containers as far back as 100 000 years ago, he explains.
Other pigment containers and workshops found elsewhere date to “only” about 60 000 years ago, although some older individual grindstones and hammerstones used to process ochre have been discovered.
“Fortuitously, no one came to the cave for probably a couple of months or maybe even years after that. The sand just blew in and it was all covered over, so that when the next people arrived they didn’t damage it. So it’s like a time machine, hermetically sealed almost,” says Henshilwood.
“Why would you leave so suddenly, leave the paint behind, and why would you not come back? It’s a question that keeps coming back to me, it fascinates me.”
l The “toolkits” are on display at the Iziko South African Museum in Queen Victoria Street. - Cape Argus