ScienceWeek

ARCHEOLOGY: ON THE ART OF THE ANCIENTS

The following points are made by Anthony Sinclair (Nature 2003 426:774):

1) Excavations at the cave site of Hohle Fels in southwestern Germany have recently unearthed three small animal figurines, as Nicholas Conard has reported(1). The figurines, none longer than 2 cm, were carved out of mammoth ivory sometime between 30,000 and 33,000 years ago by some of the first modern humans to colonize Europe. One figurine is shaped like a bird, another like the head of a horse, and the third seems to be half-man, half-animal.

2) This find is an important addition to a group of more than 20 ivory figurines that have been found at four sites in the Ach and Lone Valleys: Vogelherd, Geissenklösterle, Hohlenstein-Stadel and Hohle Fels. Without question, they are the oldest body of figurative art in the world -- pieces that show a coherent set of manufacturing techniques and themes for representation. Alongside the figurines found at each of these four sites are the remains of waste from ivory, bone, and stone working. At these four sites, could we be looking at the oldest artists' workshops?

3) The study of early art has been plagued by our desire to see this essentially human skill in a progressive evolutionary context: simple artistic expressions should lead to later, more sophisticated creations. We imagine that the first artists worked with a small range of materials and techniques, and produced a limited range of representations of the world around them. As new materials and new techniques were developed, we should see this pattern of evolution in the archaeological record. Yet for many outlets of artistic expression -- cave paintings, textiles, ceramics and musical instruments -- the evidence increasingly refuses to fit. Instead of a gradual evolution of skills, the first modern humans in Europe were in fact astonishingly precocious artists.

4) For example, before we were able to date directly the classic cave paintings of southwestern France and Spain, eminent archaeologists had devised evolutionary schemes that ordered the works, from the first charcoal animal drawings to the more recent multicolor animals drawn with a clear sense of perspective at famous sites such as Lascaux and Altamira. And yet the beautiful multicolor horses, lions and mammoths at the Grotte Chauvet in France, discovered in the early 1990s and dating from 32,400 years before present, are now thought to be the oldest examples of cave art in the world.

5) The oldest evidence for the use of textiles and clay -- at Pavlov and Dolni Vestonice in the Czech Republic and some 26,000 years old -- does not suggest crude techniques or a poor knowledge of materials. Among the textiles, there are a number of distinct patterns, and also some finely made clay figurines. Furthermore, the evidence of several thousands of small pieces of ceramic has suggested to some that humans could deliberately manipulate their raw materials to explode ceramics in their kilns on command -- perhaps the earliest form of pyrotechnics.

6) At Geissenklösterle, Germany, a fragment of a bone pipe, of the musical sort, has been found. This pipe was made from the radius bone of a swan and has three clear finger holes. There are also more than twenty specimens of musical pipe of the same sort and age from Isturitz in France. Microscopic examination suggests that they may have been reed-voiced instruments, like a modern oboe, and that the finger holes have been chamfered to increase the pneumatic efficiency of the finger seal: simple whistles they are not. Such evidence of complexity is used to argue that these cannot be the first musical pipes, even though they are the oldest in the archaeological record(2,3).

References:

1. Conard, N. J. Nature 426, 830-832 (2003)

2. d'Errico, F. et al. J. World Prehist. 17, 1–70 (2003)

3. White, R. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 21, 537-564 (1992)

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ON THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN HUMAN BEHAVIOR

The following points are made by C.S. Henshilwood et al (Science 2002 295:1278):

1) Archaeological evidence associated with modern cognitive abilities provides important insights into when and where modern human behavior emerged (1). Two models for the origins of modern human behavior are current: (a) a late and rapid appearance at approximately 40 to 50 thousand years ago (ka) associated with the European Upper Paleolithic and the Later Stone Age (LSA) of sub-Saharan Africa (2,3) or (b) an earlier and more gradual evolution rooted in the African Middle Stone Age (MSA; approximately 250 to 40 ka)(4,5). Evidence for modern behavior before 40 ka is relatively rare and often ambiguous (2). However, in sub-Saharan Africa, archaeological evidence for changes in technology, economy, and social organization and the emergence of symbolism in the Middle Stone Age may support the second model (4, 5). Examples of these changes include standardized formal lithic tools (5), shaped bone implements (5), innovative subsistence strategies such as fishing and shellfishing, and the systematic use of red ochre.

2) Utilized ochre is found in almost all Stone Age occupations in southern Africa that are younger than 100 ka. The ochre may have served only utilitarian functions (e.g., skin protection or hide tanning)(3) or may have been used symbolically as pigment(4). Evidence for the latter is a persistent use of ochre with saturated red hues to produce finely honed crayon or pencil forms. However, no ochre pieces or other artifacts older than approximately 40 ka provide evidence for abstract or depictional images, which would indicate modern human behavior(2).

3) The authors report they have recovered two pieces of engraved ochre from the Middle Stone Age layers at Blombos Cave, South Africa. Situated on the southern Cape shore of the Indian Ocean, the cave is 35 meters above sea level. A 5- to 60-cm layer of aeolian sand containing no archaeological artifacts separates the Later Stone Age from the Middle Stone Age occupation layers. A mean date of 77,000 years was obtained for the layers containing the engraved ochres by thermoluminescence dating of burnt lithics, and the stratigraphic integrity was confirmed by an optically stimulated luminescence age of 70,000 years on an overlying dune. These engravings support the emergence of modern human behavior in Africa at least 35,000 years before the start of the Upper Paleolithic.

References (abridged):

1. The term "modern human behavior" as used here has no chronological implication and means the thoughts and actions underwritten by minds equivalent to those of Homo sapiens today. Key among these is the use of symbols.

2. P. A. Mellars, K. Gibson, Eds., Modelling the Early Human Mind (McDonald Institute Monographs, Cambridge, 1996).

3. R. G. Klein, The Human Career (Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1999).

4. H. J. Deacon, J. Deacon, Human Beginnings in South Africa: Uncovering the Secrets of the Stone Age (David Philip, Cape Town, South Africa, 1999).

5. S. McBrearty and A. Brooks, J. Hum. Evol. 38, 453 (2000)

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