World’s oldest drawing found

World's oldest drawing.Photo: Craig Foster / SAPIENCE UIB / NTB scanpix

Researchers at the University of Bergen (UiB) believe they have found the world’s oldest drawing, said to be 73,000 years old.

 

The drawing was found during archaeological excavations in the Blombos cave at Cape in South Africa. It consists of three red lines scratched with six separate lines.

The researchers at UiB have revealed the drawing on a piece of rock ‘silcrete’, which was used to make stone tools 73,000 years ago.

The stone has been thoroughly studied using an advanced microscope,geochemical analysis. and modern reconstruction.

Through these surveys, it was confirmed that the lines were made by humans.The research team has since found that the drawing was applied with a “coloured pencil” made of red primrose.The end of the lines indicates that the pattern
must have originally covered a larger surface.

Earlier, it was believed that unique symbols first emerged when Homo sapiens arrived in Europe 40,000 years ago.

That means the discovery puts back man-made drawing by at least 30,000 years.

The Blombos cave has been under excavation since 1991.

The last 15 years have been under the auspices of the ‘Senter for Fremragende Forskning’ (SFF) at UiB and the University of Witwatersrand.

The cave contains material dated from 70,000 to 100,000 years back.A period of time described as the African Middle Ages.

 

© NTB scanpix / #Norway Today