Cape Town - Stone age South Africans created a milk and ochre mixture 49 000 years ago which they probably used as body paint or for rock paintings, a new study has found.
While ochre – a natural pigment – has been discovered at many Stone Age archaeological sites in South Africa from 125 000 years ago, this is the first time that a milk and ochre paint has been found. The milk was used to bind the powdered ochre into paint.
The study was published in the recent edition of the journal PLOS ONE by a team of university researchers from South Africa and overseas.
The paint was discovered after analysing a small stone flake of dolerite found in Sibudu Cave, a rock shelter in northern KwaZulu-Natal about 40km north of Durban.
The excavation was directed by Professor Lyn Wadley of Wits University.
Paola Villa, curator at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, and one of the study’s authors, said in a media release that the ancient site was occupied by “anatomically modern humans” in the Middle Stone Age from roughly 77 000 to 38 000 years ago.
“This surprising find establishes the use of milk with ochre well before the introduction of domestic cattle,” she said.
Cattle were domesticated in South Africa between 1 000 and 2 000 years ago. Villa said the milk was probably obtained by killing a lactating buffalo, eland, kudu or impala.
It may even have come from the now extinct “giant buffalo”, a massive animal with a horn span of more than 3m.
“Obtaining milk from a lactating wild bovid also suggests that the people may have attributed a special significance and value to that product,” said Villa.
The study’s authors suggest the Stone Age hunters targeted lactating animals which had separated from their herds to give birth.
“It would not be difficult for hunters to locate lactating cows, particularly among seasonal breeders. This hunting pattern would result in access to milk.”
It is not clear what the paint was used for. It may have been used for body decoration.
While there are no reported instances of milk being used to bind ochre pigments as a body paint in Africa, Villa said the modern Himba people in Namibia mix ochre with butter as a colouring agent for skin, hair and leather clothing. It could also have been used for rock art.
The oldest confirmed rock art paintings on the continent are those of the Apollo 11 rock shelter in Namibia.
Radiocarbon analyses have dated these paintings to 27 500 years ago, some 20 000 years after the date the milk and ochre mixture was produced.
“Only further research on pigments and binders of rock art in South Africa will allow us to identify similarities or differences that may support one hypothesis over the other,” the study’s authors concluded.
Weekend Argus