SA Museum to house 100,000-year-old Blombos cave discovery

The world’s oldest known and best preserved ochre-processing tool kit is now on display at the South African Museum in Cape Town. The set was discovered at Blombos cave in the Southern Cape by a team of Wits University archaeologists in 2008.

**Abalone shells from the ochre toolkit [Credit: © Prof. Chris Henshilwood, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg]**

The 100,000-year-old tool kit, which consists of two abalone shells, ochre, bone, charcoal, grindstones, hammer stones and stone tools, was used to make liquefied ochre-rich mixture for the likely purpose of body paint, decoration and sunscreen. Only one of the shells is on display at the museum.

According to Dr Sven Ouzman, curator of the museum’s precolonial archaeology department, the tool kit is the world’s oldest known evidence of early humans using a container and practising chemistry by mixing ochre, fat and other compounds to make a pigment-rich mixture.

“The find is wonderful. It adds a valuable piece of evidence to the body of thought that suggests that humans evolved first in Africa, not just in physical terms, but in mental or cognitive terms. It helps us approach the question of ‘What makes us human?’ with evidence.

“The ochre preparing kits are a rare find – primarily because organic material does not always preserve well, especially when it is 100000 years old. There were no doubt other such kits, possibly older and definitely more recent, but this is hard, datable evidence of complex human-like thought a long time ago,” he said.

Ouzman also believes the find is evidence that “early humans thought in similar ways” to modern humans.

For Prof Christopher Henshilwood, who led the team of archaeologists, the find adds to the evidence of behavioural developments associated with homo sapiens.

“The recovery of these tool kits adds evidence for early technological and behavioural developments associated with Homo sapiens and documents their deliberate planning, production and curation of a pigmented compound, and the first recorded use of containers. Homo sapiens thus also had an elementary knowledge of chemistry and the ability for long-term planning,” he said.

But for Henshilwood and his team, the discovery was not as big a surprise, as they had previously discovered a number of ochre-processing items of the same age, but what they found amazing with the latest find, was the “excellent condition” of the tool kits.

“For us this was the equivalent of uncovering the ‘smoking gun’ – the best evidence to date for exactly how ochre processing was carried out in this early period of H. sapiens’ behavioural evolution. We will return to the site next month to continue with excavations in the 100000-year-old and earlier levels,” he said.

The evidence also suggests the site may have been a “one-time workshop,” said Henshilwood.

“Within this stratigraphic level there are very few artefacts that are not related to the tool kits and almost no food waste. It seems the site was abandoned shortly after the tool kits were used and dune sand then blew into the site and encapsulated them. It is possible that the site was only again occupied months or years later, as there is no evidence of damage to the toolkits caused by later trampling,” he said.

The findings have been published in the latest edition of the journal, Science.

Author: Fadela Slamdien | Source: The New Age [October 25, 2011]